Mermaids and Jesus

We are having very deep and good discussions from the book of Luke on Friday nights with two students. This week one asked, “So the Holy Spirit is greater than Jesus, since the Spirit created Jesus in Mary’s womb?” So we backtracked and explained that Jesus was preexistent in Heaven reigning co-equal with the Father, further demonstrating Jesus love for us in humbling Himself.  How does one ever explain the Trinity? Particularly if you are starting almost from scratch. Reflection reminded me about a post I did about 18 months ago when we were first in China, teaching in Taian:

I am not sure how to write this post without sounding like a heretic, but I don't think I am. As we were in the "US culture" class today (for 4 hours every Saturday), the students were responding to a newspaper article that talked about a lady with webbed fingers claiming to be a mermaid. The students had to give a review of the article and then ask a discussion question. The question they asked was: "Could these fairytale creatures be real?" They proceeded to have a pretty good discussion and the overall opinion seemed to be that "Yes, they might we real. We are so limited in our intelligence that who knows what is 'out there'." Rick and I are looking at each other rather astounded at the support for mermaids. But then I stopped myself and realized that I was immediately going into a power point about Easter and the claims of Christ to have been raised form the dead! To these students, many of whom have never even heard the word "Easter", this must almost go in the same category as "mermaids". I hesitantly said that most US colleges would not really be having this discussion in support of fairytale creatures, but that I believed in God, so our intelligence really is very limited. They were quite interested in the Easter presentation, which I am giving to all my classes, talking about the secular and religious aspects. I wonder if they would have been as interested if I would have insisted on a scientific response to mermaids?