They Learned Well
August 8, 2004
Dear Friends,
A long time ago, there was a TV commercial aimed at youth smoking. In one of the spots, it featured a man driving his car with his small son in the seat beside him. The youngster had a toy steering wheel. When ever his father turned the wheel, the child turned the wheel the same way. If the father put on his blinker, the child did the same. Finally, the father reached for a cigarette and the child reached followed suit. The message was watch out for what you do as the children are watching.
About a month ago I had the opportunity to teach a class of about 30 young people in Wisconsin at a Bible School. The class was very similar to my Thought for the Week series on A Foundation of Life where I contended that the Bible is useful for answering all of life’s questions. In the class, the teenagers were encouraged to use their Bible to answer life’s challenges and given some tools to do it. After spending a few days prepping the students, we were ready for our first application of the principles. I asked them to pick a topic. The first topic they chose was homosexuality.
Rather than just show them what passages are pertinent to the subject, we decided to do some role playing. We made our class into an ecclesia and me into a baptized, practicing homosexual.
The first day the young people were amazing. They turned to Matthew 18 and used the guidelines there to approach me. They were gentle, but firm. They reasoned among themselves as to the very best course of action and worked with each other to reach a consensus before acting. Just to make things a little easier, I took the stance of having no desire to change and indifferent to any Scriptural counseling. To add to this, I stated matter-of-factly that I was bringing my boyfriend to meeting very soon.
After the first day, it was up to the “ecclesia” to make a decision about what to do. This is when everything fell apart. Quite to my amazement, the young people started genuinely getting mad with each other and taking sides. With each passing minute it seemed they referred to their Bibles less and less and deferred to their emotions more and more. As reason gave way to emotion, each time someone would try to inject the Bible into the discussion, it was met with an emotional and sometimes illogical rebuttal. At the end of the day, they were forced into making a decision on what to do. They decided to withdraw fellowship with me.
Unbeknownst to the group, I had secretly told a couple of the young people to leave the ecclesia and come with me to form a new ecclesia. This ended up being an unnecessary step, however, as those who were vehemently on my side were already prepared to “split the kirk.” At the end of the second day, we had two ecclesias with roughly 25% joining the new one.
The next day we did an “autopsy” of our dead ecclesia. What went wrong? Was Christ glorified in our behavior the previous day? How did we allow one unrepentant sinner cause so much strife? We opened our Bibles and looked at what God had to say about the issues as well as our behavior. It was a humbling experience for all involved. The young people were humbled by coming face to face with what the Bible had to say about their behavior. I was humbled as I realized what how easily children copy the examples set by their parents.
“Then said he unto the disciples, It is impossible but that offenses will come: but woe unto him, through whom they come! It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.” (Luke 17:1-2)
Have a great week!
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