Sunday morning. The birds are chirping. The sun is shining. And with muttered grumblings that you'll make up for it next week, you lie down and get back to dreaming. In our world today, what does it mean to be a Christian youth? It means having to find that delicate balance between young adulthood and your faith. Contemporary adolescents are seen as restless, disillusioned, rebellious and irreverent. Adults are quick to argue that we have too much time on our hands and don't spend enough of it in the church. If that's not the case, then teenagers are anxious to believe in anything, so long as it's radically different from the faith in which they were raised. But, let's just take a quick look at our daily influences: music, television, pop culture, high school, graduation, university, girlfriends, boyfriends, sports, volunteering, summer jobs, homework and always in the background, our parents.
Are these merely excuses we have created in order to ignore what we know to be our responsibility to the church? No. In fact, these are powerful, if not always important foundations that clamour for our time and attention. So where is my faith, how do I find the balance? For me, the answer, though not easy to articulate, encompasses everything. My faith is expressed in my upbringing, in the love and respect I hold for my parents, in the time I spend with my friends, in every act of horror and in every act of kindness.
Even those who seek to rebel cannot wipe out every trace of what it is they were raised to believe. It is a part of us, as is our race or culture. Our parents have already become our foundation and what they teach and ask us to understand, be it faith or morals, becomes a cornerstone in our life. With my girlfriends, it takes on a different persona. Friday after school usually consists of an exhilarating soccer match, against the much inferior boys of course, and is followed by a cooling-off period at the local fast food restaurant. Surrounded by those of the Islamic and Hindu faith, our weekly group outings can sometimes turn into debates of massive proportions. A simple query like "When do you think you'll get married?" spirals into a questioning of the purpose of marriage, our reason for existence. And that constant wonder as we friends from different faiths ask, "Which one of us will be saved?"
In this exploration of the issues that separate and divide us, it's amusing how I always emerge stronger in Christianity. In our daily world of random acts of terrorism or visions of devastating poverty, prayers become a constant, and with each prayer, a reaffirmation of our faith in God. Similarly, goodness, portrayed in every kind word, or in any selfless deed, can be attributed to a belief in the power of Christ and that which He tried to teach.
I was walking home from school one afternoon, past a Pentecostal church and ahead of me, I could hear a little girl singing "Jesus loves me." First I smiled at the innocence of childhood, my memories of that tune, but then I felt sad. Unknowingly, she had reminded me how long it had been since I had thought about those three simple words, or of how effortless living used to be.
Lately, my thoughts had consisted of how much work I had, what I have to do to survive in order to graduate and how that would result in the birth of even more complications. Feeling religiously guilty, I went home and because I hadn't done it in a while, started flipping through the Bible. Stopping here and there, I didn't know what I was looking for until I landed at the Beatitudes. Eight short, concise, easy to understand lines, but how profound! Providing a map of life, this reading brought forth a realization that the doors of religion were never actually closed, but instead, slightly open. I'm one of the grumbling, not always having enough time to go to church types, but I also know that that isn't all my faith wants of me. A personal relationship with the Father and His Son, an understanding that I will never stand alone, and a trust that the life I am living is what was meant for me… that is how my scales are balanced.
