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owicpub · 5 years ago

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I AM not amused

I AM not amused is a modern and different take on Christian entertainment. This book takes us through my story of growing up during the radical shift in media entertainment, evaluating the message in entertainment from the mouths of the creators, and then dive into the Bible to see how we should respond.

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Here is an excerpt from Chapter 2

Writing the Ballads

If a man were permitted to make all the ballads he need not care who should make the laws of a nation – Andrew Fletcher

As we venture through our examination of media entertainment, it is important to consider what the artists themselves say about their creations. It seems media’s proponents and opponents always cross words, both making specific claims about the entertainment they produce. Truly, what is the intended meaning behind a song, a movie, or a game? Do artists really just create entertainment for creation’s sake? We cannot rule out some art is constructed to teach or promote a concept or a lifestyle. Education was the intention behind the after school HBO presentation, The Truth about Alex, and another program by CBS titled What if I’m Gay? Both of these presentations were produced as after school specials to entertain but also to teach kids about homosexuality as merely another lifestyle choice. While our modern culture routinely discusses homosexuality, the 1980’s media landscape generally treated the topic as taboo. Like all social agendas, artists broke into media to influence the audience’s mind, which slowly becomes law. To that end, the next two chapters will examine how media affects us and what the modern artists intend to teach the consumers through their art, whether present or absent from the life of Christ. With the popular artist’s influence established, we will determine what they intend to teach us and what lifestyle has resulted from their beliefs.

Early World Entertainment

On the seventh day of creation, God rested, and the command to observe the Sabbath was included in the ten commandments to reflect the general principle of rest from a hard week’s work. The exact purpose of the Sabbath is not entirely clear. It could have been a day to set aside for the complete worship of God, or it could have been a day set aside to merely rest. Because the entire Israelite social system was theocratic and Paul declared Jesus the fulfillment of the Sabbath rest, its observance was no longer commanded according to a few separate verses from Pauline writings (Romans 14:5, Colossians 2:16). I will simply suggest our rest is a matter of the conscience and I will leave the discussion of the Sabbath intent to others. With that, however, we are free to engage in entertainment to the extent God is honored by what we do.

We know that the root of the Olympics was born from the sports-like competitions used to showcase the best warriors of the ancient Greece. Gladiatorial games were spawned by the cruel Emperor Nero who turned the games from simple competitions into a bloody fight to the death. Sin had taken hold and our bloodlust spilled over into violence. The gladiatorial games finally ended when a martyr named Telemachus died in the arena in protest to Christian Rome participating in the ungodly games[i]. His death ended the gladiatorial games once and for all under Emperor Honorius, but we know what comes next for our unrestrained entertainment: either more bloody violence, uncontrolled heathen sex, or maybe a spattering of other sin.

The lost city of Pompeii was discovered in the mid 1700’s and the archaeological excavation continues today. The archaeologists revealed a culture so vile the people experienced what had to be a replay of Sodom and Gomorrah. Curiously, another town, Herculaneum, was also destroyed by the same volcano, Mount Vesuvius, in AD 79. The still available artwork inscribed on the statues, pillars, and walls in these towns depict a city totally saturated in sex and perversion. I am not about to suggest all natural disasters in our world are God’s specific judgment, but perhaps artwork from the valley of salt would yield similar imagery before the sulfur fell from the skies, and perhaps God acted in this manner to destroy a city so vile a message would ring through to the young expanding church: beware of resting too comfortably, a lesson Israel failed to learn time and again through the historical period of the judges. About the great city of Pompeii, the artist Bastille wrote[ii]:

Oh where do we begin? The rubble or our sins?

This artist asks a reasonable question which we must ask ourselves. Though our world is mostly not in total rubble, the sin of the culture is leaving a rubble of wrecked lives, ruined marriages, fatherless children, and drug and alcohol abuse. Do we start with our rubble or our sin? That is the core of what we are trying to answer in this book.

