Is Pride Still a Deadly Sin?

Since joining St. John Lutheran Church, I am back to attending Sunday school almost as regularly as when I was a kid! Once a month, St. John replaces its regular Sunday morning classes (with kids separated by age into different classrooms) with one "family Sunday school" session for which all the kids and their parents are supposed to gather in the fellowship hall in the basement for a large-group session. Most families take that Sunday off each month, but not the Mobergs (Mommy is the Sunday school director upon whom our absence would reflect poorly). We belly up to the round tables, and I join the girls in the craft projects and wonder why so many other parents feel no compunction over being truant.

Parents are better at attending PEAK (Parents Educating and Affirming Kids) and pre-confirmation classes with their children on the Sundays when those are held. Those sessions are two or three consecutive Sundays, and then they're done. In October, I joined Hillary for two classes on fairness and forgiveness. Last month I joined Abigail for three classes on baptism (remember?). And today Suzanna and I attended the first of three sessions for her on the sacraments. Susan has her Sunday school director duties to tend to, but she pops in and joins us when she has a free moment.

When children take confirmation classes at our church, one of their tasks is to memorize all the books of the Bible. To that end, they are asked to begin memorizing the books in small chunks during pre-confirmation classes in grades three through six. Last year when Suzanna was assigned to start memorizing the first few books (remember?), we just went ahead and memorized all the books. As a family. Last month Abigail got the same homework assignment, and it took her about three seconds to rattle off from memory the list of books that had been given her as memory work. This morning Suzanna saw that her homework includes memorizing a few more books than those assigned last year. We winked at each other; her homework is already done.

When I was a kid, the ladies who ran our Sunday school program kept track of our attendance, and we children made it a goal to earn "perfect attendance" pins in the spring. Now that I'm back in Sunday school, I wish our current church did the same thing. I have unChristian thoughts about going to church with my attendance pins on my shirt, initiating conversation with other parents--the parents whom I do not see at family Sunday school or PEAK or pre-confirmation--just so that I can nonchalantly adjust my pins to draw attention to them while we talk, or perhaps even boldly ask where their pins are. Parents who don't attend family Sunday school, though, are likely to be parents who punch smart-asses who make snide comments about their non-attendance, so it's best to keep this daydream to myself. I'd better not even write a blog post about it.