What can we learn from the Puritans' belief that they were the new chosen people? As I get older, I'm continuously realizing that when we face God, we're mostly going to realize that we were actually quite wrong about a lot of things. Having grown up in a really conservative Pentacostal church, attending Biola AND Talbot, I can't help but look back at my journey and see how far we've come. Many of my friends who still connect themselves to those traditions jokingly call me a liberal pagan who's lost her way from the straight and narrow path of Jesus. But can we really be so arrogant of a people group to think that God exclusively speaks to us and us alone? Isn't this the same belief that the Catholics had and still maintain? Listening to Dr. Bolger during lecture just makes me think bad just 4 years ago when most of the Christian population was crying foul play about global warming and that God has blessed us with this earth so why can't we milk it for all it's worth?! Those who are warning are delusional and Al Gore is the anti-Christ. But what do I see on the cover of one of the magazines about a year ago? Global warming and the need to preserve the beautiful earth that God's blessed us with. What the?! And if you've got about 3 hours, I can regale you with tails of what people thought at Biola - "wait, you're a Democrat? Wait what? But you're Christian! Democrats are evil!" Goodness. When we get caught up in being so dogmatic about these issues and not remember that we are actually finite beings, we will make horrible mistakes and viciously taint the name of Jesus. Why must we be so insistent that we're right and you're wrong when we really don't know. I'm not one to advocate that post-modern philosophy is right. I do believe in absolutes. I do believe that there is a black and white. I just keep thinking that maybe we won't really know what those black and whites are until after the fact. Or maybe we should just take a moment to think about such things before declaring anything. When the one person shared about how she'd been baptized 3 times, I couldn't help but chuckle at the absurdity of it all. I, too, have been baptized 3 times (twice as an infant and once more as a teenager). Again, I don't say all this to make a point that nothing is important or can be figured out. I just think that we need to pause before we let our spiritual pride take over and become the monster that we've seen it become in the past.