Blasted Youth Groups

God bless young Christians. I mean it. Every time I see a young Christian I rejoice and find myself pleased that they have subscribed to "The Way" and have made conscious efforts to pursue God. Sadly, I don't see these kinds all that often. Both believing and non-believing adolescence almost never thinking about maturing. I have learned to not expect maturity out of them as I know of myself that I was not much better when I was younger. Granted, I am still very young have much room for growth, but what I have done in my thinking is a crucial point for kids these days. I have breached the wall of encouraged immaturity and have seen the error of my ways. I explicitly said, "I want to stop being immature and obtain wisdom."

The youth (not of today, but of all history) have denied these pursuits.

The Father of the righteous will greatly rejoice; he who begets a wise son will be glad in him.
Proverbs 23:24

Yes, and what more could you do for a father than to not have made terrible decisions? It is one of the better Father's Day gifts. "Thanks for raising me dad! I owe much to you." Though, Christians have presumed in recent times that all the wisdom in the world is in the gospel. In other words, they have graduated the high school of wisdom but neglected to pursue higher learning of wisdom. Sure, it is pleasing enough that your kid be Christian at all, but that does not mean they are not susceptible to making really stupid decisions.

What I see in youth groups is a lack of concern for the maturity of the children. The kids end up going to these meetings to have fun for two hours straight and then sit down to tolerate thirty minutes of talk from the youth pastor. So, for the bulk of the time they only encourage unwise and immature behavior and later, remind them that they should do good things. But why should they do good things? For most of their lives they have been trying to milk the situations they are in, for all the fun they are worth; paying no heed to the wisdom of it all.

What do these kids need to hear? They need to be told to grow up. And it is certainly rough to do so since having fun is not inherently sinful. Knowing this they justify their particular actions of fun; not knowing that their particular arrangement of fun could be very unhealthy for their growth. Regardless, they must hear it and realize that there are much more important things in life than piling up the fun.

As we discovered before that kids think because they are saved that they are home free from the life solving department. To be honest, that is only where life solving starts. Youth groups decide to take the kids on a mission trip somewhere so they can witness to non-believers the gospel. Ha! As if they had the world figured out! This mentality to "save the world" has good intentions, but I suggest that you work on yourself first. And what better way than to start with Solomon, who was (need I remind you?) the wisest man that ever was.

This has been a discourse on the despicable youth by yours truly, Evan Gunn Wilson.