January 8 - Once Upon a Time

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Description:

This night begins by taking the teens back to their childhood storybooks.  After a brief time of introduction and a get-to-know-you game, the teens compete in a competition where they guess the names of children's stories or nursery rhymes through either live charades or a taped skit. The competition leads into a teaching on God's revelation in Scripture and practical ways Scripture can become part of their daily lives.  Then the teens have an opportunity to write their story or testimony down as a way to see how their story fits into God's story and are given a Bible with a scripture passage marked in it.  The teens are asked to reflect on how that verse applies to their lives today and then share their reflections in small group.  Finally, the small group participates in a short Bible study on trust to give the teens some experience looking up passages in their Bibles and then applying those passages to their lives.

Parent Connect:

(This section is a brief outline of the teaching for the night with suggestions on how you, as a parent, might connect personally to the night's topic. It is copied directly from the LifeTeen lesson plan we use for the teens.)

This week begins a new semester on Scripture. We will be discussing how God is revealed to us through Sacred Scripture and how we have a part in his story of salvation. 

How Do We Know About God?

God reveals the truth of himself through revelation. The word "revelation" literally means that something is revealed or uncovered. God's revelation is the gradual process of revealing his nature to us, "it pleased God, in his goodness and wisdom, to reveal himself and to make known the mystery of his will. his will was that men should have access to the father, through Christ, the Word made flesh, in the holy Spirit, and thus become sharers in the divine nature." God does not wish to make his will a secret.

Where do we find his will—His revelation? Through the instruments of Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. Scripture, the written word of God, is a record of God's revelation in history. Through it we come to know the story of our first parents, Original Sin, the covenants, the prophets, the foreshadowing of the Messiah and the coming of the Kingdom. We are made aware and reminded of the events that have happened in the past that have bearing on our world today in this collection of ancient stories, poetry and historic writings found in the Bible.

Is the Bible Always Literally True?

Dead people coming to life? Walking on water? Talking donkeys? A virgin conceiving a child? These things can't be literally true, right?  That depends on what you mean by literally. There are many different approaches to understanding the Bible; some are better than others for many reasons. The Bible is a collection of 73 different books that differ in style, audience, content and language. for this reason, it is necessary to seek to understand more than just the words on the page.

What does this mean? This means that Scripture is true, but the written word composed centuries ago may have to be understood differently than the way you and i typically read a story. Genesis tells us that God created the world in seven days—it does not say that God created the world in seven, 24-hour periods of time the way we understand "day" to be. "What is the literal sense of a passage is not always as obvious in the speeches and writings of the ancient authors of the east as it is in our own times...The interpreter must go back wholly in spirit to those remote centuries of the east and with the aid of history, archaeology, ethnology, and other sciences, accurately determine what modes of writing the authors of that period would be likely to use, and in fact did use." (Divino Afflante Spiritu, 35)

This is why we ought to approach the Bible with a contextualistic method. What does this mean? It means that when we read, we should have some familiarity with the author's purpose in writing, the audience to whom he is writing, and the content of the text. This is the best way to understand the writings. The authors were not scientists, but they also weren't liars. We know their writings to be accurate in their message and it's a mistake to look to them in order to explain things the ancient human author is incapable of explaining. The same reason why you wouldn't ask a baseball umpire to officiate a basketball game, you wouldn't ask the Bible to explain astrophysics.

What Does the Bible Mean for Us?

Once we understand something about God, his revelation to us, and have discovered the Bible, we must then ask what it all means for us. Saints have written of the benefit of learning the Scriptures. St. Jerome, who translated the Bible as we know it today, is famous for saying that, "ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ."

The Bible contains the story of our origin, fall from grace and centuries of redemptive work culminating in the person of Jesus Christ, the sending of the Holy Spirit, and the founding of his Church. Scripture is our guide to explain our relationship with God and the basis and authority of our life together in the Church. Everything in our Church's tradition is rooted in the Sacred Scriptures. Our Mass, the divine Liturgy, is saturated with Scriptural references, quotations, creeds, and theology found in the Bible. The Sacraments are all found in the Bible. Most importantly, our knowledge of Christ is found in the Bible—his word, his teachings, his truth has been recorded and passed on so that we may know him today.

Discussion Questions:

(This section provides some questions for you to continue the night's discussion at home)

• What is your favorite Scripture verse?
• How have you seen God moving in your life? Where does your story fit into God's story?
• Do you believe that God is truly present in Scripture?
• How can we as a family better incorporate Scripture into our home?

Weekly Challenge:

Read some Scripture this week. If you're unfamiliar with Scripture, there are many ways to get started. Sitting down and starting to read cover-to-cover is probably not the best way. Start by picking a Gospel to read. You'll find familiar stories you've heard at Mass or when you were a child. Read one of St. Paul's letters in the New Testament and you'll hear more about the teachings of our Lord. Many Bibles have an introduction printed in them to explain about the author, audience and setting of the book. These are very helpful to understand what you're about to read.