Before you go on to read the following, I will inform you a bit about the context of this article. The following was written for my English class Newsletter so I tried to keep it short to leave some space for other content so there are no Bible verses which is what I usually try to integrate into my blog posts but this is an exception. So with that in mind read and enjoy the article!
Underage Thinking
Why do I believe what I believe? What is my purpose? Is there really even a God out there? And if he is, what is he like? Very few “churched” teens would ask themselves these questions.
It seems as if most kids just seem to accept what other people believe around them. They just take in what they are given from their parents, friends, teachers and pastors and “believe” it and even replicate it. Its dangerous to merely copy someone else’s lifestyle because you don’t truly own it, you only borrow it blindly not knowing the significance of knowing what you believe.
Now far be it from me to be the one to kill your faith in God. I’m only asking for you to ask questions about “why”. Why you do what you do? And why do you believe what you believe? Because an unchallenged faith is a faith that will soon grow weak and die out. And in the end you’ll wonder if you ever even truly believed in the first place.
USA Today did research and found out that “Seven in 10 Protestants ages 18 to 30 — both evangelical and mainline — who went to church regularly in high school said they quit attending by age 23, according to the survey by LifeWay Research. And 34% of those said they had not returned, even sporadically, by age 30. That means about one in four Protestant young people have left the church.”
And though I stress the fact that your faith must be questioned, I also believe that all of a person’s facets of life must be examined as to not bring injustice or misunderstanding. Because the Civil Rights Movement didn’t just appear out of nowhere, it was the product of people who questioned how their life was and they saw the injustice. And you never know, a movement might even rise because of you. As Socrates once said “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
