Cotton Balls and Paper Cups or what a Sunday School illustration for four-year-old children can teach pastors
By Barbara Lopatin

In my thirty years of involvement at McLean Bible Church I have particularly dear memories of teaching the preschoolers. I taught the four year old class and became “Miss Barbara”, a story teller in The Treehouse for many years.

Our wonderful preschool director introduced a new curriculum one Sunday and taught with me. The lesson centered on telling the truth. For the lesson activity, the director had paper cups and cotton balls for all the children to play with. We put a cotton ball under one cup, and with three cups, we played a game of “which paper cup has the cotton ball?”.

The cotton balls represent the truth. The paper cups represent covering or hiding the truth. If you covered the cotton balls with the paper cups, this represented deception, or not telling the truth. We taught the four year olds that covering the truth, or hiding the truth, was just as wrong as telling an outright lie. Although I do not remember the Bible story we taught, I remember the paper cups and cotton balls because I realized that God’s standard is much higher than is typically accepted in society.

At McLean Bible Church we taught the four year old children that it is wrong to purposely hide the truth. Half-truths, distortions, exaggerations, or evading the truth all fall under this category of deception. Deception is sin.

Imagine my heartache and disappointment these past years as our church leadership has seemed to embrace these deceptions as common practice. Many of these practices began long before there was the excuse of litigation.

“I do not have the specific numbers.” PAPER CUP

“Email us your question and we will get back to you.” PAPER CUP

“I do not have the numbers here.” PAPER CUP

“It depends on the meaning of ‘affiliate’.” PAPER CUP

“You will be giving to an organization like this.” PAPER CUP

“Come in and we’ll talk about a room you can use.” PAPER CUP

Why do church members who ask targeted questions about the budget get threatening letters from the elders? Why can’t members know the actual numerical election results? Why the secrecy and evasion? What happened to your ‘yes’ being ‘yes, and your ‘no’ being ‘no’? What happened to telling the truth “ to a hurt” or telling the truth even though you think that you or your position may be harmed in some way , because you fear God?

I often remember the cotton balls and paper cups. Perhaps some seminary grads at McLean Bible Church need to go back to Sunday School.