Everything for my intro to Buddhism<\/a> course did go well; I checked course assessments and they were generally very positive and encouraging. I worked on that essay, \u201cTeaching from a Buddhist<\/a> Perspective\u201d for a few days and nights but have yet to finish it\u2026 and it\u2019s well past the due date by now. But I\u2019ll see what I can get done on it this week and if I can still get it in (perhaps to be published in a book this year).<\/p>\n What kept me so busy was the Phil of Religion course: reading selections of Paul\u2019s Epistles, much of Genesis and bits of Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, along with the full Gospel of Mark and most of the parables of Jesus. We also read Dante\u2019s Inferno <\/span>and a wonderful translation of the Book of Job<\/span> by Stephen Mitchell. The material was largely new to me (oddly enough), so it took some time to absorb. I was also amazed by the professor\u2019s re-reading of the Old Testament as a series of life lessons, like Aesop\u2019s Fables with more character development. They were stories about people and a God who were learning from mistakes, and the disasters that befell those who didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n The professor led us toward the conclusion that the God of the Bible is not a moral God (in any way we might think of morality today). So we could either follow him one way or we could learn from those Biblical stories and others to hone our own moral sense. With a good moral sense we can see others, those we may have blindly believed must<\/span> be good such as our parents or political leaders or gods, from a more realistic vantage point, seeing that they too are flawed, perhaps seriously. At least that\u2019s what I got from it.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>I think it\u2019s about time to start an ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/7907151-3345813924759884182?l=americanbuddhist.blogspot.com\")
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