Posted on 02/24/2010 10:56:49 AM PST by JoeProBono
FAYETTEVILLE, N.C.- A North Carolina high school student said she was willing to sacrifice her honor roll grades to avoid writing an essay contrary to her Christian beliefs.
Tieanna Trough, a student at Gray's Creek High School in Fayetteville, said her English class was instructed to write essays on making deals with the devil as part of a curriculum studying Washington Irving's short story "The Devil and Tom Walker," WTVD-TV, Durham/Raleigh, reported Tuesday.
Trough said her faith bars her from writing about deals with the devil.
"I believe you don't write about how to sell your soul to the devil," she said.
The girl's parents said they agreed with their daughter.
"We can't allow God into the classrooms, but yet they are going to allow the devil in the classroom, that's the way I felt," said her mother, Monice McLean. "They were told if they didn't do it they would get a zero."
Trough said teachers have now given her an alternate subject for her essay, how and why money is important. She said the new essay subject is acceptable.
Who sold their soul to the devil in Job?
Yep...I'm surprised the teacher didn't get hammered for teaching it. I wonder if the kid and her parents would be open to reading The Screwtape Letters or if they'd have a problem with that as well.
I live my life like there’s no tomorrow....
I did not say sold but I was referring to interaction with the Devil, in this case God and the devil.
Well...
In the "deal with the devil" stories with which I am familiar, the "deal" is clearly a quid pro quo, being the exchange of favors from the devil in exchange for a human soul. The "deal" is always made between a devil and a human. Sometimes the victim escapes through human cleverness or intellectual ability (the Devil and Daniel Webster) but more often falls to the devil's machinations (The Devil and Tom Walker).
In the Book of Job no human made a deal with the devil. There is no offer of devilish favors in exchange for a soul. Rather than the devil making a deal with a human, he makes a challenge to God: "If you allow me to do such-and-such, your servant Job will do thus-and-so," denying God's claim that Job was a righteous man. God simply accepted the challenge. The devil did his best, resulting in an epic fail. God didn't even really do anything--He speaks to Job and his companions only after the devil's failure. God is pictured as merely waiting for a predetermined outcome.
So I can't really agree with your assessment of the Book of Job as a "deal with the devil" story. I don't think you'll find one of those in the Bible.
Not really the point. If she refused because she was a Muslim, she would be issued a formal apology and the teacher and fellow classmates would be undergoing “sensitivity brainwashing” as we speak.
Also, if the teacher has assigned them a subject concerning God, she would be unemployed today, as if that would ever happen.
What the mother said about forbidding God from entering the classroom , but allowing the devil in, sounded simple-minded on the face of it, but the more you think about, the truer it is.
And that should be the crux of the matter, making an issue about that.
I suppose the Government schools would make a case that this is as far as they can go ‘right now’-—introducing the devil so as to reflect well on God, but to me that’s just the same secular dodge.
There IS something highly suspect about the assignment.
And I say that as a non-religious person.
I wonder what they would say about assigning the great Tolstoy story “God sees the truth, but waits” to these kids. A story I read at 17, and whose title and message rings in my whole being even now, decades later.
Funny, just as I was about to “post” I also remembered a required reading story when I was in highschool . “The Devil and Daniel Webster”. Now I want to read it again, to see if it confirms my feeling about this.
I knew I was going to get into trouble that is way I used the quotes. Obviously you are right but I was thinking even the Bible has stories about the devil as an active character in events interacting with people, God and Jesus.
God doesn’t make deals.
Could you put some butter and syrup on the bunny’s pancake? Thank you.
Some posters on here just don’t understand that this girl found it offensive to write such an assignment in the way that I would find it offensive to go to a satanic mass.She was repulsed and offended by the assignment and was going to get a 0 if she didn’t do it. Good for her!
LOL! Succinct and to the point.
Very good
A+
I would suggest that this is an invitation to present God in the classroom.
If the teacher has a problem with that, she should choose another subject.
This story is a very good example why you don’t deal with the devil. There could be some symbolism introduced into the report that may be a bit stinging to the teacher.
Not quarreling, but Job was pure and upright, and Satan acknowledged that. Satan disputes that Job really feared God, arguing that he only loved God because of His favor. Among the many things God says in Job, I believe one is that the truly righteous love Him and submit to His sovereignty without regard to the blessings and curses we encounter in life.
Wasn’t a deal it was a bet.
ROFLMAO!!!!
Not a bet. A command.
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