Jonah and the Junior UUs

Today in RE the junior UUs talked about the book of Jonah from the Bible. The focus of the lesson was "How do you decide what to believe?" Clearly our group of sophisticated kids didn't believe for a second that Jonah had actually been swallowed by whale. But they lost confidence when they heard the story of James Bartley who, in the late 19th century, was swallowed by a whale, and lived; the story was reported in the New York Times. They also didn't believe the story of the man who was speared through the head with an iron spike and lived, until I said "no, really, it's true," and that the story is in every Psychology 101 text book.

(Based on research from 1991 it appears that the story of James Bartley may not be true, even if it was published in the New York Times.)

Only five of the junior UUs were in RE today. Although it would be great if more attended, often conversations develop more naturally with small classes. Today I felt that there was a conversation and we talked about why we might believe what we believe. I also had the opportunity to talk about one way that Unitarian Universalism differ from other religions... other religions agree on specific metaphysical truths, while UUs agree only on an approach, (consider the 4th principle).

It was a good day in RE.