Pleasure is entertainment’s destination, and research has shown the more affluent a culture becomes, the greater the people seek both pleasure and entertainment. Since all means of entertainment is from the hearts of the people that produce it, it is not any wonder that their heart comes out in the art they produce. C.S. Lewis wrote the great series The Chronicles of Narnia. Though people frequently say that he wrote it to portray the sacrifice and redemption of Christ, that is simply not true. C.S. Lewis spoke many times on the subject and made it very clear he was merely writing in-depth children’s stories during a time it was assumed people did not want to read fanciful tales (an aspect he made light of in Eustace’s family in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader). He says that the Christ-like imagery merely came out of his heart because defending Christianity was one of the ultimate callings in his writing. But some hearts are full of evil. During the creative process, the evil present in an artist’s heart will spill out into the books, games, and productions they create and the end result will be a work that is not wonderful or beautiful, but twisted and evil. Such was the case of the Golden Compass series. The author, Philip Pullman, is an outspoken atheist. His childrens’ story depicted an enemy who was none other than God Himself. Such was the outpouring of his heart. In light of this, one Christian commentator of the entertainment industry revealed that for the most part, the writers, directors, and producers in Hollywood are generally not church-going people, and do not typically regard God or His word. Let us not be mistaken, if these are the people that are writing the shows we watch, let us not presume their views on life will not impact our own worldview. My message is clear: be careful what you watch on your television, do on your computer, or listen to in your personal time while secluding yourself through headphones.

Considering some artists teach out of intention and others teach out of the overflow in their hearts, we are led to a discussion of ethics. Most college programs now require students to take ethics courses. I was a graduate student studying biological sciences and our ethics course was intended to teach about what is right and wrong in scientific studies. Of course, the typical university preaches there is no absolute truth, so how can we possibly define what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’ in a college ethics course? This is not a moot point because when the ground was broken for the USC film school, the attendants were Steven Spielberg, George Lucus, Irvin Kershner, and Randal Kleiser. In the article about the event, Lucas gave this ominous observation of the position of film in our modern age:

Film and visual entertainment are a pervasively important part of our culture, an extremely significant influence on the way our society operates. People in the film industry don’t want to accept the responsibility that they had a hand in the way the world is loused up. But, for better or worse, the influence of the church, which used to be all-powerful, has been usurped by film. Films and television tell us the way we connect our lives, what is right and wrong.[iii]

From one of the top directors of that time, and even still currently after three decades, Lucas reminds us that film and television do impact our lifestyle and thought. He even acknowledges movies and television impact us more than the church, for better or for worse. For this reason, Lucas goes on:

It’s important that the people who make films have ethics classes, philosophy classes, history classes. Otherwise we are witch doctors.[iv]

It is interesting Lucas wants to talk about ethics. According to Webster, ethics is the area of study dealing with moral right and wrong. From sciences to business, to human and animal studies, universities that proclaim there is no moral right and wrong want to teach their students about what is right and wrong! Chip Ingram deals with this problem in his message on Whatever happened to Right and Wrong?[v] He says that everyone agrees we need ethics, but no one can agree on whose ethics we adopt. I agree. My ethics, my moral rights and wrongs, are defined by God’s character as expressed in His Word. Other people say we should let our internal compass and feelings define what is right ‘for us’. This was the message in an interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono who helped to spread the mantra of existentialism, which is basically the ‘do your own thing’ philosophy. Ravi Zaccharius, however, observes that some cultures want to eat with their neighbors while other cultures want to eat their neighbors…do we have a preference? Yes, ethics are important, but unless those ethics are grounded in truth, they may be little more than lip service. We will continue a discussion of Christian ethics in chapter 4, for now, ethics aside, we want to see what the artists and producers want to teach us about the influence of art, and also what they want to teach us through their art.

The Method of Impact

The documentary Decadence: Decline of the Western World explores the steady decline of the Judeo-Christian culture that has dominated the western world for over 300 years. The description of the film on IMDB declares: The West consumes without consequence, loves without longevity and lives without meaning[vi]. The latter part of the film discusses media and religion. The narrator gives a prophetic summation about how our consumer lives are influenced by the media:

We watch helplessly as our sons and daughters, mesmerized by pop-idols and Hollywood’s cut-glass heroes, advertise for sex first and then maybe a relationship which soon enough reaches for the headache pill.

