Well, apparently God has called a pox upon my head for criticizing the stay-at-home mom article… because I really could have used my own stay-at-home mother fawning over me and my cold this weekend. Instead, I had to make my own Jell-o and hot tea while downing doses of my Crestwood IGA miracle cold drug. I literally left the apartment only twice over the course of the weekend. David, bless his heart, indulged me with quite a few hours of phone time from Boston so that I wouldn’t get too starved for human contact.

But I’m back in the saddle today—I don’t believe in coddling a cold for too long, or it gets used to the attention. Armed with my Crestwood IGA pills, my water bottle, and a roll of toilet paper for the copious amounts of flem exuding from my nose (to put it nicely), I’m bunkered down in my office for another day of NNPCW fun. I just got several photos back from the CoCo meeting a few weekends ago, so I may try to post one here for you. I’ve heard that Blogger allows you to do these things, and you might enjoy a photo of September 16th’s guest blogger, Sacha, astride the noble Peace Seeker.

I somehow managed a few weeks ago to be talked into helping out with my church’s youth group (one of the two reasons I left the apartment this weekend). The problem is that kids scare me a bit in large groups. I do well enough with kids one on one (I’m a friendly sort of person, I think), but when they get together I’m just not sure how to connect with them. Moreover, I’m not a good disciplinarian. Yesterday, a couple of boys were bouncing off the walls while these elderly missionaries were telling the group about India. I kept giving them “the eye,” hoping that this would calm them down. But I have the authority of a peanut when it comes to kids. It took one of the other leaders, a college student who had once been part of the group herself, to separate the two. But (sigh), I try my best.

So it was with interest that I read a recent article in The Christian Century entitled “What Teens Believe.” Results of this survey of 3,000 US households and 267 interviews with teens reveal that most teens consider their beliefs somewhat or very similar to those of their parents (particularly their mother’s), and that those beliefs fall under traditional Judeo-Christian categories. In fact, the article asserts that most teens are pretty conventional when it comes to religion.

But what disturbed me was what the article said those beliefs actually were. The article labeled teen beliefs “Moralistic Theraputic Deism”—while most of these teens believe that God exists and that this God wants us to be good to one another, they also assert that “the central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself” and that God isn’t really involved in our lives except as a problem-solver.

But what happens to these kids when real life hits? When someone dies, when you lose your job, when broken relationships occur, and God doesn’t immediately show up to wave a magic wand and make it all better? What happens when you pursue the god of happiness through two BMWs, one broken marriage, and an addiction to Prozac? If this is what our faith communities are raising kids to believe, in our attempt to make religion palatable, then we’re setting them up for failure. Christianity proclaims a God of hope, a God of joy, a God who stands with us through trial and hardship. But it doesn’t proclaim a God who fixes life for us so that we can feel good all the time. If that were the case, we’d never grow into the people God calls us to be.

So maybe the youth group isn’t such a bad place for me to be. Not because I know all the answers about God, but because we all need to challenge youth to tackle the tough questions of faith. Sugar-coating religion for teens only creates major faith crises when they are adults. And if we haven’t ever made them think, will they be able to survive it?

“You shall put these words of mine in your heart and soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and fix them as an emblem on your forehead. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.” --Deuteronomy 11:18-19

Kelsey