{"id":129,"date":"2024-01-12T10:03:05","date_gmt":"2024-01-12T16:03:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscenteredfamily\/?p=129"},"modified":"2024-01-12T10:03:05","modified_gmt":"2024-01-12T16:03:05","slug":"youth-culture-trends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscenteredfamily\/2024\/01\/youth-culture-trends\/","title":{"rendered":"3 Disturbing Youth Culture Trends We Can’t Afford To Ignore"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
The future of the rising generation is filled with anticipation and excitement, but it\u2019s also filled with some disturbing youth culture trends that, as parents, we should be aware of if we are going to create Jesus-centered homes<\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n
If <\/span>you\u2019re over 30, then you know the world our kids are growing up in isn\u2019t the same world we grew up in. In fact, it\u2019s so different that you can hardly recognize it. And for some of us, that reality is sometimes painful.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
In more than twenty years of youth ministry in one capacity or another, one growing trend bothered me more than anything else I saw. And trust me, I saw it all. It was this incredible infatuation with Jesus with almost no desire to follow him.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
What does that even mean?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
They sincerely believed that being a Christian only meant they had to like or appreciate Jesus and some things he said. Despite the heartfelt worship, verse memorization, and genuine interest in theology, Jesus was only a model citizen, and loving like him meant accepting people for who they were and affirming them in whatever lifestyle they chose.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
To do otherwise amounted to a heinous act of hatred. In my academic circles, we called this ideology Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, which is just a fancy way of saying that what matters is being a good person. While that sounds nice and simple to a young mind, it is perhaps the best of all possible options. For many students, it served as the easiest reconciliation to their hard questions about faith that no one seemed to be answering. They missed that this pursuit of being a good person meant a complete distortion or even negation of truth.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n