It was a good discussion, and in the course of that discussion I made the assertion that unless as parents or grandparents we are intentionally engaging and challenging our young people through Christian discussion and training, they are growing up with these mistaken notion in their heads.  Even if they go to church and youth groups, surveys are beginning to show that they have internalized strongly notions of tolerance, relative truth, and other hallmarks of secular humanism (and defined by secular humanism, not defined as we might agree with them) in it's current iteration.  Unless specifically trained otherwise, even Christian youth are beginning to think that right is a matter of what we determine - even if they go to Confirmation and youth group every week.  

I'm talking with students in the philosophy class I'm teaching at the moment, and they're seriously arguing that they believe there are circumstances where the premeditated killing of an innocent person can be justified as good.  Where rape could be justified as good.  They can't think of such a circumstance, and they're pretty honest in that they aren't even willing to try and think of one.  But they refuse the idea that Truth could be absolute, that moral truth is unchanging.  They insist - blindly - that it can't be.  They have absolutely no moral grounding, no moral compass to guide them.  They are ripe for whatever rhetoric is most prevalent at the moment.  And they did not reach this state by accident or circumstance but by design.  And at this point, my ability to help sway them away from this point of view is severely limited.  I work hard at it, but it's a battle I won't know if I've had a substantive impact on in this lifetime.  

Which is why it's critical that we ramp up our efforts to engage youth and keep them engaged.  This begins early in life - before they start school.  It continues all through Sunday School and into confirmation.  And then, traditionally, it all falls apart.  Just as students hit university and the very overt push of secularism and relative truth, our denomination fails them.  Pastors overall seem to do a poor job of being in touch with their high school & college aged youth.  They often don't pass on names of their college-bound youth to campus ministries and congregations in the area.  There isn't follow up.  It's a massive, ugly black hole in spiritual care that results in a cross-denominational statistic of almost 70% of college-aged youth dropping out of active involvement in church.  Many never return.

I applaud the Catholics for beginning to take concrete steps  to address this situation in their own circles.  I can only pray that my denomination finds the wherewithal and vision to do the same thing.  Talking with people that I work with/for in attempting to provide resources and assistance to youth leaders, pastors, and young adults is disheartening, though.  Not because they don't care, but because there aren't the resources to support the effort the way it should be, and I'm not sure that our polity is able or willing to think outside the box in terms of how to address it more effectively.

Our young adults need us.  And if we fail them, we can hardly expect that they are going to return to the church later in life.  If we fail to meet the ideological forces bunkered in our public school systems, our public universities, our media, and our political landscape, the Church becomes culturally irrelevant, and we follow down the path of Europe and other secularized, modernized nations where the churches are empty.  

If you have young people in your congregations, pray for them.  Build relationships with them.  Build relationships with their parents.  Be talking with your pastor and asking what is currently being done to reach out and support these younger folks.  Be willing more importantly to offer yourself in tangible ways (prayer, time, money) to assist and bolster these programs.  This is not a matter of programming and budgeting - it is a matter of whether or not our children have the spiritual fortitude and intellectual stamina to see the humanist onslaught for what it is - and to reject it as the illogical, irrational system of blind hope and wishful thinking that it is, even as it accuses Christians of this very fault.  

Know what's going on in your community, in your schools, in your culture, in your church, and in your home and the homes of your family members.  This isn't being nosy or pushy or intrusive - it's providing the leadership by example that we are each called to give to the world around us and particularly that part of the world that we are intimately involved with.