It was my turn to teach Sunday School again today, lesson 41, “I Have Finished My Course,” drawn from the epistles to Timothy and Titus.

I’m always a little hesitant to talk publicly about my Sunday School lessons, because there’s always somebody who doesn’t think I stuck closely enough to the manual. If you think from what I write below that I went renegade with this one, please read the entire posted lesson before you comment.

We had about 20 minutes remaining in class when we started talking about 1 Timothy 4:12:

Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.

My first question was:

Look at verse 12 again. “Be thou an example of the believers.” I think most people would consider belief to be an internal thing, something you hold in your brain, or in your heart. Does Paul seem to think that belief is only an interior thing?

and we talked about it in general. But then I wanted to get specific. The questions I actually asked (I eliminated one or two from my notes, because of time) were:

What does it mean to be an example of the believers if the belief we’re talking about is “that through the Atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel”?

How can you be an example of the believers in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on Paris, or in recent attacks in other places?

How can you be an example of the believers in relation to the hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing terror in various parts of the world?

You have no doubt heard, maybe participated in, the confusion and turmoil regarding the Church policy recently announced concerning Latter-day Saints who enter same-sex marriages. How should you be an example of the believers in this instance?

I started with the question based on the 3rd Article of Faith because I wanted to sneak up on the potentially difficult ones, and because I hoped someone would mention that if we truly believe that Christ’s atonement extends to everyone, then we should treat each other as the children of God that we all are. Check – close enough, anyway.

The one about recent terrorist attacks drew comments about contributing to Humanitarian Services (or LDS Philanthropies, now). Someone mentioned the impressive show of sympathy with the French through the rapid addition of the “bleu, blanc et rouge” filters to so many Facebook profiles. I added the point that we can be examples of believers by not succumbing to hate or cynicism or hopelessness in the face of things like this. I had hoped someone would say something explicitly about not condemning Islam itself or all Muslims for the barbaric acts of a tiny handful; someone kinda sorta hinted at that, but it wasn’t said as clearly as I had hoped.

Next question, about refugees: Again, a mention of contributing financially to relief. One man took it a large step farther by saying that when refugees are brought here for resettlement, the warmth of the personal touch, such as getting to know them as new neighbors and inviting them into our homes, also demonstrates the love and charity and hospitality of the believer in Christ; what’s more, he briefly told the story of how the people of Quincy, Illinois, received the Latter-day Saints fleeing from Missouri in 1838, opening their homes and feeding and clothing them and showing them the human kindness that we so much needed.

One woman said she had heard about one town somewhere that had taken in so many refugees that it had changed the character of their town. She didn’t say so, but left the impression both that that was a bad outcome and also that we should be careful that the same thing doesn’t happen here. A man said that it was hard to be charitable toward someone who is pointing a gun at you and threatening to kill you. I told him that I doubted anyone would disagree with him, but I neither argued nor gave him a chance to continue in that vein. I don’t think I said anything to the woman beyond “Okay,” and called on the next one with a raised hand – I had decided beforehand to hear without argument any comments that I thought didn’t exactly provide a sterling example of being a believer, ((That is, I wanted people to suggest ideals explicitly about showing belief through word, thought and deed. People may hold perfectly legitimate social and political views that neither support nor attack the Christian example; I wasn’t hosting a free-for-all political discussion, though, but a Sunday School lesson.)) to give everyone who wanted to a chance to say something, but not to allow the discussion to become too terribly partisan in any direction.

Then came the last question, the one about the recent same-sex marriage policy. The first comment was that there wasn’t anything new about the policy, just that it involved children now. I gently corrected that, trying to make it sound as if I were building on what she said rather than correcting her outright, to note that categorizing same-sex marriage as apostasy rather than as an ordinary sin, was indeed a change, and of course she was right to note that the policy did now involve children.

Then someone – a reader of this blog, but I won’t name him unless he wants to claim this himself, in case I don’t report it correctly – spoke up. He said in so many words that he was choosing his words carefully, that he had had a great deal of heartache in the past few days thinking about what this all meant, that he hadn’t yet resolved all his feelings about it, that he hoped that what he had said in social media had not been unduly harsh toward Church leaders, and that whatever he felt about the policy, “here I am.” He was there, in Sunday School, with his people – and his people were not only those who were at Church today; those who were having a hard time with this were also his people. (If you care to repeat what you said more exactly, friend, I would be glad to see it. You said it so well, and obviously I couldn’t take notes in the moment.)

That opened the door and we had quite a few comments. Some were from younger class members who ordinarily don’t speak up much. Some were from the same older people who do comment quite frequently. I know this is the question in which there will be the greatest interest by Keepa readers, but it’s also the part of the discussion I can’t report as well as the other. I was too much on my guard against something too unacceptable being said.

We came close to that twice. One man, one of the younger ones, didn’t exactly say that “it’s about time that teh gays are thrown out,” but I had the uneasy feeling that if he had been allowed to comment further he would have said just that. What he said, though, by itself, was okay; I would have closed down the discussion if he had been more explicit. One woman made an extensive comment about Jesus directing the minutest affairs of the Church, so we know this is precisely what Jesus told President Monson to do. I will be looking for suitable opportunities in the near future to discuss revelation and inspiration and prophetic infallibility; my response to her was not outright agreement, but a statement about there being safety in following the prophet. Perhaps I should have been prepared for that comment and had a better response in mind, but I was playing this by ear and simply hoping to keep the discussion from swinging too far in any direction.

One young woman talked about the polarization of Facebook, and encouraged moderation. I noted that I supposed there were many people who did not appreciate either of Facebook’s extremes, but who didn’t speak up because they suspected they would be treated badly by the extreme voices – if you felt bad about the harshness of what you were reading, there were probably many others feeling that along with you.

In response to someone’s comment, I said that we could be examples of the believers by being charitable toward all, whenever we talked about this issue – that while I didn’t know who they were, there were likely members of our class who were directly affected by this, one way or another. I saw quite a few heads nodding – while my vision isn’t clear enough to always read facial expressions, I can still see the movement of vigorous head nodding.

The final comment was from a class member who is both a first generation Latter-day Saint and a first generation American, as she noted. She mentioned the wide range of races and backgrounds among her grandchildren, and said that we were all followers of Christ, bearing his name, and needed to treat each other as if we believed that about each other. That seemed as good a closing to the lesson as the one I had planned, so we ended it there.

All in all, I was impressed by the contributions of class members. I think we need to get beyond generalities in our discussions – the lesson manual calls the lessons “scripture discussion and application,” so we had jolly well discuss and apply. It wasn’t easy to do that today – I think everyone, even those whom I thought were a little too blunt, were trying to be both true to their understanding of doctrine and sensitive to class members who might have different perspectives. The earth didn’t open up and swallow anyone, there were no lightning bolts from heaven, and while some of the silent ones perhaps did not feel that anyone had represented their own feelings, everyone did have a chance to speak if they wanted to.

This kind of frank discussion isn’t something I dare do very often – it isn’t always necessary, and our classes generally should be places for devotional expression – and this was devotional, but everyone understood how carefully they needed to speak. Our Sunday Schools should be places where we can talk about whatever needs discussing; in a faithful, considerate atmosphere. When the doctrines are true doctrines, if the scriptures are going to be a guide, then we should be able to use those doctrines, those scriptures, to address the most difficult problems of mortality.