A person who shall remain unnamed says I’m pushing my luck asking for this at the end of the school year, but my hope is you will hang with me for the last 5 weeks of Sunday school. I’d like to have a careful discussion about a couple things that will benefit anyone who is: A) deeply flawed and, B) committed to Christ. Many of our problems, in life and in relationships, arise in our struggle to manage the chasm between those two identities: “absolute failure” and “absolutely committed.” When John Donne wrote about this, he said he was in love with God but married to Satan.
If you take parenting as just one example, many parents don’t know how to navigate the fact that they are asking their children to become someone they themselves are not. It’s potentially (and often) a recipe for disaster. You might as well have a dormant volcano in your kitchen; but “dormant” is a temporary condition.
The discussion will be led in such a way that no single (or handful) of voices dominate the room and timid people will have opportunity to think and speak.
Here’s a thought to (hopefully) pique your interest between now and Sunday. In 2 Chron 6, when Solomon is praying over the newly constructed temple, he says on Israel’s behalf: “If they sin against you—for there is no one who does not sin—and you are angry with them…” You have to remember that Solomon’s mother was Bathsheba, and that David wrote Psalm 51 after forcing himself on Bathsheba, a sordid backstory known by virtually everyone in Jerusalem. Known by everyone, yet known to no one so well as Solomon himself, for whom it was personal family history. Now reconsider his words, “…there is no one who does not sin” and think about his own family dynamics. I’m going to make the case that these are the dynamics of virtually every family, one way or another.