About two decades before Dunn wrote this prophetic statement, Alan Bloom wrote similar projections in the book, The Closing of the American Mind:

Picture a thirteen-year-old boy sitting in the living room of his family home doing his math assignment while wearing his Walkman headphones or watching MTV. He enjoys the liberties hard won over centuries by the alliance of philosophic genius and political heroism, consecrated by the blood of martyrs; he is provided with comfort and leisure by the most productive economy ever known to mankind; science has penetrated the secrets of nature in order to provide him with the marvelous, lifelike electronic sound and image reproduction he is enjoying. And in what does progress culminate? A pubescent child whose body throbs with orgasmic rhythms; whose feelings are made articulate in hymns to the joys of onanism or the killing of parents; whose ambition is to win fame and wealth in imitating the drag-queen who makes the music. In short, life is made into a nonstop, commercially prepackaged masturbational fantasy.[vii]

How did we arrive at such a place where our freedoms lead us only to perversion? To examine how our culture slipped to this extreme is not an easy task and entire books have been written on the topic. I only hope to summarize some of the debate with the sheer intention of whetting your appetite to search for better personal conclusions on the matter. Examine everything carefully.

Musicians, film producers, video game programmers all agree their respective art affects us. But as George Lucas notes in the above quote, they do not want to admit they have any role in how bad the world is, but most want to declare that art makes the world a better place. It is true, from the Christian pop-artists to the thrash-metal bands, from the shamanistic styling of the Grateful Dead to the unique brand that is Frank Zappa, musicians, neurologists, and everyone else who looks casually at the facts will honestly agree: music greatly affects our disposition. Research is starting to mount that other forms of media entertainment also take hold on us, teaching us, forming us. Rand Salzman said it best: “Viewers simply cannot help but be ‘rippled’ by the emotional gut-wrenching influence of huge moving color images backed by stereo sound.[viii]” The question remains is whether this emotional, gut-wrenching influence is a good influence or a bad influence on the consumers of such entertainment.

Some may argue the influence is negative. When school shootings and other violent acts are perpetrated by youth, some people are fast to point the finger at the violent songs, games, or movies often consumed by these kids. Such blaming is an oversimplification, however, on the other hand, many will suggest that their favorite music has no impact on their worldview; they merely ‘like the beat’. That, too, is an oversimplification. The delivery as media is actually neutral, like money. The point of agreement among those with a positive view and those with a negative view is that music can affect the way we live, it can give us something to relate to, something by which to blow off steam, or something by which to teach us about our world.

During the initial influx of film into the American culture, it was very clear that the entertainment industry was going to change the way people lived their lives. During the 1920’s, a series of morally questionable films, the murder of William Taylor, and a Hollywood rape prompted the proposal of several laws to place regulations on the film industry. Will Hays was appointed to produce a conduct guide for Hollywood film producers, a guide that became known as the Hays Code. The document begins by saying:

If motion pictures consistently held up high types of character, presented stories that would affect lives for the better, they could become the greatest natural force for the improvement of mankind.[ix]

The introduction to the document continues on to say entertainment and art are important influences in the life of a nation, thus the film entertainment is “directly responsible for spiritual or moral progress, for higher types of social life, and for much correct thinking.” The code guided and directed the moral content of the film industry for over forty years, but some people whom did not agree with the code or the morality it proposed pushed the boundaries so far as to force the document into the ancient and out-dated relics of the American entertainment industry. The code was later replaced with the current rating system which will be discussed in more detail in chapter 8 of this book.

During these early years of film production and with consideration of the Hays Code, the realization that film does impact the moral disposition of its viewers, Warner Brothers adopted the slogan, “Good Citizenship with Good Picture Making”. In the early years, the film company did focus on morally good films, but the steady decay began to erode the message and while to this day the company has an entire affiliated website dedicated to good citizenship, that may be exclusive lip service from the company that brought us such morally bankrupt films as Natural Born Killers. In all, despite the clear evidence film does morally direct the society, the film industry merely produces what we pay to see.

The power of film transcends beyond simple moral messages, and music can direct the listeners to the intended message the artist seeks to teach. With a full-on media campaign, anyone can convince even the most studious people to change their ways and adopt a belief system for which they generally do not believe. This was very clear by governments who started to use the power of film to change the minds and beliefs of its citizens into their own ideals. Although many people will point to the Russian (Alexander Nevsky) and German films (Triumph of the Will) that were used to turn the citizens of those countries into what amounted to war criminals in the reigns of Stalin and Hitler, the Italians and the United States were also among those using film for propaganda. Gerald Nye, a Republican senator from North Dakota, declared in a congressional meeting:

When you go to the movies, you go there to be entertained…and then the picture starts-goes to work on you, all done by trained actors, full of drama, cunningly devised…Before you know where you are, you have actually listened to a speech designed to make you believe that Hitler is going to get you.

