Youth Study

Simon led a great study for the Wellington youth in between worship services. There were quite a number there - 25 or so - and Simon said he thought the responsiveness to the questions was very good.

The study was on body-ness, and how we should treat each other. It wasn't at all clichéd, though, mostly because Simon talked about how his own convictions and actions had been changed by reading the text - 1 Corinthians 12:12-31. He illustrated this by telling a story about a native convert in China, whom Simon had met. This man began leading many to Christ in his home area of China simply by showing acts of love and kindness to those outside his own kinship group. And he expected nothing in return! For his countrymen, this spoke of a very different God at work than the ones they already knew. And, this man's acts of service told them that this God could be their God, too. For, weren't His servants welcoming them into His love, freely?

When this man moved to New Zealand, however, he discovered a country in which none were without shelter, and none hungry. Here, a Christian heritage had been at work for so long that it had fed, clothed, and sheltered everyone. This was a nice problem to have! But how could the rule and blessing of God be extended even further, so that people came to realise and experience the real depths of His love?

Simon began thinking about this in the context of the body-life that Paul instructs the Corinthian church to have. He thought about Paul's instruction to recognise the necessity of the weak members, and to give more honour to those who seemed to lack it - the 'unseemly' members. Who were these, he wondered?

His suggested answers in our New Zealand context were the uncool and the aged. A practice of dishonouring these people is woven deeply into the fabric of our culture.

Being cool is - for Christians - to end up adopting a humour of sarcasm and irony, often at the expense of others - because sexual or toilet humour isn't allowed. It's also about being branded, and living consumption-driven lives. In these lives the proof of one's chic is to be able to refer to the humour in the latest movie, to know the songs of the approved bands, and - of course! to have seen their videos. It is about being good at sport, being able to wisecrack in group situations - to be the clown who makes everything revolve around his personality, but who truly cares for none of it. Outside the church body (if we're lucky) - it's about being as willing as the next guy to dare, to show your disdain for boundaries, to experiment, to show that you know what's cool, too. It's about refusing to be labeled, refusing even to recognise the meaning of authority, and to show oneself completely at ease with personal sexuality choices - often by participating in the choices of others. "Hey, I'm tolerant, I'm easy with it". The details will differ will the age group and the place, but we all know whom we weave out of social interaction because, well dammit, they're dull and an embarrassment - a detriment to our own need of acceptance as, and demonstration of, cool.

This is deeply ungodly. It does not represent the God we say we worship, who chooses to love the weak, whose strength is spent in restoring the unlovely.

And then there's the aged. The vitality, drive, freshness and economic value of youth is exalted and made the measure of all things good. If it is not the pursuit of pleasures that only the young can have, then it is their productive capacity, the young talent, that is pushed and reinforced as the organising principle of the nation's social, education and economic policies. And it is all accompanied, of course, by the overwhelming aesthetic of youth - the glory of young bodies, untouched by age and the accumulated signs of provision and nurture in the service of others. Drooping breasts that have fed a generation of babies? Hips that have birthed life? A stomach with stretch-marks? Grey hair? No. Perversely, it is the symbolism of immaturity, non-responsibility, comfort and sexual arousal (not 'pleasure', because true pleasure is found in a relationship of mutual love and service) that is pushed at us, over and over again. The old are a burden, to be bundled into rest homes, their inconvenience safely shut away from the younger families to whom they gave life and, no doubt, helped to set up. We do not even have a language to speak of respect for the old and what they represent: even the titles that once marked a life's progress, the degrees gained by rites of passage, have virtually disappeared into a familiar, leveling, first-name-only basis.

This too is deeply ungodly. The aged are the teachers, the sustainers, those who in God's covenant faithfulness are sources of wisdom and experience, who are given the task of instruction and example, who pass on the tradition.

Simon was quite open about his own confrontation with the requirements of body-life - especially the way his own interests had been served by maintaining the required-for-coolness distance between himself and the other youth of his church. The great thing about Simon is that he's completely genuine when it comes to being convicted about things. Once at the point of confrontation with the need to change, he does it. And he's not ashamed to show that process to others - which is a fantastic way of disarming the self-protective guards we so often erect around ourselves. Humility and honesty yields its own return in kind. We all, deep down, would rather be loved and accepted for who we are than remain safely unseen behind our masks. Simon at his best gets behind the masks by dropping his, and it's a wonderful gift.

At one point in the study Jasmyn suggested that we each send a piece of paper around the group ("pass to the person on your left") with our names at the top. As we received a page, we had to write the gifts and goodness we saw in its owner. That exercise, combined with the discussion before and afterward, and Simon's able leading, produced an excellent study that had a feeling of genuine learning and growth rather than the more usual 'well, we've gone through all the questions with the required amount of discussion - can we go now?'

Hopefully, then, our youth will begin showing Christ's kingship in Wellington, New Zealand, bringing the redemption of God into their own communities, and then beyond - as 'outsiders' realise that this God is different to the ones they worship, and the works of this God are marvelous to behold.

Well done, Simon.