PYCL: Face each day with a choice. (#2) Expect God’s work is being made visible! (4)

[PYCL: Face each day with a choice. (#2) Expect God's work is being made visible in your life! (4)]
Possible Younger Class Lessons for the Christian Science Bible Lesson for

November 8, 2015 on

“Adam and Fallen Man”

by Kerry Jenkins, CS, House Springs, MO
kerry.helen.jenkins@gmail.com (314) 406-0041

Pycl #1: With the classes that are a bit older, it could be interested to look at the sequence of the recent Bible lessons: Everlasting Punishment, Doctrine of Atonement, etc. When you see this lesson in the sequence it is cool how they kind of link together. We learned that punishment is not from God, and certainly not everlasting. We have learned that while Jesus did come to show us how to know God and to understand Him better as Love, he did not come to absolve us of our duty to stop sinning. So when you get into this week's lesson you find places where these ideas are touched on in new ways. For example citation B24 continues the Adam story with God sending Adam out to suffer permanently from the sin of eating the forbidden fruit with Eve. Likewise several citations in Section 3 deal with the fallout from Eve listening to the serpent's advice. Does it sync with what we have learned, to think of God as a being who punishes man for all eternity by shutting him out of heaven/paradise because of a mistake that he made—that omniscient God should have known he would make…? Jesus tells us that the kingdom of God is within, and citation B21 includes the line: "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men…". Heaven is with us now, we are not shut out. Citations S30 and 31 confirm this fact.

Pycl #2: I love the idea of facing each day with a choice. I often talk to my boys about the choice they have each day to be happy. Their happiness comes from the recognition that it is God's day, not from a particular thing that is happening that day. Are we victims of circumstances? Are we subject to a teacher we don't like, a parent that we think has been unfair, fellow students who may be unkind to us? What choices do we have in life? Look at the Golden Text and Responsive Reading with this in mind. Check out the story of Adam and Eve and think about whether that is the model we want to choose. What do their choices represent in this myth? Is it always easy to choose to be joyful/kind/hardworking/persistent/unselfish? Is it worth it? Why can't you choose to be selfish, and also happy? Can you discover how our choices lead to certain results?

Pycl #3: You may be able to do something with magnets in the Section 1. Citation S5 speaks of the antagonism between the opposite versions of creation in Genesis. What does 'antagonistic' mean? If you can find those little dog magnets that repel each other when you approach them from the correct sides this would be a cool illustration. Likewise you can use the opposite powers of magnets for the second part of that citation. Think about how the planets in our solar system orbit the sun. Explain the forces that keep these planets from wandering around in space. The planets cannot just decide of their own accord to leave their orbit. No more can we, in reality, wander from God in "an orbit of [our] own". There is no true power to keep us drawn in some other orbit. Just as earth is safely within the sun's pull, so we are safely pulled to God—cannot be separated from that force of Love and Life. You can extend this analogy by looking at how matter has no center around which to orbit or be drawn into. Without reality to back it up, it is a drifting and powerless suggestion that tries to convince us that it has existence, substance, source—when it doesn't.

Pycl #4: I wonder if we can look at Jesus' statement in citation B11 every time we are sick or have a problem. Instead of asking why we are having trouble we can look to Jesus who said "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him." In other words: there is no cause for this trouble, no source, never heredity, not contagion, accident or any other so-called power. What if we merely say to ourselves the next time we are faced with a problem: "I am just working here to see how God's work is manifest, present, visible in my life"? That seems like a cool thing to think of.

Pycl #5: Which model of woman (also generic man) do the kids like better—the one Eve represents, tempted, weak, punished, manipulated and manipulative? Or the woman clothed with the sun, moon underfoot, and crowned with stars?! You could do something with clothes, using them to represent the woman in Revelation and the woman in citation B16 whose clothing is "strength and honor". What would that mean? How can we "wear" that too?

Pycl #6: You could talk about the serpent in Genesis and the serpent or dragon from Revelation. They bookend the Bible… Why is the dragon so big? What does it symbolize that the dragon fought against the spiritual understanding of man and was "cast out", that no place was found for them in heaven? What is heaven? Why is there no place for the serpent or dragon? The consciousness of Love leaves no room for any other consciousness. Why does the dragon look bigger in the end?

Have a great Sunday!