Friday, February 7, 2014

Day #36

February 5, 2014

What an affirming conversation I just had with a young adult, although a sad one. The affirmation is in what I have heard and read over the course of the last few years: something that keeps many young adults away from the church is the lack of authenticity they find there. That the church, and Christians, say one thing, but act another. The conversation affirmed that a group of young adults verbalized that very thing as their reason for not attending worship.

Now, perhaps some would call that behavior hypocrisy (saying one thing and doing another), but that doesn’t seem to be what is meant about not being authentic. It is not being “real.” Young adults give room for folks to make hypocritical mistakes, but pretending they don’t do it seems to be more the issue. That all the finger pointing Christians do about behavior needing to be a certain way, or belief needing to look a certain way, and basically indicating that I have all the answers that I need to get you to understand and accept, instead of listening to or caring about your perspective, is what is considered to be a lack of authenticity.

At least that is my perspective of what is meant. I may be way off base. How do I authentically go about finding out?

Blessings.

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