Responding to young peoples’ fears with real hope
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Our youth are breathing in new air.
Inhale: Half of my class is not at school. Exhale: Should I be at home too?
Inhale: Learning at home; shutdowns. Exhale: When will I see my friends again?
Information goes in—daily updates of new cases, other countries facing devastation, people dying—fear comes out: Will it be that bad in Australia? What if I get sick? What will happen to me? My friends? My family?
Maybe not straight away, maybe not out loud (they can present in different ways) but fear is a normal response to our present situation.
You are their youth leader. You feel responsible for discipling them through this. But how do you answer the fears of young people you care about without being trite or shallow?
Know that the first task is pastoral, not theological
“I’m seeing so much sickness, suffering and death on the news. How can a good God allow all of this?”
If you’ve ever had questions like this directed to you, often delivered with passion or anger, it can be confronting. You may feel inadequate to answer.
But sometimes these are not questions at all. While there are important conversations to be had on these topics, these questions are often really expressions of fear. A detailed theological account of God’s sovereignty and goodness is not required, rather a listening ear. The task is pastoral.
An appropriate response to the question Why is God allowing this? might be:
“Yeah, I know what you mean. It sounds like you’re pretty worried about the world”.
They might say yes. Or they might say “Not really” but either way, you’re closer to knowing what is really going on for them.
Address the fears by looking back and looking forward
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When it is time to answer their questions with biblical truth, how can we do this? Here’s a simple framework to begin the conversation.
Look back, look forward.
Look back
As young people look around and see all the craziness surrounding them it’s important to help them understand that this isn’t just happening out of the blue. The information they are breathing in comes from somewhere so we can look back to the foundations of humanity and the world—creation and fall—to understand the causes.
If a young person is noticing death seems much more real and present than it used to, we can encourage them to:
Look back to creation and understand that people are made in God’s image (Genesis 1:27) and are precious and valuable. So, sickness and death hurt. It is confronting. There is something wrong with it.
Look back to the fall (Genesis 3) and see that death is real. It’s a very present and inevitable part of fallen humanity, no matter how hidden it has been over the last 50 years.
What we see now in the global pandemic is shocking to us but not surprising if we are thinking theologically.
There is deep comfort in the explanatory power of the biblical story. It can handle all that we see as we enter times of crisis.
Look forward
But looking back and understanding the cause is not enough. Our fears are future-focused—What will happen to me? What will happen to my family?—so we need to look forward to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. It brings a future where our fears are completely resolved.
Looking back to creation and fall means we can understand our times but the gospel—the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ, the church, the Holy Spirit and the new creation—mean we can have hope in our times.
So if a young person has observed that, “Death seems more real than it used to” and asks in fear, “Will I get sick?” or “Will someone I love die?”, we can show them how Christ trusted his father in the face of death. We can show them that the resurrection of Christ means we have hope that we will see those who die in Christ again, we can show them that the new creation means the Christian future is one without death or sickness.
The gospel of Jesus brings the promise of a new creation where all our fears are resolved. But as you walk the road with young people, with their own specific fears in the face of a global pandemic, offer a pastoral ear and help them look back to understand our times and look forward to find hope.
Inhale: Presence with Jesus. Exhale: Fears resolved, hope fulfilled.
