1. BIG QUESTIONS, BIG PUNCTUATION
Draw a huge question mark onto the playground at the school you’re visiting (if an indoor lesson is needed, masking tape the question mark to the hall floor). It needs to be about five metres in diameter for a class of 30 to all stand inside it. Give them a 90 second blast of ideas about God in a ‘did you know?’ format using the ones below.
Practise delivering these in a highly dramatic tone. Then ask the class to walk single file, with three second gaps between each person moving (to create personal thinking time), to the chalky punctuation mark, and stand with their toes on the edge of the chalk, in a big circle. Stand in the middle, and read out some quotes about God. Anyone who has something to say can step forward and say it when you call them. This is a great, low key but high thought questioning strategy. Quotes to read (make up some more of your own as well): ‘I think that God only exists in the mind.’ ‘If God is real, then AIDS and torture prove that God is weak.’ ‘We shouldn’t say ‘he’ or ‘she’ for God.’ ‘I have a question I would like to ask God.’
Did you know…
…Islam is the second largest religion and the fastest growing religion in the world with over 1.4 billion followers, while Christianity has about 2.4 billion followers and is also growing fast. Add in the Jews and the Sikhs, and nearly six out of ten people on the planet believe there is one true God, full of love.
…Global atheism is, by some good estimates, about four per cent of the world, but global religion is about 90 per cent. (There are some real ‘don’t knows’ as well.)
…More people become atheists because of the problem of evil than any other reason.
…There are over 800 books for sale on Amazon about the problem of evil.
…Christians think Jesus was literally God walking the earth.
…Feminist Christians say ‘she’ for God at least as often as ‘he’.
…Lots of religious groups (including Muslims, some Jews and some Christians) ban pictures of God because ‘he’ is not an old man in the sky with a beard. If God is, then God is spiritual.
…Britain’s ‘top Christian’, Archbishop Justin Welby says, ‘The Church is not a place where good people go. It’s a place where bad people go to meet God.’
2. COMPARE TWO WORKS OF ART
‘My art represents the feeling that God, if he exists, is unreachable and hidden. At a time when we need God most, we reach out and no one grabs our hand. The masses of paper falling from the sky suggest that our prayers never reach anyone.
Newspaper cuttings in the shadow speak about terror, murder, death. Jesus stands behind her. In the shadow, God is there. The image of Jesus behind the girl and the colour that surrounds them illustrate that even when things look dark, God is working there. There is light even in the shadow.’
Above are two works of art by young people on the theme ‘Where is God?’ Both 15 years old, the artists express opposite ideas, one saying you can find God in dark times, the other drawing atheist conclusions from the experience of prayer that goes unanswered. Ask members of the learning group to weigh up both of the works, and say which they prefer and why. Talk about how we all interpret art – and life – in different ways. Give your own interpretation. A great follow up to this lesson is to invite students to create their own ‘Where is God?’ art work, which can be entered in NATRE’s annual ‘Art in Heaven’ competition – see www.natre.org.uk/spiritedarts for details, and hundreds of brilliant examples.
3. USE A BBC RE FILM CLIP ON REVELATION
This year I made five RE programmes with BBC Religion and Ethics for GCSE and Standard Grade students. One is about Revelation. We had a panel of young people, Muslim, atheist and Christian, doing various stimulating things. We sent some of them to a healing service at a church in Hull, to see if they felt that God could be revealed by healing miracles today. The 11 minute programme is on the links section of the Premier Youthwork website. Show the clip, tell them in 40 seconds your own experiences and beliefs about God and healing, and ask for theirs as well.
4. WASHING LINE: AGREE AND DISAGREE
Move classroom tables out of the way, and arrange the chairs so everyone can see a washing line you’ve hung across the classroom. Give them all a strip of paper, and ask them to put their name on twice, so that when folded and hung on the line people either side of the line can see who hung it up. Read out some quotes, reading each one twice, and pause between readings. When you say ‘go’ everyone should hang their opinion near one end (strongly agree) or the other (totally disagree) or in the middle (not sure). Sit down again, and invite comments on the line and the quote. Six of these usually last half an hour! Quotes to include are: ‘Jesus lives’; ‘God is dead’; ‘Being an agnostic makes sense because there’s not enough evidence for or against God’.
