Doubting [insert name here]

A funny thing happened at church this week. I was going to start a new unit at our jr. high Bible Study this Sunday. I was all gung ho and ready to go, until I arrived at church and panic set in; turns out, I brought the wrong curriculum book. The one I was going to use was about holiness; the one I had was a book we went through last year. The first lesson in this book was about doubts. So I quickly developed a new lesson plan based on that one, and hoped for the best. I figured that I could just start the unit on holiness next week. But then something odd happened.

At first we started talking about the typical doubts we always talk about in church--the 'apologetic doubts'. These are the ones that all those 'other' people have ('other' being anyone who isn't a conservative Christian). These are nice safe doubts to talk about, because they're highly impersonal and we can talk about them on a completely intellectual level. And, of course, when we memorize the answers to them, we can be prepared for when any of those 'other' people come to use with those doubts. If, for example, someone says they doubt that Jesus really was the Son of God, we can reach into our bag of "Answers for Heathens" and shoot them out like balistic missiles.

It wasn't long before my "I've heard it all before" teens were looking pretty glassy-eyed. So I asked them what kinds of doubts Christians might have. Silence. We started talking about it more, and a lot of interesting questions came up. And it didn't take long for me to see that we needed to spend some more time on this.

So we're going to take five or six weeks and talk about a specific doubt each week. And I was hoping that, as I try to create curriculum out of thin air, I could get some help from all of you people who are smarter than me. I'm going to post a list of the doubts they brought up below, and I'd like your feedback and thoughts on them. How would you respond to someone who says, "I doubt that...

...God really cares about me
...a loving God would send people to hell
...God really answers my prayers
...it's very important for me to read the Bible
...a loving God would let bad things happen
...God's people would disagree so much."


Any thoughts?

the prodigal

I've been working on a children's lesson on the prodigal son(s), and I'm stuck on a particular question. This question should be an easy one, and yet it seems to be far more complicated than I ever realized. So here is my question to all of you: What does it mean to forgive?

A Plea for Mercy

O Blogger, dear Blogger, how have I offended thee?
I switched to your new system as you so persistently asked,
And now I am so frequently denied the ability to sign in!

O Blogger, dear Blogger, do you no longer care?
Do I no longer find favour in your site?
What mortal sin have I commited?

O Blogger, dear Blogger, what is the origin of your displeasure?
Is it my persistent use of Canadian spellings?
If I say I will love my neighbor and not my neighbour, will that satisfy your wrath?

O Blogger, dear Blogger, have mercy.

The Wisdom of Hilary

Take a look at this post by James Kingsley. Short, sweet, and definitely to the point.