Our Catechism / Q1 / Students

CONVERSATION STARTERS:

According to Genesis 1:1-2:25, what did God do?

• God made everything and gave life to it.

According to Psalm 104:1-35, what would happen if God did not sustain Creation?

• Everything would come apart.

According to Genesis 1:1-2:25, when did God do this?

• At the very beginning. It is God who created Time.

According to Genesis 1:1-2:25, what existed before God created?

• Only God. He has always existed, and He created everything Ex-Nilo (Latin for “out of nothing”).

According to Exodus 3:1-22, God’s Name indicates what?

• That He is eternal, and the source of all existence. Thus, we speak of His Transcendence for He is essentially different from His creation in every way. Omnipotent, Omniscient, & Omnipresent (see Isaiah 46:1-13).

How is this Theistic idea of an intelligent being designing and creating, different from the Atheistic idea of Scientific Materialism?

• According to Scientific Materialism, Matter has no beginning and no end. It exists simply because it does. Life has no design it is a chaotic fury of chance and happenstance. But if we were designed then there is an intent and a purpose. Similar to how gravity draws celestial bodies into orbit around larger bodies, providing them with stable pathways; so also design explains the instinctive longing of Humans for something greater than ourselves.

How do we make sense of the fact that in Acts 17:16-34 the Apostle Paul quotes the pagan philosopher Epimenides (Cretica, 600 BC) when he says that it is in God that we live and move and have our being?

• We know from the other readings here that God has imprinted truth into Creation, therefore, to know the truth even if we do not know why it is true or the source from which that truth is derived, in no way makes it less the truth.

According to Acts 17:16-34, the Unknown God has revealed Himself for what reason?

• So that we may know Him and place our trust (faith) in Him.
• In this way, the Jewish/Christian understanding of God is unique among all the religions of the world. Hinduism remains uncertain whether we can know that God is personal, or infinite in his perfections. Islam affirms that God is infinite in his perfections but is uncertain if God can be personally knowable. Buddhism is officially nontheistic, denying all first causes, including God.
• In contrast, Christians affirm that while God is unknowable unless He reveals Himself to us, He has revealed Himself to us because He longs for us to know Him and love Him and live fully alive through Him.

ACCESS POINTS:

Logic Exercise: How do you Prove Something is True or False?

Put together a Puzzle: Have your Students put together a puzzle, but keep them from seeing the picture and hide some of the pieces. Talk about how this impacts the process of putting the puzzle together.

Watch this Video: View these Bible Project on Genesis 1 and then check out the accompanying study notes provided {https://bibleproject.com/explore/video/genesis-1/}

Craft Project: Make your own Picture Book of Creation.

Play Minecraft: When you play Minecraft you create stuff out of other stuff. Where did all the other stuff come from?

Role Play: Pretend you are blind. What do you see? Is the world still there? How do you know?

Build a Model of the Solar System: Notice how everything is balanced perfectly? This is called the “finetuning” of the universe.

Logic Exercise: If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it still make a sound?

Logic Exercise: If the Atheistic Scientific Materialist worldview is true, then what purpose is there to life?

Watch these Videos: View these videos about the scientific evidence for a Creator {https://pinerunemc.org/god-and-science}

GO DEEPER:

As Christians, we believe that God is the best explanation for everything that exists. If you would like to explore in more depth, the ways in which this impacts how we share the Faith, you should check out Lesson One of the Adults’ Catechism.

Q1 / ADULTS

NEXT:

Can We Know God?

Q2 / STUDENTS