UMR Communications is offering the latest headlines in the RSS format.
Commentary
COMMENTARY: Looking for love in all the wrong places Shannon Vowell, Apr 9, 2008
Shannon Vowell
By Shannon Vowell Special Contributor
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued in March a series of public health announcements: At least one in four American teenage girls has a sexually transmitted disease. Among those who are “sexually active,” the infection rate is as high as 40 percent.
According to subsequent news reports, “Doctors said the numbers might be a reflection of both abstinence-only sex education and teens’ own sense of invulnerability.”
These statistics and analyses constitute an urgent call for the United Methodist Church. Our failure to offer truth or transformation to youth is literally killing them—and us.
I’m not suggesting we commit to a denominational chanting of the refrain “true love waits.” I’m saying that Methodists need to re-remember and then practice talking about what and who “true love” actually names.
Only Jesus satisfies. We are supposed to know that; we are supposed to proclaim that. But we neither know nor proclaim Jesus passionately enough to grab youth’s attention, much less transform their lives.
Our church seems locked in a cycle of self-defeat when it comes to making young disciples. The statistics on our church population are more well-established and just as shocking as the new statistics on teenage STDs: Our mostly elderly congregations are rapidly dwindling under the leadership of our mostly elderly clergy.
Our efforts to be more attractive by being less distinctive—derived from our well-intentioned, “seeker-sensitive” dilution of scriptural authority and personal holiness—have led us Methodists to a dead end—especially where youth are concerned.
Desperate to attract youth, we have “dumbed down” messages that might have challenged them or held their attention. Desperate to hold onto what few youth we had, we apologized for or eliminated standards of personal discipleship; in so doing, we made the notion of discipleship meaningless and pointless.
The bottom line on teenage sexual practice as far as our church is concerned is this: We’ve failed them by copping out on scriptural teaching about sex, both institutionally and individually.
But even more profoundly damaging, we’ve failed them by making scriptural teaching and Trinitarian theology simply one option among many—by turning “the Way” and “the Truth” into “a possibility” and “a choice.” Our quest to be relevant has left us relativistic in our principles and positions, and deeply divided on core issues.
And youth, more than any other group, are repelled by hypocrisy and sham.
When we look at our failure with youth, one of the many consequences of trading substance for politically correct pabulum becomes glaringly evident: our loss of Christ’s authority. In the quagmire of our pluralistic and relativistic identity we have nullified our ability to mentor anyone.
By cutting ourselves off from the power of the Holy Spirit we have quenched our capacity to make young disciples. If not for Christ, then for whom are we raising up youth? If not in order to transform the world, then why are we bothering? If not by His grace, then how are we empowered?
Without Christ, we can look only to ourselves—and frankly, we are a mess. The headless Body denigrates spiritual parenting into self-righteous presumption by flawed human beings.
To reverse our pattern, we have to take hold of several essential and un-politically correct principles. First, what is true in the home is doubly true in the Church. (Whether we like it or not, adults in the church serve as spiritual parents to the children and youth in our congregations.)
Parents who base their authority on their own righteousness doom themselves to failing their children and—even worse—to alienating those children through their own inevitable hypocrisy.
True authority is the Lord’s alone. We claim it to His glory. We cede Christ’s authority over ourselves and our children to our own destruction—and theirs.
The powerless apathy implicit in that shoulder-shrugging rhetorical question, “What can you do? Kids will be kids,” is just as poisonous in parenting as the tyranny of “Because I said so!” For our children’s sake, we must actively parent under God and toward God. This is true in the Christian home; this is true in the Body of Christ.
Second, God’s truth about sex is the same as God’s truth about all good gifts: It was His idea! He made it pleasurable because He loves to give us pleasure. We are intended to enjoy it within the parameters He established for our own protection and our own pleasure.
God is not a kill-joy. God is the source of all joy. Using sex in ways that God never intended dooms sex to joylessness and worse.
Third, we set aside scriptural teachings about sex in defiance of doctrine, statistical evidence and personal experience. God’s way truly is the best way. Why do we have so much trouble articulating that?
We can point to the consequences of abusing the pleasure of alcohol, and offer loving counsel and recovery in the name of Christ to those who have suffered that abuse. We can do the same for those who abuse food, or those who abuse substances.
But about sex, we stand silent—or simply echo a muted version of the destructive ethos of culture: Anything goes, because we are too civilized and sophisticated to need God’s boundaries.
The conventional wisdom on sex, which cites “consenting adults” and protests that “nobody is getting hurt,” increasingly fails to acknowledge reality: Consenting children are getting hurt—very hurt.
As the Body of Christ, it is our holy privilege and obligation to invite them (and ourselves) into the bodily and spiritual freedom for which we have all been set free by Jesus Christ.
The new statistical evidence on teenage STDs is as much a call to decisive action by the Church as are the statistics about the ravages of AIDS, famine, oppression, racism, injustice—evil in all its guises.
John Wesley’s clear instruction is urgently applicable today: We must offer them Christ!
Ms. Vowell has five children, from preschooler to young adult. She teaches adult Bible studies and works with youth at Ridgewood Park UMC in Dallas. Discussion questions
Shannon Vowell
