November 1943
413 . . . . American Young People"Gospel Hardened"? By LaVOSE A . WALLIN* Los Angeles, California
by another who merely infers that he is looking to Jesus as an ideal. Again, the phrase, ‘{ H e a v e n l y Father,” m e a n s to the enlightened Christian the God who has adopted him as a son and heir through the blood of Christ—a personal and lov ing God. The b l i n d e d professing Christian looks upon God as the Father of all mankind and therefore of himself—a relationship imperson al, formal, and f r u i t l e s s . Thus subtly Satan works to accomplish his purposes, l o c k i n g hearts’ doors against Christ. Are these misguided youth prepared to correct misinter pretations of Scripture and to cull the truth from the debris of false doc trine they receive? If not, can we hon estly say that they have received any b a s i s for a Christian decision and philosophy? Another barrier to the truth is the common branding of evangelical churches as “fanatical” or “emotion al.” Fine as the message of these churches may be, they gain little audience from young people who are warned against them. Now consider the educational pro grams of our conservative churches. Are the leadership, the methods, the equipment, and the supplies what they ought to be? Are they conducive to w o r s h i p , study, change, and growth? What might be the attitude of youth toward God when they have come from fully equipped and excel lently staffed secular schools to a hodgepodge Sunday-school program? Is it not strange that nearly every recent advance in religious education has been initiated by liberal groups, while evangelical Christians sit back content with outmoded and ineffective methods, refusing to assume responsi bility for their inefficiency? Instead of meeting the challenge of our obli gation and paying the price of im provement, we are inclined to judge —and s o m e t i m e s harshly—thole young people who are more attracted by the world than by the church. Furthermore, if Christ is not made attractive by the completeness of His * Member of the faculty of Westmont Col lege. Miss Wallin has as her special duty the w o r k of Sunday-school counselling — a free service w h i c h is being offered to churches in the Los Angeles area. She also serves in connection with the Teacher Train ing program which the college has introduced as an evening feature, and in which Sunday- school teachers and officers of many de nominations are finding valuable help.
claim upon their lives, can we expect young people to place any real value upon their relationship to Him? We cannot hope to see deep love and de votion grow out of cheap senti mentality. The Influence of the Home In the second place, one of the most effective factors for or against the acceptance of Christ’s claims upon youth is the home. The attitude of parents toward spiritual things will determine largely what their chil dren’s openness to the gospel will be. The personal lives of the parents will affect deeply the child’s standard of valuer and his ideals. When the only reference to the Godhead or i the Christian church has been in the form of an oath, ridicule, or jesting, can the youth of that home be expected to take seriously the living character of the holy God? Even in Christian homes, the in fluence actually exerted for true Christian faith and living is often meager. Are the parents exemplifying the precious father-and-mother rela tionship so often used in Scripture to illustrate the love and care of the heavenly Father? Is Christ manifestly King in those homes? Is His Word the beloved center around which the family gathers for daily-worship? If not, must not those parents’ religion appear a superficial, unimportant, and undesirable habit to their chil dren? The vast number of young people who drop out of Sunday-school and church after their junior or junior high years is sad proof of this ap praisal. One set of statistics indicates that the church loses sixty per cent of its girls and seventy-five per cent of its boys during their adolescent years. How difficult it will be to reach these young people for Christ, once they have withdrawn from the church! Many of t h e s e adolescents could have been held if the church had
made its program sufficiently attrac tive and vital. Nevertheless, if the parents had been faithful and loving in' their witness and in their Christian teaching and training, the home would have made such an imprint upon the child’s spiritual life as to have in some measure overcome the failure of the church. There is a duplicate responsibility here because of a double failure. The Influence of the School Strong influence also is exercised by the public schools and colleges. Thank God for those Christian teach ers who seek to develop the souls as well as the minds of their pupils. Few they are, however, in comparison with the number who insidiously attempt to undermine faith in the divinity of Christ or the infallibility of the Bible, or who ridicule Christianity. The practice of reading the Bible in .the public schools was first outruled by the State of Wisconsin in 1890. Other states soon followed, and so spread the program of secularization of edu cation, until it has grown to* such proportions as to strike fear into the ^hearts of Christian parents and leaders. Modern education has interpreted our constitutional provision for free dom of religion to include the prohibi tion of any Christianizing influence in the public school class. I know' a young Christian teacher whose contract was not renewed after her first year in a middle-western town. She had not violated any rule of the Board of Education; she had not read the Bible in the school room nor taught religion to her pupils. But she did live a radiant Christian life and was active in the work of the church. She inquired why she was no longer desired as a teacher, and was given the following reason for her disfavor: “We have gotten along with-
O taste and see that the Lord is good : blessed is the man that trusteth in him. • . . They that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing.— Psalm 3 4 :8 , 10.
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