"Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important." ~C.S. Lewis
While reading through Part II of Almost Christian again, a few things stuck out to me that did not before. I guess when we re-read something a little later we have changed a little bit and we find little nuggets of information that we may not have noticed the first time around.
For instance from page 53: "It is also possible that the "textbook" faith and well-adjusted outlooks of highly devoted teenagers-for Mormons and others-may be a better indicator of these teenagers' ability to win adult approval than an indicator of true faith."
It gets me to thinking that some youth may say they are highly devoted in their faith just to get approval from their parents or other adults. They give as our youth say "a sunday school" answer when asked about their faith. We as adults need to be keenly aware of this to better equip ourselves to know the difference. One of the best ways for us to develop this awareness of devoted faith in our teens is to be around them, be there for them, and ask them questions. In short, we need to be present in their lives. I need to be there, their parents need to be there, mentors need to be there, and you need to be there. Remember that the faith of all of us is still developing and we need to be aware of that and help each other out.
Highly devoted teens are able to (1) confess their tradition's God story (2) belong to a community that enacts this God story (3) they feel called by this God story (4) they have hope based on this God story. Does anyone else sense a theme here? Our youth (and by extension) all of us must be able to share our own God story with one another. That is how we can reach young people. All of Us!!!
Hope your reading is coming along well. Check back next week: same Bat Time, same Bat Channel.
Grace & Peace
Kevin
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