Nye was attempting to make the point that Hollywood was being transformed into a propaganda machine for war-mongering to change the American people’s stance on World War II. Nye was against the Hollywood propaganda machine, but the President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, considered it necessary. In 1939 Nazi Germany was producing propaganda in a full-fledge media campaign to garner support for the Nazis under Joseph Goebbels. Roosevelt responded with using American film to sustain morale and according to Nancy Snow, Hollywood now acquired a prominent place in the battle for men’s minds[x]. 1940 saw the creation of the Motion Picture Committee Cooperating for National Defense, the industry-wide organization that would produce military training films and patriotic films for the American people in order to gain support for a war effort that many Americans were not sure merited participation. The government only unofficially supported this effort, though after the entrance into World War II, FDR created a specific division in the government to inform Hollywood producers on ways to portray any manner of political matters from war and foreign policy to domestic affairs. Though it is unclear whether this direct influence is still enacted, officially, in 1949 an appropriations act restricted the use of public funds for “publicity and propaganda.[xi]” Regardless of this act, film plays a large part in unifying the ideals in the people whom consume media.

Though we hear very little about it today, marketing itself is propaganda. Companies pay millions to place their products in movies, and in America today government-paid advertising on health care, political parties, food, defense, and social services can be observed daily on television and displayed as Internet advertising. Even the enemies of the United States use propaganda in order to garner support for their cause. Suicide bombers for Al Qaeda and likely also ISIS are recruited by viewing the successful explosions of other martyrs and hearing the praise for the perpetrator and seeing the community celebritizing the remaining family, showering them in riches. Such films and rallies gain support for the cause of suicide bombings and acquire willing people to carry out the acts[xii]. Whether we are seeing a commercial for the latest laundry detergent or seeing a new spin on a political agenda, we are better off acting on our mind’s sound logic rather than by the seductive, humorous, or emotionally appealing commercials.

Beyond propaganda, modern entertainment including movies, music, and video games desire to teach the consumers. The writers and producers want to convey a worldview or question the audience’s presuppositions. This is not just a modern trend that cropped up in the last decade. As early as the 1920s, research was commenced to determine the influence movies exert over youth. The results of the studies determined teenagers learned how to dress, how to behave socially, and how to think about the world though film. Some movies, such as The Crying Game sought to question erotic love between same gender adults and For a Lost Soldier examined homosexuality in adult-child relationships. Both films were released in 1992, though the latter was a foreign film. These productions were very intentional in how they made the viewer question their presuppositions. Most movies have just as great an impact in a passive way like the manner in which dirty uncle Eddy can influence the kids into uncouth manners.

Taken together, these observations indicate media entertainment, in any form, can certainly convey a message to those who consume the art. The message is not entirely bad or entirely good. The creators and producers of the art cannot choose to positively impact the consumer because they wish to deny the negative consequences of bad media, but neither can someone decide a certain song or movie contains all negative impact based solely on the beat or the reputation of the band. All these taken together, we will consider next some special considerations surrounding music and video games and their role in impacting the consumers.

Music and Sound

Music is all around us. While some want to dismiss music as a harmless pastime, most artists defend the positive impact of music in the world, though as Lucas admits, they do not want to admit the negative impacts. Even the MTV producers know about the impact that music can have on the listeners. One executive for the station said:

Music tends to be a predictor of behavior and social values. You tell me the music people like and I’ll tell you their views on abortion, whether we should increase our military arms, [and] what their sense of humor is like.[xiii]

Likewise, Michael Greene, the former president of the Grammy Music Awards, said in his 2000 speech:

Music is a magical gift which we must nourish and cultivate in our children, especially now as scientific evidence proves that an education which includes the arts makes a better math and science student, enhances special intelligence in newborns, and let’s not forget that the arts are a compelling solution to teen violence, they are certainly not the cause of it.[xiv]

Notice how Greene defends music as making students better at math and science, though those studies were conducted using classical music including Mozart and Beethoven, not the music the Grammy’s generally support or award. He talks about music’s impact in the newborn, and simply dismisses the clear impact it can have in rebellion of the listener. But his 2001 speech embraces the rebellion behind music:

