After two years in youth ministry I have noticed a disturbing trend in teens over the past years. They don't tilt at windmills (see Don Quixote). They don't drive hard, strive hard, work hard, believe hard, and accept hard.
These teens have nearly no problem holding in tension their impure relationships with their boyfriend and girlfriend and their relationship God. And they can look at porn and not really feel convicted. And they can do drugs and then go into a worship service. These things they may never talk about it but that is because they are privately held beliefs and they don't need to be shared with anyone else.
So the Readers Digest timeline of American thought according to D.M. Rose would go something like this: WWII vets come home and after see death and destruction the likes of which this world has rarely seen decide to have lots of babies.
Those babies grow up hearing stories from their parents about the war and decide they don't want that for their generation and being the largest generation ever in America they have serious political sway. This political sway is used to push their post-modernist agenda because they see religion, moral beliefs, and "personal beliefs" disagreements at the root of violence.
So the hippies finally have kids after coming out of their LSD-induced comas and because they stood for nothing their kids don't know what to stand for outside of the fact that they want to own this world and their drive produces a heathen yuppie generation (see the eighties-coke-addicted-stock traders and the dotcom billionaires of the nineties).
And now those yuppies (who were open-minded enough to inter-marry not just denominations but religions and political parties) have kids who they don't want to punish or push because rules are lame, man (the one thing their parents did teach them). Additionally, they allow their kids to choose their religious views from the time they are fetus as if a child has the cognitive ability to process what is actually right or wrong let alone what they need (as opposed to want).
This up-and-coming generation ranging from 8-22ish stands for nothing. They were allowed to choose religion like so many candy bars at the grocery store so how much different can one be from another (outside that some may contain more nuts than others)? The same goes for political stances- who cares? Maybe it works for you and not me but, really, what does it matter?
The only thing I hear anyone in this age-bracket saying anything about is global warming and AIDs in Africa- simply talking points made by left-leaning talking heads that have no real personal implications in the life of your typical American teenager therefore requiring no change in lifestyle and no more serious an action than the purchase of a condom and "fuel-efficient" car. Not to mention, who cares if people illegally cross our borders, they just want a better life and who cares if a mother kills an unborn child, she just cannot afford it/doesn't really want it/wouldn't really love it and who cares if gays get married because they will just live together anyway? Who cares? WHO CARES?
This is not open-mindedness, this is apathy. They don't even really believe what they say they believe because they don't really care. Finally, we arrive back to the present. Where I sit, staring out across a sun setting on my lawn wondering how to impact even the relatively small group of kids I have so they will care. All I can do is tell them what I believe and the rest is up to them... or is that just the kids talking? |
