God the Father, Mentor's Guide, MG06

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G O D T H E F A T H E R

Help the students review the teaching of the video in order that they may have a mastery of the foundational concepts covered within it. Concentrate on ensuring that the students understand the answers in light of the lesson aims of the first segment. This kind of review is critical for them to build on their understanding of these truths as they go. As always, be careful in your use of time, giving attention to the key ideas and watching out for any side roads or ditches which may lead you from rehearsing the critical facts and main points of the providence of God. In reviewing with the students the truths for this segment, make sure to review with them a quick overview of the some of the alternative theories surrounding the existence of a God of providence in the world. The atheistic or materialistic view holds that no God exists, and that the material universe is eternal. This is the popular view of atheistic evolution which would say that the material universe possessed within itself the needed properties that produced the heavens and the earth through the long process of evolution. The pantheistic view says that God is everything and everything is God. This view holds that the universe is like the very “living garment” of God, who is the soul of the universe, which is the physical creation of his form. In this view God is equated with the universe itself, and differs little with the basic materialistic views of the universe. The deistic view holds that God does exist, that he made all things, but that he created them so they need neither his involvement nor oversight in their continuance. God made the material world subject to certain unchanging laws which they obey, but humankind maintains their personal freedom as a “rational and morally free agent.” The clock maker analogy is used often to explain this view: God is to creation as a clock-maker is to his timepiece. God made the clock, wound it up, and left it alone. God is the Great Uninvolved in human affairs; true religion by this view is only natural religion. Nature’s laws and processes are the highest we can go to understand the person and influence of this absentee God.

6 Page 63 Student Questions and Response