Monday, January 23, 2006
The Challenge For Youth Ministry
CT carries a really interesting article about what they call "affluenza." The idea is that the listless, directionless lives many youth seem to live is not a result of disinterest or lack of discipline, but rather
Here's how I would frame the essential issue. In our affluence, we can no longer rely upon scarcity to teach value. It used to be you had to decide what was important to you because you only had so much to work with. Now, you can have a little of everything, you never really have to learn to decide what's really valuable and what is not.
So the question becomes, how do we teach value when scarcity is not there to do it for us? I, for one, don't think a life of somehow self-inflicted scarcity is the way to teach those values. How do those of us with our values well-formed make these decisions in the midst of our plenty? That's where we need to start.
A faith-based approach will only go so far. So much is ethically and morally neutral.
One suggestion. We need a well founded biblical idea of beauty. In a time of abundance, beauty should be more valuable than the ugly. But anymore, those concepts have been reduced to matters of taste.
Where would we begin to develop such a thing? How would we begin to develop such a thing? These are questions I intend to ponder. How about you?
Related Tags: abundance, affluenza, plenty, listless youth, values, Christinity
But many others, like Susan, become dazzled and bewildered, frozen by indecision or jabbing in five directions. A million options promise five million happinesses, but they often lead to a billion disappointments.While I think the article gives a little more credence to this idea than it deserves, I think there is great value here.
Here's how I would frame the essential issue. In our affluence, we can no longer rely upon scarcity to teach value. It used to be you had to decide what was important to you because you only had so much to work with. Now, you can have a little of everything, you never really have to learn to decide what's really valuable and what is not.
So the question becomes, how do we teach value when scarcity is not there to do it for us? I, for one, don't think a life of somehow self-inflicted scarcity is the way to teach those values. How do those of us with our values well-formed make these decisions in the midst of our plenty? That's where we need to start.
A faith-based approach will only go so far. So much is ethically and morally neutral.
One suggestion. We need a well founded biblical idea of beauty. In a time of abundance, beauty should be more valuable than the ugly. But anymore, those concepts have been reduced to matters of taste.
Where would we begin to develop such a thing? How would we begin to develop such a thing? These are questions I intend to ponder. How about you?
Related Tags: abundance, affluenza, plenty, listless youth, values, Christinity
