Overall Thoughts on Religious Perspective Class

My understanding of how religion is important to humanity was very clear after reading the books for this class. Perhaps Asher Lev showed this most clearly as he had so much torment in deciding between his religion or his passion of art. Tom in Uncle Tom's Cabin used religion as his life line. I'm guessing he would not have lived had he not had God to give him hope. Hope was the common element in all the books. Without religion, people do not have hope and fall into despair. Graham Greene expertly showed this in his book. Their communities seemed non-existent without their priests directing them.

People need hope in life and religion gives them that hope. I am reminded of my pastor talking about "believers" who are on their deathbed compared to "nonbelievers". He said believers, having hope for everlasting life, do not fight death and their physical death comes much easier. They seem to accept the crossing over to the other side because of their religion. They have hope and belief that God will take care of them. Nonbelievers, on the other hand, fight death and show much fear. He said he watched many people struggle through the end and hang on to the life they had, even when they are in extreme pain. I just think this is a great example of how people need God in their lives.

It seems as religion has always brought out the best and the worst in people. As far back as the beginning of time, people have fought over religion and power. They are continuing to fight and kill each other today all because of religious persecution. Of course, WWII is a great example of this. The Germans tormented and torchured the Jews just because of their religion and their Jewish heritage. Even today, people waste much time and energy fighting over whose doctrine is right or wrong. Families and friendships can be split over the issue of religion.

Again, I felt reading these books for class opened my eyes to some different thinking. It was especially good to read others thoughts and writings in this online class. I have not had the opportunity to read EVERYTHING a student has submitted in a regular class. On the other hand, it was a little hard for me to post my writings for everyone to read. I was just a bit intimidated at first, and then decided it didn't matter. I really felt my classmates had some wonderful interpretations of the books we studied and I have gained from them.

My biggest "a-ha" moment came when I read the background on Graham Greene. He was such an interesting person and his background was so important in understanding where he was writing from in his book. I think I learned the most about him as we had to come up with different facts than the other students in class. I finally got confused trying to write something someone else had not written. Then I realized it did not really matter at this point since I had gained to so much from reading all the other facts. That was a great assignment!

I thought the class definitely met the objectives. I would have been good to study a different religion. Perhaps something from the Middle East since that is such a current topic in the world today.