As you might’ve deciphered from the blogpost, I had another opportunity to have a spiritual conversation with my French class. We were working on asking and giving opinions, when a lady from Spain asked me and another lady in our class (an older lady from New York via Haiti and St. Martinique) why we’re religious. She asked this because the class knows I’m here to work with a church and teach theological classes. What follows is a description of the conversation, but know that it all happened in French. Also know that I really, really struggled to express myself, though the rest of the class could sense my frustration and they were very patient and encouraging (as they always are).
I responded to the question by answering, “I’m not religious.” While I figured they might be a bit surprised by the answer, they were much more taken aback than I’d expected. I explained that I’m not religious, but I do try my best to live for Jesus. Jesus didn’t come to found a religion, but to reveal to the world what Father God is like. I explained the Constantian shift (or tried to) and it was when Christianity joined the Roman government that it began to do the terrible things it’s know for; oppressing women, starting wars, etc. I told my class that I’m a follower of Jesus for two main reasons: 1) I believe the gospels to be historically reliable and 2) If God is really the way Jesus portrayed him to be, then He’s a good person.
We actually discussed a lot of different and intense topics during today’s class (of which I likely understood just near 50%) and it was a healthy, engaged discussion. While it’s a pretty big faux pas to discuss religion (or Christ) in France, the class was very respectful of and interested in our opinions. Again, this is why I chose to take a class from this school rather than the Christian school that has similar classes.
When our teacher asked if anyone else in our class (composed of people from England, Sweden, Spain, Italy, Korea and Venezuela) other than the two of us believed in anything, no one else had any sort of faith beliefs. The teacher asked if I found that strange, but all I could answer was “no.” I wanted to explain why I’m not judgmental and also believe God’s love is searching out everyone, I just couldn’t express myself. I ended my part of the discussion by stating that it’s frustrating that I lack the ability to speak coherently regarding something that is so important to me. But I did get to share my faith, even if it was with grammatically incorrect and even sometimes incoherent, French.
Written by Donnie Miller
millermissioncorps 