People are mad! And people are talking and that is a good thing, because it is through dialog and debate that social discovery and progress can occur. Listen, music has always been the voice of rebellion, it’s a mirror of our culture, sometimes reflecting a dark and disturbing underbelly, obscured from the view of most people of privilege…We cannot edit out the art that is uncomfortable. Remember, that is what our parents tried to do to Elvis, the [Rolling] Stones, and the Beatles.[xv]

Greene discusses a very true point, and it is one point that I am attempting to make in this book:

Most of the adults who pass judgment have never listened to, or more to the point, have never even engaged their kids about the object of their contempt [the music]. This is not to say that there is not a lot of fear in this violence driven society of ours.[xvi]

I agree with Greene on this final point, but he does not go far enough. It is not a matter that we just need to look at the media our kids are consuming; we need to look at the media we are consuming because our kids model our own behavior before they will live out our instruction. We cannot blame music or movies entirely for the cultural decay Greene clearly admits, but we are foolish to think watching violent, sexual films or listening to violent, sexual music is just a meaningless distraction, since we already believe music alters our mental and emotional state. We must find a balance and consider that art does teach us and we will learn the messages they espouse whether we want to or not.

Michael Greene is not the only professional in the industry to believe music can cause tremendous positive impact while denying it’s negative effect. To a degree, these people are correct. When the Columbine shooting occurred, Marilyn Manson was thrown under the bus as a major cause of the event, even though Klebold and Harris did not even like his music. Manson wrote an article in his own defense appearing in Rolling Stone magazine, and Manson does raise several great arguments. He writes:

Responsible journalists have reported with less publicity that Harris and Klebold were not Marilyn Manson fans -- that they even disliked my music. Even if they were fans, that gives them no excuse, nor does it mean that music is to blame. Did we look for James Huberty's inspiration when he gunned down people at McDonald's? What did Timothy McVeigh like to watch? What about David Koresh, Jim Jones? Do you think entertainment inspired Kip Kinkel, or should we blame the fact that his father bought him the guns he used in the Springfield, Oregon, murders?[xvii]

Manson is not alone in the camp of artists who do not like to hear their art being blamed for violence in the culture. Some people echo the sentiment of a young heavy metal fan who said, “It’s all fantasy, none of it is real, you can’t take this seriously, it’s just like a movie.[xviii]” Many artists over the years have been asked if they believe violence in music has any impact on the listeners, and their answer is generally a resounding ‘No’. But that does not stop people from trying to blame music anyway. In a commentary blog, the author identified “Six Most Idiotic Attempts to Blame Musicians for Violent Events.[xix]” The article was written on the heels of the attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson. It appears the perpetrator was a big fan of the song, Bodies Hit the Floor which the artists, Deadpool, say the song is about the moshpits in heavy metal concerts (curious how we are in a relativistic world yet the violent interpretations are not accepted). Nevertheless, the connections have been made not only to this song, but others as well.

Some arguments suggesting that music plays a role in violence can seem valid, such as the teen suicide committed when a young man placed the Ozzy Osbourne song Suicide Solution on repeat while he hanged himself. The AC/DC song Night Prowler was blamed for the Richard Ramirez murders, and serendipitously, he accidentally left his AC/DC hat at one of the murder scenes! While researching about lessons learned from school shootings, the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine researchers compiled a book depicting the warning signs and character traits of several high-profile shootings from the 1990’s and it would appear violent music lyrics did have a role in the legal cases surrounding a copycat killing a month following Columbine[xx]. These are just a few of the notable examples where music has been blamed in part for violent crimes.

Though I do not in any way suggest music is the root cause of violence and rebellion in our culture, I do not deny it may be a rather large contributing factor. I personally have listened to my fair share of horrible music including heavy metal and gangsta rap, but I for one have not gone out killing people. I do find it telling, however, that very few mass killers are not big fans of Beethoven although heavy and violent music more often than not is readily consumed by the young killers in our society.

Taken together, it is more likely music and movies reflect our nature back to us. As they become more violent, violence starts seeping out into the culture at large. So music may not cause the violence, but it is a reflection of the violence we feel inside ourselves, more of a mirror and less of a causation.

