Teenage Sunday School Starts Genesis 3

Read Genesis 2:8-17 (using it for both a brief review of last week and for an introduction to this week).

1. Is creation good?
   
2. Is God good?

Read Genesis 3:1-7.

1. How did the serpent plant doubt? About what God really said.
   
2. How typical is that, when we want to do something wrong, for us to start there, by asking whether it really says it's wrong? Typical.
   
3. What did the serpent say that made Eve really want the fruit? You'll be like God. (This was a plant for a later question that we wouldn't get to this week because of the surprises the class had for me on some later questions.)
   
4. What the serpent said: true or false? Neither, exactly.
   
5. C.S. Lewis said the most powerful lies are at least partly true. Discuss. Examples taken from stories told to parents about how things got broken, where they really were the other afternoon, etc.
   
6. Is it possible for us to be better than God at something? See below.
   
7. Is it possible to sin without assuming that we are better than God? See below.

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The big surprise this week? One of the kids really wanted to argue that he could be better than God at some things (like fishing ... when Jesus one-upped Peter with the fish he was cheating by using that miracle stuff), and that it was possible to sin without assuming we're better than God (so sin is not really arrogant and foolish). I'd expected those questions to be no-brainers and we would move past those pretty quickly into the next questions.

At first I was amazed at the direction the conversation was going. But then I realized that instead of understanding the serpent's trick, at least one person in the class was openly showing that he had fallen for it on a very deep level. (Don't we all, on some level?)

So that's where we'll pick up next week.