My First Sunday School Lesson

So, I've been debating on whether or not I want to assume my audience has a firm understanding of Mormon doctrine and theology. I know many of my friends aren't LDS. Even though many of them grew up in a predominantly Mormon town, I feel many of them have some pretty ridiculous misunderstandings about my faith. Part of me wants to take the time to not only explain my personal feelings and interpretations, but also elaborate on what the official doctrines of my faith are. I've decided to... well, do whatever the heck I please at the moment. Sometimes I may assume you have been going to Mormon Sunday School since you were five, and sometimes I may assume that you think Mormons play naked volleyball in the Temples (FYI, that is a false assumption).

I also apologize in advance. I talked about how I planned on writing before and after the lesson. That didn't happen today. I got a bit busy before church.

Today's Lesson: Foreordination
Honestly, I was a little worried about this lesson. Foreordination is not only a topic I don't understand well, so I felt extremely unqualified to teach about it. Now, before I get going, let me clarify. Official doctrine states that we are foreordained to certain things in life, such as Jesus being the savior of the world and Joseph Smith being foreordained to be the first prophet in these "the latter days". (So, I'm realizing how much Mormons have our own "dialect" when we talk). You know, things that you're supposed to do to help continue the Lord's work on the earth. Not to be confused with the Calvinist doctrine (sorry if anyone reading this is Calvinist and takes offense. I mean no harm, but your doctrine is different than mine) of predestination, or that your eternal salvation is already decided from the moment you are born. Mormons believe that what you do with your agency in this life will affect you in the eternities, and that you can miss out on fulfilling your foreordained duties. And that's pretty much what we talked about today (The nice thing about being a Sunday School teacher for adults is that you can get them talking and making comments and they do the teaching and you are pretty much just a referee to make sure the lesson goes in the general direction you want). Some expressed the excitement knowing that they have a special purpose in life (see the third paragraph on this page), knowing there is a purpose to being. Others talked about how heavy of a responsibility that can be, and expressed a bit of anxiety at the daunting task of making sure they do what the Lord has planned for them. The last few minutes I reined in the class and gave my two cents. Joseph Smith once said, "[T]he fundamental principles of our religion are the testimony of the Apostles and Prophets, concerning Jesus Christ, that He died, was buried, and rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven; and all other things which pertain to our religion are only appendages to it." I take that to mean that anything we teach in the Church absolutely must tie back to Christ and his atonement. If you can't connect what you're talking about to it, then it is not important enough to be discussed in a religious context. So, that's what I did. I talked about Christ's foreordination to be our Savior. I am so grateful that he lived up to that. Why, you might ask? Well, because I fall short so much in what could possibly be my mission in this life. I no doubt have missed out on opportunities to bless other's lives. In fact, I have knowingly avoided such situations. But Christ's atonement makes that okay. Yeah, I may have missed out on some blessings, but in the end, I can still be eternally blessed.

TL;DR We all have a mission on this earth that God expects us to fulfill. But even if we screw up and don't fulfill that mission, there is still a place for us in God's kingdom, because Christ fulfilled his mission