ISSUES OF FAITH: Big lessons learned inVacation Bible School

Published 1:30 am Friday, July 10, 2026

IT’S JULY AND many congregations invite neighborhood kids to a weeklong church “camp” called something like “Vacation Bible School.”

Sometimes several community churches let go of details of their faith traditions and join together to teach Bible stories, sing catchy tunes and eat some version of a rice crispy treat along with healthier fare of grapes and apples.

From my recollection, there is also often a craft for the week.

It can’t be too hard. It needs to be completed by the end of the week and preferably have a useful purpose.

Instructions need to be simple, too, given the primary school age group.

I was once that kid in vacation Bible school and I followed instructions to the T.

My class was to make a tie rack for our fathers and craftily glue on it his favorite saying or Bible verse in macaroni letters.

I diligently sanded the thin 9-inch by 4-inch piece of plywood one day. I followed up in the days to come with careful shellacking and screwing in the little hooks for the ties. (Ties in the ’50s were very narrow.)

Then came the careful spelling out of my dad’s favorite saying.

No Bible verse came to mind, not that I thought my dad didn’t have one, but he said one thing many more times than “God is love” or “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow.”

I found all the letters I needed from the pile of pasta on the table, making sure they were whole and not cracked or chipped.

I first laid them out on the plywood to assure the quote was centered. I was interrupted by my teacher, who asked in a concerned but kind way, “Donny, are you sure you want to say that?”

I assured her that I did because that was what my dad did say all the time. I would not be moved.

I got all the letters glued down. I was proud of myself.

Friday came and so did parents to hear their kids sing and see what they had been up to over the week.

The tie rack crafts were all laid out, and parents filed by.

No names were attached to the works, but everyone who went by mine snickered and said, “That must be Bob Corson’s son Donny.”

What was that dearly held quote from my dad I felt compelled to spell out beautifully?

It was my dad’s basic theology: “People ain’t no dad gum good.”

I don’t actually remember my folks’ reaction to my handiwork.

I had crafted my work with no ill will or guile.

I was just a kid doing what he was told. I’m pretty sure my mom had something to say to my dad later though.

To my knowledge, the tie rack was never used, but my mom treasured it, and I found it again when we cleaned out my folks’ place a while back.

Over the years, my dad held on to his basic understanding of humanity that people were generally up to no good, but he lived a life of grace that belied his general pessimism.

Do I share my dad’s world view?

Yes and no.

Yes, in that I recognize, like our Lutheran worship liturgy says, that we “are captive to sin and cannot free ourselves …” but were we really rotten from the start?

The concept of our inherent evil streak is theologically called “Original Sin” and was first pinned and championed by St. Augustine in the 4th century.

He believed our proclivity to “sin” was inherited, going all the way back to Adam and Eve’s disobeying God in the Garden of Eden.

Over the centuries, the notion of “Original Sin” became a core belief in traditional Christianity, but it hasn’t always been so central.

It was actually hotly contested by a theologian named Pelagius around the same time as St. Augustine.

The fact that Aurelius Augustine was made a saint and Pelagius is now mostly forgotten validates that the winners of controversies and wars are the ones who get to write all the history.

Pelagius believed since we are made in God’s image, and God pronounced all of Creation to be very good (Genesis 1), how could our essence be anything but really good, too.

Further, since people were gifted with the ability to choose, then “sin” is just a bad choice, and one we get into the habit of making … a lot.

This notion of why we do bad things, whether we call it sin or just falling short or “missing the mark,” has caused many sleepless nights for many founders of branches of Christendom’s family tree. (Judaism has taken an entirely different tack by the way. Look it up.)

Martin Luther, my denomination’s founder and originally an Augustinian monk, struggled mightily in his early years under the weight of his personal sinfulness down to the most minor “offences.”

It got to the point his confessor (the Vicar von Staupitz) told him to go away and come back when he had done something really worth confessing. But, wisely, his priest emphasized God’s love and forgiveness at the same time.

That advice, along with a fresh reading of Romans 3, helped Luther realize that the weight of his falling short was way outweighed on the other end of the teeter-totter by God’s grace.

Are we really evil from the get-go? Is God’s grace really enough to cover all our shortcomings we are sorry for and with God’s help try to do better next time?

It’s a good thing we don’t have to be the judge on that one. God already has made the verdict, and there is no need for appeal.

I wonder if they still sing “Jesus Loves Me” in vacation Bible school.

Maybe all you really need to know is what you learned in kindergarten.

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Issues of Faith is a rotating column by religious leaders on the North Olympic Peninsula. Don Corson is an Ordained Deacon in the Lutheran Church (ELCA) and the winemaker for a local winery. He is also the minister for Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Forks. His email is ccwinemaker@gmail.com.