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May 20, 2008
The bears will eat you ...
Bishop Gavin Reid has been delivering some input to the DYO conference and was reflecting that there is only one section of the Old Testament that directly relates to youth work. The passage in question being from Second Kings:
23 From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. "Go on up, you baldhead!" they said. "Go on up, you baldhead!" 24 He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths. 25 And he went on to Mount Carmel and from there returned to Samaria.
His reflection being that in a culture which was built around multi-generational family, this is the only example of young people being together as a peer group!
I was quite amused by the idea of this obscure episode being the only directly applicable Old Testament reference to work with young people. A bit of trawling around also revealed this passage to be among Cracked dot coms most bad-ass Bible verses.
So ............... don't 'mess' with Prophets!
Posted by ian at May 20, 2008 4:47 PM
Comments
There's a bit of youth work in 1 kings 17:19-21 - but dare I suggest that it is probably even less appropriate for a modern day setting :-)
Posted by: Ray at May 22, 2008 12:23 PM
I'm sure Fat and Frantic did a song about this. Mid Eighties?
Posted by: JT at May 23, 2008 10:12 AM