Tag: billy-graham, young-people

Young people are experts on leisure, water skiing, dancing, rock music, rapping, TV watching . . . by and large, chores are a thing of the past.

Where students talk about being independent and on their own, you will find them practicing the most rigid conformity in dress, in speech, in moral attitudes, and in thinking. Sometimes they follow fashion at the expense of integrity. They dread to be alone. They do not want to stand out or be different. They want to conform. After they graduate from college, many of these young people want nothing more than a good job with a big firm, and a home somewhere in suburbia. But they don’t find security.

There is a great identity crisis among students today. Who am I? What is the purpose of life? Where did I come from? Where am I going? The Bible has a direct answer to this great big philosophical question and unless God seals the vacuum among youth today, then some other ideology will, because young people must have a faith. They must believe in something to find fulfillment in their lives.

I have found that most young people really want us to spell out a moral code. They may not accept it or believe it, but they want to hear it, clearly and without compromise.

In America we have an idolatry called the “adulation of youth.” Apparently distressed by their inability to communicate with the younger generation, many adults simply imitate it.

If we would take the traits that characterized the Pilgrims and make them our own, we could regain hope. We could recover the spiritual and moral strength that we have lost. We could offer a thrilling challenge to our young people.

Far too many young people coming of age today have no spiritual or emotional roots. They have been deprived of values by an agnostic and contemporary culture.

Our magazine shelves are filled with crime and sex pulp-magazines that are being read and devoured by millions of young people . . .Scores are seeing each week the trash that Hollywood produces. Truly our children are “movie mad.

I don’t believe that young people today can live clean, pure lives without the help of God. The peer pressure is too great and the temptations they see in the movies and on television, and what they hear in their music is too much. Only Christ can give them the power to say no.

Do you know what nearly all the sociologists say today in their study of young people? The greatest problem facing young people today is not sex—it is boredom.

Our youth are desperately searching for purpose and meaning in their lives. They are searching for fulfillment . . . I believe that a return to biblical conversion, faith, and conviction would have a great impact in our day.