A Faithful Hope

Like the prophet Jonah, we've been called to Nineveh (Jonah 1:1). Like Jonah, we may well be convinced that the prospects are unpromising. Indeed, even God's message to Nineveh seemed to portend doom and destruction (Jonah 3:4). A funny thing happened on the way to disaster: Nineveh turned around.

One of the passages in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings records a conversation in which Eomer has an unexpected meeting with Aragorn, and says:

"It is hard to be sure of anything among so many marvels. The world is all grown strange. Elf and Dwarf in company walk in our daily fields; and folk speak with the Lady of the Wood and yet live; and the Sword comes back to war that was broken…How shall a man judge what to do in such times?"

"As he ever has judged," said Aragorn. "Good and evil have not changed since yesteryear, nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men.

It is a man's part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house."

A Growing Love

When Jesus was asked about the marks of maturity, he summed it up in two comments (Matt. 22:37, 39): "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind," and "Love your neighbor as yourself."

This article is not about good guys and bad guys, us versus them, people who love Jesus and people who don't. Every person whose ideas I've questioned in this article, those I've identified and those I haven't, are people, insofar as I know them, who demonstrate a passion for God and a deep compassion for people. In fact, it's on the basis of those shared commitments that I raise these concerns. I know that, bottom line, we're all seeking to do this with integrity, creativity, and faithfulness. Hopefully, by planting these ideas in the chat rooms and networks of youth ministry culture, we will better understand how we can be faithful to the Faith, true to the Truth, and to "grow up every way into Him who is the Head, into Christ (Eph. 4:15)."

"When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me" (1 Cor. 13:11-12).