We trust that the people who teach us new things know best and we are just trying to soak in their knowledge. But in reality nobody can know everything and challenging them should be taken by them as an opportunity to learn themselves instead of being offended that a student dared to question their teaching, as it often happens, especially in schools.
It also happened to a 16-year-old Sunday school student who noticed that the teacher was incorrectly translating the Bible and pointed it out. This was not taken well and the teen was kicked out, which made her parents very upset.
More info: Reddit
16-year-old just wanted to call out her teacher for his translation mistakes but got kicked out of Sunday school
Image credits: Greg Chimitris (not the actual photo)
The Original Poster (OP) lives with her mom and stepdad Brad and his children who all go to Sunday school. The teen describes the family as very religious and has a lot of rules, such as girls having to wear skirts all the time and going to church several times a week.
In the comments, the author of the post said that she is from the Southern US and she is not sure what kind of denomination her stepfamily belongs to, but she believes that it’s the Holiness movement.
As Britannica explains, the Holiness movement is a Christian religious movement that has its roots in the 19th century United States and is “characterized by a doctrine of sanctification centring on a post-conversion experience.”
Most people who belong to this church believe in “Christ's resurrection, truth in the scriptures, justification, sanctification, baptism of the Holy Ghost, divine healing, and the premillennial return of Christ to earth.”
The author of the story lives with her mom and her stepdad who is very religious and makes his children go to Sunday school
Image credits: throwaway_394757
In the OP’s eyes, her stepfamily’s relationship with Jesus is toxic, and the things being talked about at church are “superstitious misogynistic nonsense.” What is worse, she is being forced into it and refusing to go to church turned into a big argument.
Her own mother asked her to just go in order to keep peace and because it’s a thing they do as a family, although it’s mostly enforced by Brad, who has almost made it a mission to convert his stepdaughter and save her soul.
Not only did she have to go to church with the family, but also attend a Sunday school. Sunday school, also known as church school or Christian education, is “school for religious education, usually for children and young people and usually a part of a church or parish.” It was introduced in Protestantism and most of the learning there is related to teaching the principles of the religion and reading the Bible.
As the 16-year-old is now part of the family, she needs to attend it too, but when she tried to explain it isn't her cup of tea, the teen didn't get any support
Image credits: throwaway_394757
It’s always interesting to know what others believe in and what their religious scriptures say about the world, what values they instill and what stories they choose to illustrate their points with, regardless of whether you’re religious or not. But being forced to believe in it, agree with it and be interested in it is a different thing.
On top of that, the OP has a feeling that their teacher thinks that her age group is a bunch of stupid girls who don’t understand anything, but wanted to show off as smart by translating the Greek version of the Bible himself. That was pretty annoying because he wasn't doing a very good job.
Turns out, the OP actually knows the version of ancient Greek to which the Bible was translated. In the comments, the teen explained that she goes to a private school that is known for preparing students for the Ivy league colleges and it has more language choices than your average school. Among Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, Russian, French, and Spanish, they teach ancient Greek and Latin, which the OP chose as she is interested in history and science where these two languages are often used.
The most annoying part of the lessons is that the teacher considers the students to be stupid and is mistranslating the Bible from Greek
Image credits: throwaway_394757
Image credits: George Redgrave (not the actual photo)
At this point, the OP had nothing to lose, so she brought a dictionary to be able to correct her teacher and started interrupting him by pointing out his mistakes. Although the teen was right, the teacher was quite annoyed and complained to the pastor, who decided to kick her out of Sunday school...
Both Brad and the OP’s mom are mad that the teen couldn’t sit through school quietly and want her to apologize for derailing the class, which made the teen wonder if she unnecessarily acted out as it was the first time she had been to a Sunday school and it’s the first church she has ever been to.
The teen would know as she studied ancient Greek at her private school, so she realized that the teacher was translating nonsense
Image credits: throwaway_394757
Readers of the story thought that the OP’s rebellion was very sophisticated, because the teacher was actually lying and shut her down immediately without trying to create a discussion.
But the bigger conversation was about how wrong it is for the parents and the teacher to push on a religion on a person who is not interested and went as far as calling it child abuse.
So she brought a dictionary and questioned what the teacher was saying, which he complained about to the priest and he kicked the teen out of Sunday school
Image credits: throwaway_394757
The teen not only stood up against her parents by knowingly annoying the teacher, publicly saying that she doesn’t want to be there, but she also wasn’t going to listen to misinformation being spread.
This is exactly how Moses ended up being represented as a man with horns. Various illustrations, paintings and sculptures depict Moses with horns because that’s what the translation from Hebrew into Latin Vulgate said. The translator, St. Jerome, wasn’t weirded out by the image, as back then, horns didn’t have the association with the devil.
But now we know that St. Jerome made one of the most famous translation errors in history, which influenced how we imagine Moses and how our art depictions looked for centuries. As Dr. Ingrida Gudauskienė, who has a degree in theology explains, there are two very similar words in Hebrew, “qāran” and “qeren,” which mean “to glow” and “horns” respectively. The mistake probably wasn’t malicious as it was due to the Hebrew text being written only with consonants, so both words would have been written “qrn.”
The parents were mad and thought that despite the teacher being wrong, it was rude to correct him
Image credits: Steve Snodgrass (not the actual photo)
The OP tried to prevent her teacher from making translation mistakes because as the famous example shows, it creates ripples. But he took offense and the student was kicked out of lessons altogether, which on one hand was what the teen wanted, but on the other hand, her parents are pressuring her to apologize.
We would like to hear your opinions and reactions to the story. Do you think it was worth challenging the teacher knowing what consequences await? Do you agree that forcing someone into a religion is abuse? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
People in the comments were quite disturbed that the parents would force their child into a religion and applauded her for showing the power of knowledge
