CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
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I Don't Want My Teenager to Join a Church Youth Group

Saturday, April 11, 2009

this entry brought to you by radiohead, "paperbag writer"


I realized the other day that when my six year old daughter, Celest, becomes a teenager, there might come a time when she makes friends with someone who is very religious, and is asked if she'd like to go to her church's youth group. And if this ever happens, I won't want her going. It seems strange to admit it, because most parents, even atheist ones, wouldn't mind their teenager going to a church youth group. I think they would figure, even if they didn't particularly believe in religion, that going to a wholesome place with wholesome teenagers would be a lot better than their teenager going to parties and doing drugs. And hey, maybe the church youth group volunteers do charitable work, and there's nothing more positive than that.

But it's something I am not sure I would be comfortable with.

When I was a teenager, I had a friend named Tammy, who was the daughter of a preacher. She invited my friend Sean and I to go to a church lock-in with her. We were initially rather hesitant, but Tammy said that she didn't really get along with everyone else there, wanted someone to hang out with, to keep her company. Sean and I figured it would be an amusing experience, and finally decided to go. And, upon getting there, we were promptly forgotten by Tammy, and were forced to sit there and try and put up with being outsiders amongst a group of people who did not share our world views. But that part is actually not the point.

I'd eventually gotten into a conversation with Tammy's older sister, who was much more active in church goings-on than Tammy was, and we were talking about secular music. Tammy's sister didn't understand how I could believe in God-- at the time I wasn't an atheist, felt there was probably a God, but felt religion had nothing to do with him-- and how I could listen to secular music. She felt like secular music was a gateway drug to satanism.

"But if I'm comfortable with my relationship with Jesus," I said, more for the sake of argument than anything, because even at the time I didn't necessarily believe Jesus was the Messiah but wanted to keep the argument on her terms, "and I know Jesus loves me and will save my soul, then why should I be afraid of Satan?"

"But why tempt yourself?" she said.

"How do you know something is evil if you don't even expose yourself to it? How can you just live inside a world where you never expose yourself to anything you just assume might somehow lead you to Satan, even though you believe Jesus is your protector?"

"I'd just rather not expose myself to something ugly," she said. "If there are beautiful things in the world, then why would I ever look at something ugly?"

"How do you know it's ugly, though? How do you know it's not beautiful if you never look at it?"

"Because it's not Christian," she said.

Now, here's the thing. I thought Tammy's sister was sweet, and while I didn't exactly spend hours and hours with her, from the time I did spend with her, I would definitely say that were we to have a work relationship with one another, if we worked in the same department together at a retail store, I could see us getting along fine. I'm not trying to imply that she was argumentative or trying to tell me I was going to hell. But I didn't just resent being told that my music was a gateway drug to Satanism. It wasn't just judgmental, it was utterly silly. It is completely unreasonable to think that a person who is of sound body and mind has so little self control that he would turn to Satan just by listening to music. It was an idiotic argument.

Later in the night we were all gathered around a Youth Minister, who I would suspect was probably about 24 years old, and we were supposed to be discussing God and the Bible. Sean and I weren't taking part, obviously, trying to keep ourselves distanced from all of it, and Tammy, for once in the night, was next to us, having realized she'd spent basically the whole night ignoring us.

A boy a little younger than us asked a question. He said he had a friend that was gay, and he wanted to know how come the person was going to go to hell. He said he'd started off thinking that his lifestyle was wrong, but as time went by, he just couldn't get over how nice this guy was, and couldn't wrap his head around why this guy was going to go to hell.

Sean, Tammy, and I all exchanged glances, as if saying to one another, if this gets out of hand, we're going to have to jump in.

The Youth Minister started by saying that God loved everybody, yadda yadda, and said that it wasn't him that God was angry with, it was the sin, and that a gay person could be gay and not go to hell, it was the act that would make him go to hell.

The boy didn't seem satisfied with that answer, and said, but didn't God create us all in his image?

I can't remember the exact line of questions, only that the teen seemed more and more dissatisfied with the answers he was getting, and more and more confused with the issue, and Tammy, Sean, and I kept exchanging glances as if saying we were getting closer and closer to our breaking point. Eventually the youth minister, understanding that his line of thinking wasn't really getting him anywhere, answered, "Well yes. Your friend is going to hell."

And I immediately interrupted, speaking up for essentially the first time the whole evening. "Mmmyeah," I said, "I think you're wrong." And I started countering his points, with Tammy and Sean joining in as much as they could.

Eventually the youth minister conceded that I might be right, that he needed to research more-- basically saying "Okay, shut up, let's move on." And from that moment on in the night, there were murmurs and giggles amongst the youth group, teases I could hear under people's breath. Basically, because Sean and I had defended this guy's gay friend, we were now gay. And you could hear derision in their voice when they talked to us.

Alright then. Yes, we are outsiders, but you guys are supposed to be Christians, open armed and loving and accepting to all newcomers, and here we were being mocked because we were gay. Which we weren't. So we were gay because we defended a gay person. Fantastic.

So here is my point to mentioning all this. I know that it might seem weird to not want my daughter to go to a Christian Youth Group if she wants to go to one when she gets old enough. But I don't need my daughter being told that she shouldn't listen to rock music. I don't need my daughter to be told that her daddy's going to go to hell because he's an atheist. I don't need them praying for me, or guilting her into trying to get me to come to church. I don't need my daughter to be taught that any gay friends she might have are going to go to hell. I don't need my daughter to feel that her mother and father support abortionists, and that we're going to go to hell. I don't need Christians trying to mold my daughter into their own image: hypocritical and self righteous.

And any Christian reading this is probably saying to themselves, "It's not like that at my church." You're wrong. It might not be like that amongst the leaders of your church. Maybe your pastor/priest/minister/whatever preaches tolerance, love, and compassion. But there are people in your church who do not. And all it takes is for them to start whispering in my daughter's ear to confuse her teenaged, easily influenced mind. No thank you.
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with love from CRS @ 8:54 AM 

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