The Case for Christ Student Response #4

In the first term of this school year my grade 7/8 class has read The Case for Christ: Student Edition by Lee Strobel. At the end of the study of the book each student was asked to answer one of the questions posed in the chapters of the book. I told that I would be sharing their responses online. So, throughout the rest of the year I will be posting their work. Please note, I have not edited these responses, they are exactly what the student handed me.

Did Jesus Fake His Death

Some of the reasons why Jesus was put of the cross is that the Pharisees . Some people say that Jesus might have faked his death, but some believe that Jesus died on the cross and rose from the grave.

Getting put on the cross back then was a slow and very bad way of killing people. People about to get nailed to the cross would lay down on the cross that is on the ground and the executioner would take large spikes(nails) and drive them down into the hands and the feet of the victim. In the bible it says that the spikes or nails are put through the hands of Jesus but it actually means that the are driven through the wrists because the bone is strong enough to hold more of the body weight. People die on the cross because of suffocation, it is when some of your organs start to fail. It is hard for the body to breath when all of your body weight is hanging on just by your arms, so to stay alive for longer the victim pushes up with his feet to take a breath. When someone does push up with his feet it will hurt a lot just to get one breath and to keep doing it over and over again.

It would be hard to steal the body from the tomb that Jesus was kept in because there would have been guards and the stone that sealed the tomb was really big and would be hard to roll away. Nobody really knows the exact amount of guards that were guarding the tomb at the time, they would have made sure that nobody would be able to steal the body inside. The rock would weigh a lot and they would have needed a lot of people to maybe roll it away.

Another theory is that when Mary-Magdalene and Mary found the tomb empty, they could have went to a different tomb and not Jesus’ tomb. But another theory that sort of goes along with this is that the two women could have imagined that they saw an angel telling them that Jesus rose from the grave, but there could have been just a caretaker of the tomb that told them that Jesus wasn’t in that tomb.

The NIV bible says, there was a violent earthquake and an angel of the Lord came down from heaven, rolled back the tomb and then sat on it. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men. Then the angel said to the women, Jesus has risen from the dead, just as he said, now quickly go tell his disciples.

Bibliography goes here:

"How Did Crucifixion Kill." The Guardian. N.p., Thursday Apr. 2004. Web.

Strobel, Lee, and Jane Vogel. The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus. Grand Rapids, MI: ZondervanPublishingHouse, 2001. Print.

Attention Spans

I was recently reading The Inevitable by Kevin Kelly and I was struck by one paragraph in particular that I found on page 282, although I recommend the entire book.

We spend a lot of time worrying about attention spans at school. I wonder if the problem isn't attention spans.

Legitimate Cameras

A while back my youngest daughter, all of 7 years old, said something interesting.

We were talking about cameras. Somewhere in our conversation she said something like, "It's not a legitimate camera if it can't put pictures on Facebook."

What kind of world are our children growing up in if something is only legitimate if it can be online?

The Case for Christ Student Response #3

In the first term of this school year my grade 7/8 class has read The Case for Christ: Student Edition by Lee Strobel. At the end of the study of the book each student was asked to answer one of the questions posed in the chapters of the book. I told that I would be sharing their responses online. So, throughout the rest of the year I will be posting their work. Please note, I have not edited these responses, they are exactly what the student handed me.

Did Jesus fake his death? It’s a valid question, and one that is asked a lot when people talk about the bible. Could the assumed ‘Son of God’ been a master magician or manipulator? That’s what I’m going to trying to figure out.

One of the biggest theories is called the ‘swoon theory’. The swoon theory is saying that Jesus merely fell unconscious, was taking off the cross. And then they put him in the tum, he rested for 3 days, then pushed the rock out of the way. He then went to saw Mary and the disciples. But they’re several things that don’t line up with that theory.

First off, when Jesus died, it Matthew 27:50-53, “50 And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. 51 At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split 52 and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. 53 They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.”

This passage is showing how Jesus did in fact die, and God sent a message out to the people to show it, ripping the curtain in half and making an earthquake. This proves that Jesus did in fact die. Also, when they took him off the cross, would the guards not at least look or feel a heartbeat coming from him? Also, the rock probably would have been several feet tall and wide, meaning that no man would have been able too just straight up push it out of the way. So the swoon theory is highly improbable, so if he didn’t die on the cross, what else could’ve happened.

Another big problem that other people have is if Jesus is God, why didn’t the world just end when he died? I mean, if he’s God, then why didn’t the Earth stop functioning.  But there are some major problems with that question. First off, Jesus is not God. Jesus is the physical representation of the Son of God, one of the three parts of the trinity. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Jesus is the Son, so when Jesus died, God showed that one part of the trinity had died with the earthquake and the temple drapes being ripped in half. But then God revived Jesus, making the trinity whole again.

So now the question of Jesus dieing hasn’t been completely debunked, but once you explore what the theories are, you can make your own judgement call. But from the evidence I saw, I believe that Jesus is our Lord and that he did indeed rise from the dead after saving us all from our sins.

Works Cited

Strobel, Lee Patrick. The Case for Christ. N.p.: Zondervan Pub. House, 1998. Print.

