Liberating Youth from Adolescence

Jeremy P. Myers, Jeremy P. Myers

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781506433431
• eBook ISBN:
  9781506438184
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Liberating youth through theological reflection on vocation

Jeremy P. Myers, a seasoned expert in youth and family ministry, calls the church to challenge the dominant societal view of adolescents as "underdeveloped consumers" who can only contribute creatively when they mature into adulthood. Myers argues that young people are innately creative creatures called by God to love and serve right now. We need to see young people as the called cocreators (with God) that they are.

Using current studies, Myers shows how marketing and consumer science target young people with the hope of making them find their identity in buying and using things. This strong cultural emphasis underserves young people and even at times defines their lives as mere commodities.

Myers tells the stories of a number of young people whose lives buck the consumer paradigm and myth of the underdeveloped young person in order to live as the called cocreators God has created them to be.Each chapter provides a set of ideas that congregations can use to take a closer look at how young people in their midst are or could be invited to be creative contributors to the life of the congregation. Questions for discussion are also provided to encourage discussion and facilitate action.

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Vocation as Liberation from the Undeveloped Consumer

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

—Ephesians 2:8–10

I remember being frustrated as a teenager with adults’ low expectations of my peers and me. We had good ideas, experiences, wisdom, and skills the church could use. In fact, we had gifts the entire community—our schools, neighborhoods, local businesses, and so on—would have benefited from. The adults in our community rarely asked us to contribute. We were denied the opportunity to contribute through the good works that God had prepared beforehand to be our way of life. The same is true in many communities. Our dependence upon the myth of the adolescent, or the undeveloped consumer, prevents us from seeing the full potential in our young people. Christian theology and the biblical narrative offer us an alternative. There is no such thing as the undeveloped consumer in God’s story. As we will see, it is best to understand our young people as those who are not undeveloped but called by God, not identity-less but named children of God, not self-centered but relational, and not consumers but cocreators with God in our world. God is calling them into this life. The framework of the called cocreator will liberate our young people from the dangerous myth of the undeveloped consumer.

A Biblical Understanding of Young People

So how does the myth of the undeveloped consumer hold up when we look at the Bible, both the Old Testament and the words of Jesus in the New Testament? The way Jesus talked about, received, and promoted young people provides motivation and material for deconstructing the undeveloped consumer. We will only understand how radical Jesus’s embrace of young people was against the backdrop of the two worldviews shaping his life and teaching—Jewish theology and Greek philosophy. These were the two dominant worldviews in Jesus’s life, and they both present different ways of understanding young people. Jesus moved beyond both perspectives and offered us a truly radical way of honoring our children and youth.^[1] This biblical exploration will allow us to see how different Jesus’s view of young people is from that which is common in our society today.

Let me add a quick word about life stages in Scripture. As I mention in chapter 1, the practice of dividing life into various stages of development is relatively new in the history of humanity. So, it should not surprise us that Scripture does not divide life into stages of development. The life stage we now call adolescence was not a reality in biblical times. You were either a child or you were an adult. Therefore, many of the passages in Scripture that refer to children are referring to younger children, not teens. We should naturally wonder if these verses addressing younger children are applicable to teens today. For example, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus says, “Let the little children come to me.” Can we use these words today as a call to welcome all young people including teens, or was Jesus only speaking of young children? I believe we can and we should. Jesus elevates children in Scripture because they are powerless, marginalized, and at risk. He is committed to those who are powerless, not those who fit into a specific age range. Over the course of history, we have infantilized, marginalized, and disempowered our teens. Therefore, when Jesus elevates the powerless children in biblical times as exemplars of God’s kingdom, I believe he is also lifting today’s teens, who are also powerless and oppressed.

The life stage we now call adolescence was not a reality in biblical times. You were either a child or you were an adult.

