For the last few months I have been helping  teach Sunday School at Warrens Grove UMC. This spring I have decided to venture into writing curriculum again. Since my youth are tech savy, I have decided to put a lot of that material online. They are a great group who are unafraid of an extra challenge. To this end I have and will be making worksheets for them. I will post them on my blog so that my students can access them whenever they want. Feel free to follow along and ask questions, push back, or correct what I am writing.  I believe that what I am writing will be faithful to scripture, the tradition, and the rule of faith, but I can mess up easily. Any conversation will be welcomed. Welcome to my High school Sunday school class! 

Since I will be leaving NC sometime this summer, I thought long and hard at what might be my last classes at Warrens Grove. I wanted to do something that would potentially change the lives of my students. Therefore I chose eschatology. I came to this decision because It is something that I enjoy studying. More than that, however, I believe that eschatology provides a great frame work for how to understand Christianity.  I went with eschatology for more reasons than just preference. Lesslie Newbigin argues that the Church needs a recovery of eschatology. Stanley Hauerwas has stressed that we must pay more attention to it as well.

I spent a semester studying eschatology in undergrad, but that was just enough to get me thirsty to know more. This stems from a belief that knowing where we are going will advise us in how to live. That and I have been particularly indicted by Wendell Berry who says that “[Christians] have had their minds turned elsewhere- to a pursuit of “salvation” that was really only another form of gluttony and self-love, the desire to perpetuate their lives beyond the life of the world”(“a native hill”, in the art of the commonplace).  I think many North American Christians have done just that. They are often attempting to escape from this world into heaven. I am probably showing my hand to early, but I find that type of theology dangerous.

Yet another indictment comes from Soren Kierkegaard. IN his notes at the end of the Princeton edition of the Hong Translation of The Works of Love, one can find this:

Contemporary Christendom really live as if the situation were like this: Christ is the great hero and benefactor who once and for all has guaranteed us salvation, and now all we have to do is be happy and satisfied with the innocent goods of earthly life and leave the rest of him. But Christ is essentially the prototype; therefore we should BE LIKE him and not merely reap benefits from him”

I believe that his observations remain true. Many Christians live as though they can live their lives as though they were innocent of a great many social evils. This is not done from any malicious intent, but perhaps from a distorted picture of what will be our end. This is why we must study our end, to know what awaits. 

So there are my reasons, I have more, but this will suffice. Tomorrow I will put up a recap from last Sunday, and on Wednesday I will post something for this coming Sunday. Enjoy following along with my class!

Q