2004 Term 3 Week 6 - Follow up

Had to be there

2004 Term 3 Week 5 - Personal Description of the Chaos

I got one of the guys to talk about what the chaos looks like in his life. He gave 3 examples, one from is family, one from his school, and one about girls. I had sat down with him during the week, just one on one, to talk through this so that he knew how the examples would be used in the group. After he talked I told the group I saw some patterns between the examples, which were: a fear of being shown as incompetent, a fear of embarrassment, a fear of risking/being vulnerable, he distracts himself from facing the chaos (and he rationalises the distraction), and he keeps his problems to himself (silent). I wrote up two lists on the board. The first was how he experienced the chaos (fear of being seen as stupid, embarrassment, don't know what to do, etc) and the second was how he attempted to avoid the chaos (avoid risk, leave it for someone else, distract, go silent, etc). The second list I labelled as sin. Here are the ways that he attempts to live life without God. The chaos in life causes us to either cry out to God or harden our hearts, the second list was all about hardening his heart, not feeling the pain of a fallen world. This took surprisingly little convincing, maybe it was really obvious (or just too left field - weird).
Anyway, I then told him that he uses the second list because it seems better than to try and move forward in the chaos. So the solution was to reveal to him how the second list had the appearance of life but was really death (or it is just gravel in your mouth). We have been using the Lord of the Rings to illustrate our ideas (mainly that each of our hearts longs to be Aragorn), so continuing this I told him that the Shire is protected from evil by the Dunedain (unbeknown to the Hobbits). When he leaves the chaos to be dealt with by others he is acting as one of the Hobbits. He is demanding that others protect him. I also told him that the effects of keeping silent is like what happened to Rohan when its king, Theoden, did nothing as Sauraman’s Uruk-Hai ravaged his people. I told him that when he distracts himself from the chaos he is deserting the fellowship and returning to Hobbiton. So we named his distractions (computer games, TV, radio) and banned him for a week. After I had gone through the list and made a mess of his sinful strategies I the guys that this is part of the battle for his heart. And in the discussion that followed we linked it with the idea that whoever loses his life for Christ’s sake will find it. And that ultimately if you don’t believe in God, you will try to avoid the chaos of life. If you don’t believe that God can raise the dead, then you wont risk your heart.

2004 Term 3 Week 4 - Reworking the Definitions of Chaos

Redrew the Binksy bit as a series of lines rather than a circle. This is to differentiate it from the circle that indicates the part of the chaos where our heart directs us to attempt to bring order to the chaos.

Used Linkin Park’s Breaking the Habit song to describe the chaos and our reaction to it.

Spoke about how we are all Aragorn in an epic story. The orcs are real. And the orcs will try to kill you. You have sword. I am here to remind you who you really are (like Gandalf awakening Theoden).

2004 Term 3 Week 3 - Pete Special

I'll get Pete's notes and post them here.

2004 Term 3 Week 2 - Lust Part B

This week was a continuation of last week.