It’s the go-to phrase for explaining calamity: “We live in a fallen world.” But what does this mean, and is it accurate?
In fact, the Fall is not only the reason behind why bad things happen. The Fall is also why these bad things hurt. It’s why the loss of someone we love, whether through disease or tragedy such as just experienced in Las Vegas, brings pain. So, maybe it would be helpful to understand how the events in Genesis 3 affect us in 2017.
The document link below is an excerpt from InWord’s upcoming Bible study on loss and hurt. It is a one-session sneak peek into the seven-session study (working title: Lossology 101: Building a Theology of Loss and Suffering). This session is a rough draft in progress; we have much editing and tweaking to go. But we feel this can be a helpful and timely tool to put in the hands of youth workers to help teens process the tragedy in Las Vegas.
This document is what we call the leader’s “personal prep,” a 30- to 40-minute personal study on the subject. The session guides have yet to be developed, so we’ll leave it up to you as to how you’d like to share this personal prep with your students: lead them through the prep in a small-group setting, use it as background for a talk, distribute for their personal study.
Lossology 101: Developing a Personal Theology of Loss and Suffering