Problems with the Christian Youth

I think I'm fairly well qualified to write on this topic, too - I was one for a very long time. Even if I still believe in God and have fondness for aspects of the religion, I can also fairly well disqualify myself from that category: the "Christian youth" are the ones in YoungLife, who go to MidTown, who wrap their social and religious dealings up so closely that they forget that there's anything else out there.

For a little context, I'm in a wedding right now that requires me spending time not with the cool Christian kids that I used to hang out with (well, two or three of them), but rather the kids that they're hanging out with now. Is it wrong to call a certain set of them "cool" and a certain set . . . definitely not cool? Even if I don't buy into the same set of moral concerns that I used to, and if my actions are no longer driven by emulating Jesus in my daily life, I still live by a certain code that more or less requires me to consider others' feelings and treat people with respect. Sometimes I feel like this self-informed mode of values is far more effective - or maybe it just boils down to the fact that I was raised right.

But one thing that really strikes me, hanging out with a crowd of Christian youth, is that they tend to hide behind their Christian community as a way to avoid being real with anyone on the outside. I know Rachel felt it too, and I'm sure Alyssa was aware of the tension - not going to MidTown, or worse, not going to church at all, means that a lot of girls feel no need to get to know you at all. It's funny, because I felt the same way when I was actually going to MidTown. I guess even within that social strata, there are substrata that allow their members to ostracize people. All the girls I was with last night went to the same service (of the three that I think are still going each Sunday night - there was always a "cool" service to go to), knew the same people, had become close with the same leaders. If you don't know these people and hang out at the same times, clearly you must just be a godless heathen and nobody needs to try to connect with you.

I remember being the same way in high school - in fact, there were several weeks of crying and frustration among my youth group because some people didn't try to welcome new additions, and some people felt unwelcome even after having been there for a while. It's easy to hide behind the mutual friends and events that you can talk about with the people you know, and even easier to write someone off that's from a different circle entirely. When surrounded by your compatriots, you have their collective goodwill and the "us vs. them" mentality - some kind of primal instinct present in troops of monkeys and prides of lions - is strong. Politeness, genuine interest and kindness are unnecessary towards someone who has no tribe present.

This is not to paint myself as a victim, because like I said, I was like that once too. I had my defenses last night that allowed me to express my disinterest in playing that game - the only way to challenge it is to completely deny it - but it just seems vastly unnecessary to want to play the game at this stage in our lives. The concept of "young adult" allows for arrested development and offers what should be fully-fledged adults the ability to worm out of responsibility, both social and religious. Grow up - get a job, find the real world. If church for the youth is mostly about drawing bounds around specific types of people, then something is drastically wrong.