"What Is the Swoon Theory? Did Jesus Survive the Crucifixion?" GotQuestions.org. Got Questions Ministires, 18 Mar. 2016. Web. 21 Nov. 2016. <https://gotquestions.org/swoon-theory.html>.

Carp, Ed. "If Jesus Is God and He Died on the Cross, How Did the World Survive for Three Days without God?" Why Didn't the World End When Jesus Died? Quora, 18 Apr. 2014. Web. 22 Nov. 2016. <https://www.quora.com/If-Jesus-is-God-and-He-died-on-the-cross-how-did-the-world-survive-for-three-days-without-God>.

Pendulums

Pendulums have been on my mind lately, and not just because my middle school science students are repeating Galileo's famous pendulum experiments.

I've been thinking about pendulums in education.

When my parents were teaching one of the big pendulum swings happening was the phonics vs whole language conversation. Education seems to constantly have pendulum swings where we move from one extreme to another. (Read these two articles if you feel like reviewing more pendulum swings. 1 and 2.)

I worry that we're in the middle of another series of pendulum swings.

My experience tells me that in almost every case the middle road has been better than swinging to one or the other side. It's not either/or but both/and. To use the example above, the best way to learn to read is with phonics and whole language not just one or the other.

The two pendulum swings that are on my radar at the moment are the use of technology in the classroom and PBL.

I know that I can easily swing too far to the side of using technology too much. In fact, for one year I even deliberately did just that. The very first year I had a 1-1 classroom I chose to do everything digitally. I knew it was a bad idea even when I started it. But I wanted to find out firsthand which places the technology would prove to be a bad idea. (Colouring maps using the fill tool in a paint program does not help you learn the shape of the country of France anywhere near as well as colouring it with pencil crayons!) I very quickly began to swing back toward the middle trying to find a balance between using digital tools and more traditional tools which is where we should be. The problem that I see now is a growing reaction against technology. We have been discovering and experiencing the negatives that come with using technology. This has led to a reaction where we are sometimes avoiding the use of technology when we can and even should be using it.

The other pendulum I wonder about is how quickly the Christian school community that I work in is adopting PBL. (If you aren't familiar with PBL I highly recommend the Buck Institute for Education. They do a great job of explaining and supporting PBL.) I loved when I was first exposed to the PBL model. It gave me a language and structure to begin to understand some of my own stumbling experiments in trying to make education more relevant to my students. There are so many of the ideas and processes around PBL that are fantastic. But as we rush to an all PBL, all the time style of schooling what are we leaving behind? I really don't know the answer, and I could easily be wrong. Perhaps it isn't a pendulum swing at all. But it feels like it to me.

The Case for Christ Student Response #2

In the first term of this school year my grade 7/8 class has read The Case for Christ: Student Edition by Lee Strobel. At the end of the study of the book each student was asked to answer one of the questions posed in the chapters of the book. I told that I would be sharing their responses online. So, throughout the rest of the year I will be posting their work. Please note, I have not edited these responses, they are exactly what the student handed me.

Did Jesus fake his death? I think Jesus did not fake his death but survived the crucifixion so he could rise three days later.  Usually if a person is tortured they would live on a cross for a short time and likely never be rescued.  Instead, Jesus suffered many injuries while on the cross. These injuries included a crown of thorns which was pressed into his head before the crucifixion and his hands and feet were nailed to the cross. The Roman soldiers often broke the victim's legs to quicken the death.  Jesus likely could not die from these injuries alone.  To die this quickly, the soldiers would have likely beaten Jesus with a whip or a stick as punishment or torture.  This type of torture usually leads to unconsciousness and the loss of a lot of blood which would result in a slow death.  However, theories and the gospels indicate that he was conscious and died quickly.  So excess bleeding was likely not the cause of Jesus’s death. Although the book of John 19:34 says the Roman soldiers found Jesus dead and to be sure that he was dead the Roman soldiers pushed a spear into his side.  Another theory says Jesus chose to die or perhaps God did not want him to suffer anymore and allowed him to die quickly.   I believe Jesus was not dead when the soldiers found him but rather unconscious.  Back in the Roman days they did not have doctors to confirm if a person was alive or dead or a medical report.  The Roman soldiers used their experience and judgement to determine if a person was dead.

When Jesus was removed from the cross and laid in the tomb to rest he had some time to recover.  I believe God kept Jesus alive so that he could rise on the third day and bless his followers.  After the third day Jesus most likely gave up and died.

I believe Jesus allowed the Roman soldiers to put him on the cross because he knew that God would save him and bring him off the cross and back to life to see his followers.  Jesus did not fake his death but was unconscious and God kept him alive so he could teach his followers to believe.  

Works Cited

Chaffey, Tim. "The Resurrection of Jesus Christ: Faking Death." Answers in Genesis. N.p., 29 Mar. 2013. Web. 21 Nov. 2016.

"How Did Jesus Die." How Did Jesus Die. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Nov. 2016.

Strobel, Lee, and Jane Vogel. The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus. Grand Rapids, MI: ZondervanPublishingHouse, 2001. Print