by Joe Dennis
December 17, 2019
Fear, faith and Oconee Street teenagers
This devotional is repurposed from a sermon I delivered on Laiety Sunday, Oct. 20, 2019.
2 Timothy 3:10-17 — You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, persecutions, sufferings—what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them. In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures,which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
I have the pleasure of working with the high schoolers every Sunday morning as their Sunday School teacher.
With a full-time job, several side hustles, three kids of my own, coaching baseball, and serving as the church’s webmaster, I’ve often been asked how do I find the time in my schedule to teach a Sunday School class? But I can’t imagine not spending each Sunday morning with these students. It’s been the biggest aspect of my faith development.
As I child, I thought of God as some larger-than-life character in the sky looking down on us. While many may envision that concept as comforting, that concept scared the heck out of me. You mean there’s this guy in the sky who knows my every move, my every thought, and there’s nowhere I can go to hide from him? No wonder why there’s mention of “fearing God” more than 100 times in the Bible. 2 Timothy 3:16, says “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness …” I definitely feared God, finding myself terrified every time I misbehaved or even had bad thoughts. At any minute, God could rebuke, correct and/or train me. The Catholic guilt was deeply embedded in me.
So, when I went to college, I developed a practice I’ve since perfected – avoidance. If I avoided church, if I avoided thinking about religion, I could avoid God. And I wouldn’t have to think about God watching over me. In the back of my mind, I knew God was there, but I could shut God out. I was getting really good at that until I fell in love with Carla, who of course had a great relationship with God. Great. It was clear to me that if I wanted to have a relationship with Carla, I would have to have a relationship with God.
Over the past 20 years, my faith development has tremendously grown — and Scripture has become clearer to me. The words of Timothy are striking when viewing religion through the lens of current events. Timothy says that “the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.”
I can’t help but think about the atrocities happening in the world today at the hands of leaders who use God as a prop to gain votes and power. And their followers, who proudly claim Christianity, trade the words of Scripture with the talking points of their political leader. When Timothy says that “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for ever good work,” he means that the foundation of all good deeds must be rooted in God. And if you forsake the word of God, you’re in danger of turning aside to myths. You’re in danger of supporting the genocide of Kurds. You’re in danger of advocating for the separation of immigrant children from parents. You’re in danger of promoting cuts to programs that benefit poor children in favor of tax breaks for the wealthy.
Every Sunday morning I get to talk about these issues with some combination of Colin, Casey, Chandler, Elizabeth, Lucy, Jaydon, Violet, Jackie, Melanie and Sienna. Every Sunday they remind me not to keep my faith separate from my deeds, or my deeds separate from my faith. Every Sunday they challenge me with questions I don’t know the answer to, and we talk about it together and maybe don’t come up with a definitive answer, and that’s OK. Every Sunday they confirm to me that God is always with me, but is not some mythical figure in the sky watching over me. God is in them, in me, and in all of us.
Prayer: God, thank you for our children, who challenge us every day to be the best Christian we can be. Help us in our faith development and to not succumb to the myths of this world. Amen.