In Search of a Pocket Apologist.

So the more I read and study the Old Testament, the more questions I have...and there's no great time to ask them.

Actually, I did ask one via e-mail to two of my priests that actually had nothing to do with the OT, but had everything to do with this sincere question from a friend: How can an educated person believe in this stuff?

I thought it was a marvelous question and couldn't think of an answer to give other than "faith," which seems like a really condescending thing to say to a person who doesn't have any. And I got two different marvelous answers and have plans to blog on those answers some day, but I digress.

Seriously, though-- the notebook I use for my class notes* is awash in marginal tangents written in different colored ink, ruminations, and inquiries, many of which I'm DYING to find the answers to. And I'm not about to start clogging up the inboxes of the priests at my church, because they're busy enough without me pulling on the hems of their vestments wondering if the prophet Jeremiah was a real person or just a way to explain, after the fact, the repeated Babylonian conquests of what was supposed to be a chosen people's promised land.

Maybe I should just get over it and ask anyway? Or ask one of the three a question every other week or so to keep it from being the kind of juvenile finger-in-the-nose WHYWHYWHY series of questions that Eva gets to ask because she's four? But what if they have staff meetings and figure out I'm doing it, and I get some kind of embarrassing nickname?

If I had, you know, TIME, I could research some of this myself. It would take a lot of precious time just to get started, though, since I'm just so completely new to this sort of study. I don't know the theological heavy hitters, and I certainly don't know who's writing in a modern, up-to-date, accessible way on these topics. Maybe I shouldn't ask anyone anything, but just ask for a reading list...which I'd eventually get to in about four years, when Silas is in kindergarten?

See, this is the thing I miss about being a student-- that clearly defined student/teacher relationship.

Where do you take your "big" questions, when you have them?

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*A note on the set-up of the "class" I'm taking: The link about it is here.There are a group of students and two mentors who help facilitate discussion. Two of us are in year one of the program, which is the OT. Four of us are in year two, which is the NT. One is in year three, which is church history. I don't know what the fourth year is off the top of my head. Anyway, we each do something like 30 pages of reading each week and meet back to discuss what we read, common themes, etc. There are other things we do during class time, so there's no time to go off on tangents and make it the Cary Milkweed show.