Saturday, March 5, 2016

New Sunday School Series: Avoiding Intellectual Laziness

For Sunday school we are reprising our study of Thinking Like a Christian that we did last year as a spring and summer mid-week series. Since I never teach the same thing the same way twice even if it is a repeated series it will seem new even to those who heard it before (split personality is my friend). This subject is always relevant for each generation of Christians has new issues and new approaches to the world it must deal with. In my 28 years of preaching and teaching we have seen several of these changes and have had to face each one of them. When I first started preaching in the 1980’s the issues were driven by the baby-boomers with their narcissism and hedonism, and how to approach the church worship and growth movement.
It moved to the technology revolution and facing the challenges of the de-personalization and destruction of the individual the technology brought.
Now we face multiple movements driven by social media that changes so fast we sometimes face attacks on our worldview from Sunday to Sunday. These multiple movements are led by the LGBT attack on Christianity, the redefinition of the family and the continued apostasy of moral relativism.

Because of these constant challenges the development of a Biblical Christian worldview is all-imperative. Although we run the risk of repetition it is pretty clear that intellectual laziness has pervaded the pew and we must respond to the challenges of each generational attack with our minds fully engaged. Have we truly learned everything we need to know about a subject the first time we hear of it? I don’t think so!

The Christian doctrine is the only unifying knowledge between beliefs and actions; the Bible answers the pertinent questions every generation asks and does so with consistency and clarity. We cannot teach enough about what the Christian faith has to say to this people of this time.