Knowledge

I just came back from church. Since I’m normally quite free on weekday nights, I decided to enrol myself in a course that the church offered during this Lenten period, ‘History of Christianity’. Tonight is the first lesson and oh boy, was it an eye opener! They start with the period before Christ, from Caesar’s period to St. Augustine. Most of the time, when watching the video, I was like, " What happened during that time?", "What exactly did Alexander the great accomplish?". I realised tonight that my knowledge is not really that great. Of course most of us had heard of all these people at some point in our lives, but I think not everyone knows the details of what they did or how important they are in the making of history.

What’s more surprising is that the people who attended the course, the senior people(mostly grandparents), they know a lot about the bible and the history behind it. I was very, very shocked by that! We are used to saying that the Americans don’t know much about the things that happened outside their country, but obviously, this is a wrong concept. I guess it’s Asia that they’re not familiar with, but the middle ages and Europe, they do know something about them. I have to admit that I’ve always thought of myself as smart and knowledgeable, but I think from tonight on, I have to read more to ‘upgrade’ myself. While I’m sitting there listening to the discussion going on, these senior people will contribute or ask questions that I don’t even understand, much less begin to form those questions. I really have a renewed sense of respect for these people. One of them said I still have many more years to read and brush up on my knowledge of the bible. I guess that’s true, but only if I read it! What a jock for me to really study and read the bible often.

I hope that this course will help me to understand more of how Christianity evolved to what it is today and also I will know more about the history of the country in started in - Jerusalem. A lot of times, Rome was at the center of the course because of the many great rulers that came from there. I read from Dan Brown’s books that the Catholic powers started from there too. I guess Rome is the center of the Catholic faith. The Vatican is there and the Pope lives there. But I still don’t understand what’s the difference between Catholicism and Christianity. A question came up today regarding this but because going into that will take up too much time, the pastor didn’t not to delve into that. I really would like to hear what he has to say about that. See how it differs from Pastor Phua, my pastor in S’pore.

All these goes back to the same thing, pray often and read the bible!!!