Title: Who Decides What’s Right?
Scripture: Genesis 2:15-16
Speaker: Tim Spanburg, TimS@ChristCommunityKC.org

I. Our culture is committed to moral goodness.

>> When you begin deciding for yourself what is right and wrong - you lose three things:

1. You lose the “why”.
2. You lose a human dignity.

“...moral positions are not in any way grounded in reason or the nature of things but are ultimately just adopted by each of us because we find ourselves drawn to them.” - Charles Taylor

>> When you begin deciding for yourself what is right and wrong - you lose three things:

1. You lose the “why”.
2. You lose a human dignity.
3. You lose the good ending.

"While militant atheists like Richard Dawkins may be convinced God doesn’t exist, God, if he is around, may be amused to find out that atheists do not exist…" - “Scientists discover atheists might not exist, and that’s not a joke…”

"It is clear that in almost all fictional worlds, God exists, whether the stories are written by people of a religious, atheist or indeterminate beliefs...It’s not that a deity appears directly in tales. It is that the fundamental basis of stories appears to be the link between the moral decisions made by the protagonists and the same characters’ ultimate destiny. The payback is always appropriate to the choices made... If a tale ended with Harry Potter being tortured to death and the Dursley family dancing on his grave, the audience would be horrified, of course, but also puzzled: that’s not what happens in stories." - website Science 2.0

Conversation Starters – Shawnee Campus
Date: Sept 17, 2017
Text: Genesis 2:15-17
Title: I Decide What’s Right

ENGAGING OUR THOUGHTS: Do you ever daydream about a life in which you didn’t have to answer to anyone—no bosses, no parents, no mentors? What makes that kind of fantasy so attractive?

ASSESSING OUR HISTORY: As you think about your family history, have you seen any dysfunction caused by people doing whatever they felt was right according to their own standards? How has that affected you?

USING OUR IMAGINATIONS: If you were God, how would you respond to a culture or an individual characterized by an attitude that proclaimed “I’ll do what I want, when I want, with whom I want”?

OPENING SCRIPTURE: Read Psalm 19. What makes God’s law so beautiful and appealing?

PRAYER: Spend time praying for each other, and our new session of community groups. May this session be a time of growing in our relationship with God, One-another, and our Neighbor.