I think my neighbor got a little freaked out last July when he saw me reading Helter Skelter as part of a project to revisit some of the events of the turbulent 1960s. Apparently, my decision to read about Charles Manson’s gruesome 1969 murders raised a question in his mind. Everybody talks about the cultural changes the ‘60s ushered in, but my project showed me not much has changed during the last 40 years. Sure, things may look or sound different. But everything “new” is at its root a manifestation of something that’s been gnawing away at us from deep down for a long, long time.
We’re Still Lost and Yearning
Manson’s murdering disciples looked to him as a “messiah.” But the things that drove them are really no different than what’s driving kids today: a yearning for significance, purpose in life and that evasive “something more.” Why are kids so gullible? First, as with every person and thing in our post-Genesis 3:6 world, they were lost and broken. Second, they each felt horribly alone. Chap Clark, in his book Hurt (Baker, 2004), described the debilitating thread of “systemic abandonment” that runs through today’s youth culture. We’ve all seen what happens to kids when they’re abandoned, forgotten and left alone with their aching spiritual hunger and thirst. They’ll grab onto anything that promises (albeit falsely) to fill their hunger, quench their thirst and ultimately redeem.
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God-Shaped Vacuum
While it’s important for us to keep up with rapidly changing trends that influence our students, it’s even more foundational and necessary for those of us who minister to kids to know that spiritual yearning is a cultural constant that touches every life across all times and places. Biblical history, world history and our own personal histories all offer irrefutable proof. David spoke of his soul panting and thirsting for God (Psalm 42). A rich, young ruler who seemed to have it all came to Jesus in search of something he knew was missing (Matthew 19). The yearning of the people Paul encountered in Athens led them to erect an altar “to an unknown God” (Acts 17, NIV).
Augustine wrote in his Confessions: I carried about me a cut and bleeding soul, that could not bear to be carried by me, and where I could put it, I could not discover. Not in pleasant groves, not in games and singing, nor in the fragrant corners of a garden. Not in the company of a dinner table, not in the delights of the bed, not even in my books and poetry. It floundered in a void and fell back on me. I remained a haunted spot, which gave me not rest, from which I could not escape. For where could my heart flee from my own heart?