The wise teacher (sarcasm)

I did a talk at Yoop, it was fairly short but I reckon it went ok. It was focused on 2 Timothy 4. This is it.

The world is a big flat disk and all the water falls off the sides in massive waterfalls. If it was actually a sphere people would fall off the bottom!

It’s ok, cigarettes won’t kill you, there’s no conclusive proof that they are linked to lung cancer.

Sometimes people refuse to believe the inconvenient truth, instead they want to hear reassuring lies. They want to hear comforting things because the truth can be scary. The truth is that the world is a massive sphere and cigarettes kills loads of people, but those truths have made some people uncomfortable.

The world often says that you should abandon those who abandon logic and reason, but what does God say about those people?

(At this point everyone went off to do the study)

God loves everyone, so he wouldn’t send anyone to hell.

Jesus was just a really good teacher; he didn’t have any special powers.

Are these lies any different to the ridiculous lies about cigarettes and the world being flat? Would you rather feel comfortable believing a lie now, or spend eternity in heaven with the Lord of all? I hope you choose truth, but what about people who keep fighting for their reassuring lie? Paul encourages Timothy to Preach the Word in and out of season. That means that regardless of your audience you should always try to tell people about the good news of Jesus, because even if it does sound a bit scary Jesus will return and everyone will be judged. Not everyone will listen, a lot of people will turn aside to myths, but that doesn’t mean you should give up, keep telling them that Jesus died to save them from their sins, to me, that’s much more reassuring than any lie.

I had a different talk prepared, it was about the same thing, but it went around in circles a bit, plus it went for fifteen minutes so I deleted it this morning and rewrote it. It was a shame that I couldn't have done the other one, because I had all of the hand gestures worked out. I can't actually remember some of it already, so it's probably good I decided to redo it.