I loved this story SO much … when I was in charge of leading our church group I made everyone listen to it. Half of us were in tears and then we had a GREAT discussion on evangelism and interfaith thoughts. Our group is quite diverse ranging from those who would believe that it’s their mission to convert everyone to accepting Jesus as their personal saviour to others who would have more interfaith beliefs. Lots of talk about heaven/hell too. Someone even suggested that maybe there isn’t a hell. And no even tried to stone him and call him a heretic. I was so proud of the real and important discussion we could have w/out wanting to kill each other or cast out demons (I’m being sarcastic, but my past church history suggests that I can never be too careful).

Anyway, I forgot to post a comment and tell you how it all played out.

And one more thing … I’m a substitute teacher and a few months ago I was in my daughter’s grade three class supervising ‘Christian Education’ (we live in a strong Christian community (probably only about 50% Christian, but they’re super vocal and teach this Christian Education class in the public schools) and the curriculum that the CE volunteers are given is very conservative evangelical curriculum). Anyway, as I’m supervising one of the kids tells the CH teacher that she told the muslim girl in the other class, the only one in the school, that she was going to hell b/c she didn’t believe in Jesus. The teacher gave a (what I thought was stupid and thoughtless, and typical) response. I almost jumped out of my skin. Had no idea what to do/say, so I just kept quiet and then talked about it with my daughter later. After listening to this story, I’ve been so bothered by my response and that whole scenerio. I would handle it so differently if given another chance. I’ve even drafted a letter to our local newspaper about this whole thing. Just really feeling inspired to do something and respond and let others know what is happening in our schools. And that it’s not okay. But I’m not sure how to write it and how to get people thinking without pissing them off. Maybe I can’t. Maybe I should/shouldn’t.

Had to let you know all this came b/c of this post!!