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Family Night - Whatever Works Wonderland

Our children are often told, "There's no right way or wrong way, just your way." Although this can inspire creativity, it may also plant seeds for one of the most dangerous lies we face - relativism (there are no absolutes). These activities will help your children experience the reality that sometimes there really is "right" and "wrong" and give them an appreciation for the fact that God is always right!

Cooking with Chef "Right" and Chef "Whatever"

If your family enjoys pretending, you can pretend you're doing a cooking show on TV. Choose one person to be Chef "Right," and another to be Chef "Whatever." Other family members can be divided into teams to help the cooks or be audience members.

Choose your favorite cookie recipe: (you can use refrigerated cookie dough).

Write out the recipe for 1/2 of the batch on one card. On another card write the recipe for 1/2 of the batch only reverse the sugar and salt measurements. Do not tell the children that one is right and one is wrong.

Instruct Chef "Right" to prepare 1/2 of the recipe with the correct measurements. Remember, don't tell that it's the right one.

Have Chef "Whatever" prepare 1/2 of the cookie dough with the switched ingredients. (If using refrigerated dough, sprinkle the 1st half with sugar and the 2nd half with salt)

Do a taste test with the finished cookies and vote on which batch tastes like the ones you've baked before. Take a minute to talk about the fact that if you want a recipe to turn out the same, you need to follow the directions and therefore there's a right and a wrong way to make this particular recipe.

Talk about it:

If you follow a recipe perfectly and it still tastes bad, what went wrong?

  1. You didn't like the ingredients and so it didn't matter how well you prepared it!
  2. Your ingredients were bad or out of date
  3. You thought you followed the directions, but you messed up somewhere.
  4. The person who wrote the recipe was wrong.

In this case, the person who wrote out the recipe wrote it down wrong on one card. If you follow the recipe as it's written on the second card the cookies will always turn out wrong.

The Bible is God's recipe book for us. Because He is Right, 100% of the time we can follow His recipe and be sure it will turn out just as He says.

One of God's recipes for life is found in the memory verse from the attribute, "God is a Personal Spirit." John 15:5 says, "Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who abide in Me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from Me you can do nothing."

If we follow God's recipe and do what's right by staying close to Him, He will do amazing things in us and through us. If we don't follow His recipe and we ignore our relationship with Him, we will eventually discover that we can't do anything that's truly important... our life will be like the salty cookies, good for nothing.

Don't play by the rules!

Grab some munchies, or left over cookies from the cookie contest (the correct ones), and choose your favorite game. Begin playing the game according to the rules. After a few minutes announce that there is a change to the rules. From now on each person gets to decide their own rules to play by. For example, if they lose a turn they can decide that they won't play by that rule and they take a turn anyway. Let them try to play this way for a while. They will probably become very frustrated. Stop the game when you think it's best and talk about it before going back to playing by the rules.

Talk about it:

  1. Why are rules helpful in a game? (They show us the right way to play a game and alleviate arguments.)
  2. Who's the best one to decide what the rules for the game should be? (Whoever created the game.)
  3. Would you rather play the game with rules or without? Why?

Because God created everything, He knows the right "rules" of life. He alone knows what it takes to "win" in the game of life. A lot of people want to make up rules for us to follow, but God is the only One who is always Right and whose rules are always right no matter what.

 

Alternate

For other "hands on" activities, see Bonus Activities for God Is Always Right.

 

"His holiness and His righteousness are not the same. Holiness is 'a condition of purity or freedom from sin.' God's righteousness is the quality or attribute of God by virtue of which He does that which is right...In other words, holiness describes God's nature; righteousness describes how God acts according to His nature."
- Bill Bright, Discover God

 

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