Friday, November 14, 2014
Issues Paper Intro
The youths of our various churches have been
deserting the religions they’ve grown up with, their faith deteriorating at an
alarming speed. You great leaders hail from a generation renowned for its
faithfulness, but now watch the youth of this day from a perceived detached and
misunderstanding perspective. You probably have heard and thought that the best
way to reach out to these young adults and to keep them from falling away is to
make your religious meetings less boring and cooler, you and your preachers seem
more laid back and hip, to provide pizza at your newly organized and fun social
gatherings. While that may indeed motivate a select few to show up every once
in a while, that course of action will do very little indeed to direct the
youth back to church. The youth aren’t looking for parties, as they can easily
find those. What they want is solace and peace. Growing up, I, a youth of this
age, had both religious and non-religious friends. However, both groups were
distinctly separate parts of my life. I remember struggling between doing what
I was taught to be morally right, to stand for what I believed, to not do
anything to disgrace my religion; or doing what my non-religious friends
thought would be fun but was wrong, what society said was acceptable and desirable,
what science and the secular claimed they had proven to be unarguably correct.
My struggles were real and were present nearly every day. There were times that
I thought to myself that it would be easier to go on without religion in my life
and that when I was old enough, I would stop going to church. Thankfully, my
testimony solidified and my faith strengthened and I am still here today. Unfortunately,
that is not the same with all the young adults of today. The truth of the
matter is that religion is portrayed as the enemy. Science, politics, society
are all seemingly at war with religion. And our youth feel like they’re caught
up in the crossfire, stuck between what appears easy and what seems right. They
feel torn between the two sides, as both are a part of them. But they find it
easier to leave religion than it is to leave everything else. Because while
society attacks doctrinal practices and science tries to disprove scripture and
evolution contradicts creation and peers reject morals, religion doesn’t
counterattack but instead defends itself on all sides. It is so much easier to
be safely behind the swinging swords than to be holding up the shield against
them. While religion is greatly polarized with science, society, peers, and even
personal desires, we can help the youth find solace, peace, and compatibility
with the rest of the world.
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