How do you explain "Brotherly Love"?

Teaching the 5th grade Bible class at church is an adventure all it's own.

I'm sure this doesn't do anything for the rowdy problem we have most Sunday's in class, but I've instituted rules much like Gibbs on NCIS.

They go a little something like this:
  1. No one can talk to CB, and CB can talk to no one.
  2. Get a Bible as soon as you get in the room if you didn't bring one.
  3. TS cannot try to be funny.
  4. CH cannot say the word "cousin" or talk about any of her cousins.
  5. ER cannot tell any more stories about the funeral home Christmas parties, and no updates on who they "picked up" over the past week.
  6. PJ cannot play with my clothes or kick me under the table. 
  7. KO cannot randomly interrupt to point out that I'm not wearing purple. 
  8. PP cannot draw Cowboys in other people's workbooks.
  9. Give me your iPod Touch because I think you're on You Tube, not You Version.
  10. Put all four of your chair legs, plus your own two on the floor. 
Rules like that. I'm sure I'm missing a few. Obviously, these rules are directed towards certain people. Like I said, this probably doesn't help with crowd control. 

I also have to admit that sometimes I really wonder where the material is trying to go. This makes it difficult because TS is the king of asking questions. Usually, I can pull off a satisfactory answer. Otherwise, I say, "ask Sam." This was proven by the questions he stuck in the Question & Answer box for the preacher's quarterly Q&A night. Yes, I'm that Sunday School teacher that encouraged the box stuffing in case you were wondering. 

This quarter, I've also had explain that hell and damnation are Biblical words. Well, of course they are. The kids saw them in the Bible, pointed them out, and were freaked out that they were in there. (It also doesn't help when the material we use had included "the jawbone of an ass" in the first grade material, but I digress. I always skip that part.) I've had to explain when using hell is acceptable when used in the correct way as in, "if you don't go to heaven, you would go to hell. You don't want anyone to go to hell."

The topic last week was the Christian attitude and brotherly love. I ask, "can anyone tell me what brotherly love means?"

CB says something like, "well, my brother has been ok lately, but usually..."

I interrupt, "OK, well, maybe we should look at this differently because we all probably have issues with our brothers." (My own brotherly love is a little dysfunctional at times.)

As we struggled through the lesson without breaking the above rules, some very pointed comments were directed towards people during the lesson. This resulted in trying to illustrate brotherly love. "While I admit, that was funny ____, it is not in the spirit of Brotherly Love." 

In fact, I said that more than once. 

"Rebekah" visited our class on Sunday morning. I think they all scared her off after the quarter we co-taught. My next illustration of brotherly love left her covering her face with a song book. I bet I know what she was thinking.

"This all comes down to us loving everyone, even the people we don't like."

If I were a betting girl, I bet she was thinking of Timmy the Fly.

Yep, the epitome of loving your enemy. 

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