Do we even have the desire to spend the time exploring what is needed to be properly informed?
What am I talking about?
First of all, you need to know this question emerged from another great conversation I had with a very dearly loved friend. There’s a place that we meet on a fairly regular basis. It is so good to just spend time with him sipping on our beverages and as we drink in the liquid, we pour out the spirit. The spirit of our lives, the essence of our beings, the way things are around and in us. We drink in, we pour out. It’s beautiful. It’s not always about the deep and the profound, or the rich and the meaningful. It can be about anything. It’s a great time to share and just be.
In all of that we got talking about young people in church. That very real and tricky issue of the child being brought up in a Christian home but then reaching an age where they can make their own decisions. That age where they question the faith and practices of their parents. That age where they notice some flaws and failings in the things they were supposed to accept as real and wonderful. That age where what used to be real and wonderful now feels fake and mundane in its routine nature.
At that stage, if due sensitivity isn’t extended, young people can be turned off not just from church, but from Jesus. There’s a need for space to ask questions and room to explore them even if not everyone emerges with concrete answers. Room for creative expression in their understanding of practices that others have taken for granted and just go through the motions with it. Opportunities to experience Jesus for themselves and grapple with how on earth does he fit with their other pressing questions of identity and the changes they’re going through.
Whilst conversing, my friend mentioned the desire to give young people enough to make an informed decision about faith in Jesus.
That got me thinking and asking questions. Questions like: What is enough to allow someone to make an informed choice? Would we even know what it is to have enough to make an informed choice?
Then from those questions there was even searching about if people have the desire to be fully informed? People at whatever age are already bombarded with information on a lot of subjects. In as much as the consumer culture gives them the impression that they are in charge of the choices they make and how they are informed, there is still that concern that their control is not as powerful as they think it is. If they are conditioned to feed themselves on one substance of information, what will it take to get them to consider another source of information? Why would they want to?
Do we even have the desire to spend the time exploring what is needed to be properly informed?
(Photo by Ben White on Unsplash)
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
Life With CD 