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This morning I have been reading a book entitled Faith-Sharing as I need to write a two page review on it by this afternoon. In the third chapter “The Nature of Christian Faith” the authors describe three barriers to Christian Faith. As I read the second barrier “Faith is the Opposite of Understanding” where the authors state this concept is a barrier. As I read this and disagreed with their reasons as to why, but not necessarily that the underlying issue is a barrier, I started to think about my Philosophy classes in undergrad and also the first few weeks of my ethics class were we were going over (for me reviewing) some western philosophers and their understandings and schools of thought. As I thought about it, I started to wonder: If we were to require a class in say High School on Philosophy, at least an introduction to some of the major themes and the shapers of them, that has influenced Western Culture, would we be better off. I think we just might be. I think having course where we learn about the wisdom of those before and present might be a very good thing. I am sure that there are some extremists in various religious traditions that might have a problem with schools teaching about the discipleship of the goddess of wisdom. However, they might not. As I have not heard anyone complaining that publicly funded institutions offer doctorates in discipleship of the goddess of wisdom (PhDs). Looking back, in many ways I wish I had taken more philosophy course in undergrad as a lot can be gained from the wisdom of others even if one disagrees with their conclusions. However, it is probably a good thing I did not as in the classes I did take there were these two individuals who I would like to think of as both loving and generally peaceful people would get into very heated discussions, at times to the point others in the room wondered who would cast the first physical blow (blows never happened). As any philosophy additional course I could have taken would have included these two individuals, it was probably in the best interest of others that I did not.. or perhaps the heated discussions would have been good for the others and forced them to speak up and participate more and own their thoughts and education, who knows…. Yikes… I should get back to the book don’t have a lot of time left to read and write