October 14, 2009 + From: Educating Our Youth – Why Bother?

By Claire Ameer

The Word Magazine, October 1986

It is apparent that our North American society . . . is immersed in secular values. We and our children are bombarded with the selfish, subliminal message, “love things and use people,” instead of Jesus’ teaching that the greatest commandments are to love God and our neighbors. I firmly believe that young people need strong, clear, consistent, accurate, and thorough information about their religious faith and need to view exemplary lives in order to counteract some of the potentially lethal messages which the world often sends them. I see the Orthodox Church as offering that positive viewpoint to our youth who participate regularly and fully in the liturgical life of the church and our religious education classes.

As for positive, Christian role models, parents are the best place to start. For their children, parents mediate and incarnate God’s love and his words in an incredibly powerful way. When a child sees his extended family worshipping God weekly in church and reinforcing their faith and the Church’s teachings at home, the child knows on many levels that God should be placed in the center of our lives. We adults do a great disservice to children if we take a lighthearted approach to their religious education; or if, through example, we lead them to believe that just occasional participation in the Divine Liturgy and in the Sacraments of Confession and Communion is sufficient. We are perhaps allowing them to deduce that secular activities, whether they are jobs, sports, dinner parties, school work, or additional sleep, should be of foremost importance, while worshipping God can wait until later, if it occurs at all. Although most Christian parents would probably not openly espouse such an indifferent viewpoint, teenagers, in particular, are readily able to sense any inauthenticity and lack of conviction on the part of the significant adults in their lives.

If our youth only acquire a weak or minimal religious background, in the future will these people subsequently conduct their lives with God as their anchor and guide, or will He just be of peripheral interest to be saved for crises, holy days, and religious rituals? As we know, at no other period of life does a person make so many crucial decisions that direct his course as one makes in his youth. These decisions which a teenager reaches depend greatly upon his value system and his goals. As Viennese psychiatrist Dr. Victor Frankl learned while in the Nazi concentration camps, the people who survived best the emotional tortures there had clear life goals and their highest goal was their love of God and mankind. Likewise, if we and our families keep our eyes on Christ, His light will shine through the turmoil and confusion of life.

Being a high school teacher, I have unfortunately witnessed many times the corruption of misguided youth. I have seen far too many fourteen and fifteen year old children change in just a few months from basically good, decent students to people whose lives now center around such destructive activities as drug abuse, theft, vandalism, assault, and the list can go on. What happened? As in the Parable of the Sower and the Seed, the word and pressure from their so-called friends became more powerful in their lives than did the word of God, and they lost a sense of perspective about the real meaning and purpose of life. It was apparent that some of these teenagers received minimal guidance at home and the practice of any religious faith was fainthearted at best. A very sad footnote is that in many cases these troubled teenagers did not see anything wrong with their behavior; therefore, they had no desire to change. Apparently, their operative value system nowhere reflected Jesus’ teachings, especially the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

In conclusion, considering our society’s current lifestyles, Sunday School is an invaluable part of our children’s overall education. Consequently, with a renewed sense of purpose during this school year, let us continue to support our clergy and Church school teachers, giving them the opportunity to use their talents to spread the word of God onto the good soil of youth. In that way, His word may take permanent root and multiply a hundredfold. Only then will our children be receiving the greatest of gifts: the opportunity to know God, to learn His teachings, to accept His will, and to practice Orthodox Christianity with knowledge and faith and love in their hearts.

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Holy Apostle and Evangelist Luke - October 18

Troparion of St Luke, Tone 3

Holy Apostle and Evangelist Luke, intercede with our merciful God, that He may grant to our souls the forgiveness of our sins

Kontakion of St Luke, Tone 2

Let us praise holy Luke, the star of the Church, herald of piety and proclaimer of mysteries; for the Word Who alone knows the secrets of hearts has chosen him with Paul as a teacher of the nations.