Today’s devotional: what example are you setting?
What example are Christians today setting for the next generation? When people back at the example our lives and words set, will they be inspired to imitate our grace and altruism… or will they mimic our consumerism and worldly values?
In a devotional at Wonder of Creation, Dean Ohlman looks back a the “Me Generation” of the 1980s, and observes that traits like greed, materialism, and a decline of religious faith are far more evident than are the Christlike virtues of compassion, selflessness, and self-sacrifice. Can the same be said about us today? Are we providing the next generation with a model of Biblical behavior?
When the Christian values of faith in an eternal God, compassion for others, self-sacrifice, and hope for the future disappear from the general culture, there is little chance that altruism will survive. In fact, most people today would likely have difficulty even defining the term altruism… People of the Word have a responsibility to provide for their children and to leave for them an inheritance of faith and the gift of good land—a creation respected and well-kept….
We’re a long way from being the community that treasures our past, guards our present, and secures our future. While we look for the any-moment return of Christ, we cannot use this expectation to excuse ourselves from the responsibility to leave God’s gift of creation to our children and their children well-kept and as undiminished as possible in its capacity to provide for them what it has provided for us.
There’s much more, including some insightful quotes by Wendell Berry, at Wonder of Creation.
Young folks need to see “Christ” in Christians and churches. Legalism doesn’t work for adults or youth and never did. All of us need to hear and know that God ceated us with our own will. God never forces a person to do or not to do anything against their will. Neither should we. Our job is to make the truth known and show how and why it makes a better life that others would of their own will want to follow. When anyone (young or old) rejects the truth, it is a rejection of Christ and the matter remains between that person and God not that person and the pastor, the church nor you.