1. [i]The Last Roman "Triumph", Foxes Book of Martyrs, John Foxe, Chapter 3

2. [ii]Pompii, All This Bad Blood, 2013, Bastille, Virgin Records

3. [iii]U.S.C Breaks Ground for a Film-TV School, New York Times, November 25, 1981

4. [iv]ibid

5. [v]What Ever Happened to Right and Wrong, Chip Ingram, Living on the Edge

6. [vi]Decadence: Decline of the Western World, Pria Viswalingam, 2011, Fork Films

7. [vii]The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom, 1987, Touchstone Publishing, Part 1; Music

8. [viii]The real effect of make-believe Don't let filmmakers tell you they can't shape public opinion, Atlanta Journal Constitution, May 19th, 1991 pg D1

9. [ix]Hayes Code, http://pre-code.com/the-motion-picture-production-code-of-1930/, Accessed November 11, 2018

10. [x]Confessions of a Hollywood Propagandist, Nancy Snow, https://learcenter.org/publication/warners-war-confessions-of-a-hollywood-propagandist-harry-warner-fdr-and-celluloid-persuasion/, Accessed November 11, 2018

11. [xi]Advertising by the Federal Government: An Overview, Kevin R. Kosar, Congressional Research Service

12. [xii]Cult of the Suicide Bomber, 2006, Disinformation Studios

13. [xiii]MTV is Rock Around the Clock, Philadelphia Inquirer, Nov 3, 1982

14. [xiv]2000 Michael Greene Grammy Music Awards speech, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Glq-ecgGjE, Accessed November 11, 2018

15. [xv]2001 Michael Greene Grammy Music Awards Speech, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FP4vcVcydkM, Accessed November 11, 2018

16. [xvi]Ibid

17. [xvii]Columbine: Whose Fault Is It, Rolling Stone, May 28, 1999

18. [xviii]Heavy metal and violence: More than a myth?, CNN, May 12, 2008

19. [xix]Six Most Idiotic Attempts to Blame Musicians for Violent Events (or, the Tucson Tragedy was Caused by a Crazy Person, Not by Drowning Pool’s “Bodies Hit the Floor”, LA Weekly, Thursday, January 13, 2011

20. [xx]Deadly Lessons, Understanding Lethal School Violence, The National Academy Press, 2003

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walecpost · 6 years ago

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OPENING PRAYER: Father, help me and my parish to be involved in the welfare programs for the less privilege, fatherless and widows.

BIBLE PASSAGE: 1TIMOTHY 5:3-16

3.Honour widows that are widows indeed. 4.But if any widow have children or nephews, let them learn first to shew piety at home, and to requite their parents: for that is good and acceptable before God.

5.Now she that is a widow indeed, and desolate, trusteth in God, and continueth in supplications and prayers night and day.

6.But she that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth.

7.And these things give in charge, that they may be blameless.

8.But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.

9.Let not a widow be taken into the number under threescore years old, having been the wife of one man,

10.Well reported of for good works; if she have brought up children, if she have lodged strangers, if she have washed the saints' feet, if she have relieved the afflicted, if she have diligently followed every good work.

11.But the younger widows refuse: for when they have begun to wax wanton against Christ, they will marry;

12.Having damnation, because they have cast off their first faith.

13.And withal they learn to be idle, wandering about from house to house; and not only idle, but tattlers also and busybodies, speaking things which they ought not.

14.I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully.

15.For some are already turned aside after Satan.

16.If any man or woman that believeth have widows, let them relieve them, and let not the church be charged; that it may relieve them that are widows indeed.

MEMORY VERSE :

"Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world". James 1:27

LESSON INTRODUCTION :

A widow is a woman who has lost her spouse by death and usually has not remarried.

Orphans are children whose parents are dead, or for whatever reasons are not there in their lives(unknown, or have permanently abandoned them).

God loves and cares very deeply for widows and orphans.

He, therefore, commands us to protect and care for these people in our churches and communities. Psalms 82:3.

TEXT REVIEW : 1TIMOTHY 5:3-16 "

A. WIDOWS INDEED

i. Widows indeed are widows who are solitary dependent and without support. 1 Tim. 5:3.

ii. They (widow indeed) fix their hope only on God and persevere in supplication day and night 1 Tim.5:5.

iii. Widows indeed must have good reputation and are devoted to good work always 1 Tim. 5 :10.

iv. Widows indeed must be supported by the church. 1 Tim. 5:16.