Young People in the Old Testament

Jesus’s Holy Scriptures are what Christians refer to as the Old Testament. He was steeped in this worldview and its philosophy. The Old Testament consistently presents the young person as gift and responsibility. We are to cherish and tenaciously care for this gift, but we also have a responsibility to provide them with constant nurturing and protection. Walter Brueggemann draws on the Old Testament image of the she-bear to describe the tenacity with which we are to care for and protect our young people. Texts such as 2 Samuel 17:8, Proverbs 17:12, and Hosea 13:8 all use the phrase “like a she-bear robbed of her cubs” as a way of describing someone’s righteous anger. The Hosea passage is speaking specifically of God’s anger. According to these writers, nothing could be more angry or dangerous than a she-bear separated from her cubs. Brueggemann picks up on this metaphor and uses it to describe the passion with which God cares for God’s children and the expectation God has for our care of our young people.^[2]

Children are vulnerable and, therefore, requires our ferocious protection. Children also require nurturing. The Israelites understood the young person to be part of the covenant community. God acted in the lives of this community in a way that set this community apart as a chosen people for the sake of the world. “For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you crossed over, as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up for us until we crossed over, so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, and so that you may fear the Lord your God forever” (Josh 4:23–24).

Brueggemann points out how the pronouns change in this Joshua text. The text begins by speaking about your God who has done something for you. It then switches to say your God also did this thing for us. It then expands the reach of God’s action to include all the peoples of the earth. The passage ends by returning to the you pronoun.^[3] This shift in pronouns demonstrates the way Israelites believe young people are drawn into the covenant through God’s action, not their own, and how that covenant becomes a blessing for all people of the earth. Young people are not outsiders who must earn a place within the covenant community; God draws them into the covenant for the sake of the world. Therefore, the larger covenant community is to take seriously the nurturing of the young people into the worldview and lifestyle of the covenant community.

Stephen Prothero describes Israel’s understanding of human brokenness as life lived in exile.^[4] Nurturing their young people into their covenant community is how the Israelite people resolve the problem of exile. Although God calls them to be God’s covenantal community, they live life in suffering that comes from being in exile literally and metaphorically. The Jewish people are literally in exile, having experienced deportation and life without a country of their own for most of their history. They are figuratively in exile in that they are not living in relationship with God as God had intended. According to Prothero, we can understand Judaism’s liberation as the return home to their promised land and to the promised relationship with God. Prothero goes on to explain how the Jewish community practices this return in two ways: through keeping the commandments and through telling their story. The covenant community nurtures and teaches a way of life shaped by the commandments and by the community’s historical story. It is the community’s top priority to nurture their young people into this covenant by teaching them the commandments and the story that shapes their lives. We see this commitment most clearly in Deuteronomy 6:4–9.

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Young people are such a vital part of the community that adults are to nurture them intentionally in this covenant when they rise, when they lie down, when they are home, and when they are away.

God does not limit God’s concern for young people to those who are members of Israel’s covenant community. The Psalms and the prophets show God’s love and concern extending to all children, especially orphans. Psalm 68:5 exalts God as the “Father of orphans.” Isaiah calls Israel to “defend the orphan” (Isa 1:17). Jeremiah reminds Israel that God dwells with them when they are caring for the orphan (Jer 7:6–7). The psalmist sings of a God who “watches over the strangers; he upholds the orphan and the widow” (Ps 146:9). Because of God’s actions, “the orphan ceases to be orphaned.”^[5] God’s people, therefore, are to be as tenacious in defending and nurturing the orphan as they are their own young people.

Young people are such a vital part of the community that adults are to nurture them intentionally in this covenant.

According to the Old Testament’s witness, God sees young people as gift and responsibility. They are vulnerable, and we must tenaciously protect and defend them, especially the orphans. We are to nurture them in both the narrative and the lifestyle of the covenant people because God has already drawn them into the covenant community. God’s investment in young people stretches far beyond those who are part of the inner circle and especially reaches those who are most vulnerable and marginalized.

Young People in Greek Thought and Culture

The ancient Greek understanding of the young person was quite different. Jesus would have also been familiar with this understanding of young people as he was born and raised in the Roman Empire and in a Palestinian world deeply influenced by Greek culture. Overall, the Greeks did not see young people as contributing members of society and culture. They were “fundamentally deficient and not yet human in the full sense.”^[6] Lif...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table Of Contents
• Introduction
• The Undeveloped Consumer: Youth in Bondage to the Adolescent
• Vocation as Liberation from the Undeveloped Consumer
• Called
• Child of God
• Relational
• Created Cocreator
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Acknowledgments
• Word and World Books