B. WIDOWS 1. They have children. 1 Tim. 5:8

ii. Their children must support them. 1 Tim. 5:8.

C. YOUNG WIDOWS

i. They should go and get married and bear children. 1 Tim.5:14.

ii. They should not be busy body or give occasion to Satan.1 Tim.5:13-15.

iii. They should not be enrolled on the list of the church to take care of or become burden to the church. 1 Tim.5:11, 16. The bible made the clarifications to support widows indeed and liberate young widow from falling into temptations and to relieve burden on the church.

2 LESSON OUTLINES

LESSON OUTLINE 1:

GOD'S DISPOSITION

Teacher should explain the following points to the students and allow them to make contributions to each of the points.

i. God is highly concerned about orphans and widows, that is why He is called the Father of the fatherless and protector of widows. Psalms 68:5.

ii. God hears them when they cry and does not want them to be maltreated or afflicted. Exodus 22:22-24.

iii. Anyone who maltreats them is looking for God's trouble.

iv. God wants believers to defend, sustain and relieve the widow and orphans. Isa. 1:17, Psalms 146:9.

v. God Himself provides and preserves widows who trust in Him. Deut. 10:18; 26: 12-13 and Jer. 49:11.

CLASS ACTIVITY 1:

Class to discuss what it means to neglect, abuse or take advantage of widows and orphans.

LESSON OUTLINE 2:

OUR RESPONSIBILITIES

A. The church and the family has responsibilities towards the orphans and the widows who are usually vulnerable. Class should discuss the role of the church and family in this regard:

1. The Family

i. Family should take care of the orphans as a duty/responsibility of God. 1 Tim.5:4.

ii. Family should not enslave or abuse them, rather family must care for and help them. James 1:27. 2. The Church

i. Church should identify the widows and orphans and give them necessary support. Gal.6:10.

ii. Church should institute special welfare scheme for widows and orphans. Acts 6:1-6. 3.

Family and Church Collaborative effort of the families can provide great relief to their needs and save them from becoming destitude.

B. The teacher should call the attention of the students to the following biblical guides and directives to the young widows and physically strong orphans:

i. Young widows and physically strong orphan should engage themselves in productive ventures to meet their needs. 1 Tim. 5:9.

ii. Young widows are encouraged to to remarry. 1 Tim.5:4.

iii. Young widows and orphans should avoid any social or moral vices that could tarnish their image(s) and that of the church. 1 Tim.5:13.

iv. Young widows and orphans should be good examples for younger women in the family with proof of good work, prayer and faith. 1 Tim.5:10,15.

CLASS ACTIVITY 2:

Class should suggest ways by which more widows and orphans could be assisted.

SUMMARY :

Widows and orphans must be supported.

CONCLUSION:

Do not close your ears to the cry of the widows and orphans. Assist them in church and around you. Widows and orphans should not be lazy. They should also learn to trust God.

EVALUATION:

What is the family and church responsibilities to widows and orphans?

CLOSING PRAYER: Father, help us to support widows and orphans.

ASSIGNMENT:

Mention ten(10) ways by which widows and orphans could be helped, and select one for implementation.

SUNDAY HYMN

1. O Sunday School, on the Lord's day,

O how I love Thee well,

I am happy, it makes me glad

To rejoice at Thy birth.

2. O Sunday School, on the Lord's day,

Thy friend friendship suits me well,

Both young and old will sing Thy song,

We long for Sunday School.

3. O Sunday School, on the Lord's day,

Christ was Thy first teacher,

The Holy Spirit, great teacher,

Does manifest in thee.

4. O Sunday School, on the Lord's day,

This testimony is sure,

That God, the Father Almighty,

Poured His blessing on Thee.

5. O Sunday School, on the Lord's day,

Though the sun be so bright,

Or if the clouds be black with rain,

I'll be in Sunday School.

6. O Sunday School, on the Lord's day,

I rejoice to see Thee,

Will thou pass over me today?

Without my being blest?

Reference: RCCG Sunday School Teacher's Manual Lesson Twenty- Three (23)

http://bit.ly/2MKFx0k

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