Even learned crypto from the likes of these!
TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, texting, and even Facebook are all things I’ve learned from young people. Snapchat was a hard pass. And as I meet new groups of students each year, I never cease to be amazed by how their lingering childhood informs our adulthood. As ancient as I sometimes feel, I embrace the masses of youth because I know a whole bunch of new amazing life stories are coming my way! There are so many significant questions to work through with them, both for their benefit and mine. There are many truths we can forget as we age that these excited, apprehensive, and gifted fledgling adults live out every day. Good experience can be a great teacher, but so can the lack of bad experience (Click to tweet)! Here’s how…
1. Passion is perishable
It’s so awesome to watch a young person dive totally head-first into a charity drive or humanitarian event. Not only can they surprise you with their logistical talent, they make the pursuit of global justice fun and exciting. Granted, some of this is because they don’t yet understand the chronicity and complexities of the problems our world faces. But they also don’t respond to what they do know with hopelessness and inactivity…unlike so many of us who are older and ineffectively “wiser”. I have been challenged by these students to keep rekindling action on behalf of those in need, and I’ve seen how much fruit that can bear in the most “impossible” situations. Just last week, a few of them raised over $10,000 for one of the most cost-effective healthcare orgs in the world! May their passion awaken many others as well!
2. Teaching brings training
What might sound good as a quick summary in your head is often much harder to convincingly get out of your mouth. There is no better cure for ignorance or half-baked beliefs than having to propose and defend them in front of a bunch of inquiring young adults. They ask tough questions, and they want plausible answers. Often I can provide those, and they thank me for stretching and solidifying their worldview. But I could only give those answers because of students who made me reevaluate and revise my own beliefs to get me to a more secure place. I once led a discussion on a topic I felt very well-informed in, until two students kept inquiring further until I had to admit I needed a better answer on a particular issue. That led to hours of self-training that revealed better answers I could in turn offer them. The older have much to teach the younger, but the younger need to keep reminding the older that we still need to be taught too.
3. Frankness offers freedom
I’ve been around students so long that I sometimes assume everyone is as transparent as they are. But the older we get, the less we’re often required to truly open the depths of our hearts and lives to others, even to spouses or best friends. It’s truly shocking how much young people have been willing to reveal to me about what they think and do, and I honor that trust very seriously. But I believe they’re so open because they know how relieving it is to share all aspects of who they are – not just the (often faked) happy parts. It’s freeing to discover that many others deal with the same issues you do…and to start addressing them! Being frank about your personal successes and failures to at least a few offers you fantastic freedom from pretense and toward restoration (Click to tweet). Those of us who think faking is better than freedom would do well to “get real” like younger folks do.
Just got to know one of these amazing stories better last weekend!
4. The point is a person
When I started working with college students, I had to learn a big lesson the hard way: People are more important than programs. More practically stated, a well-intended coffee meeting is so much more productive than a well-planned event. I forgot these youth were more concerned with figuring out why they’re here and what to do about it than entertaining events. And whether you think about it or not, so are you. They taught me to explore with them every part of who they were created to be and how those parts can all be maximized in everyday, adult life. We remind ourselves together that the point is not a GPA, major, relationship status, or career choice. You can fail a test, receive a rejection notice, get dumped, or have to shift career goals and still very easily be all of you – a realization that’s probably more applicable after schooling than during. The point is who God made you and how that will bear the most fruit and fulfillment in our world. Of course, that also reminds us that part of that point is another Person as well…
5. The goal is God
An interesting but unfortunate phenomenon commonly occurs in school. A youth’s black-and-white worldview collides with the complexities of many very gray university perspectives, and many times the very worst of both emerge in that person. In other words, important beliefs that define a student’s faith get importantly challenged, and both “importants” are good. But instead of that challenge helping the student better understand the Source behind those morals, the faith can get tossed with the morals. Altering our morals/beliefs are often prioritized above exalting their Source. Do we really want God or are we more concerned with what we, loved ones, or society consider to be right or wrong? If God is truly our goal, we will accept him as God and seek to discover why his morals are there. We won’t seek something else as our god…only agreeing with God when he agrees with us. The biblical heaven won’t be full of either people who have perfect morals or people who’s morals waver under the latest god to come along. Heaven will be full of those who want God and his perfection so much that his rights and wrongs are the result of, not the reason for, their belief in him (Click to tweet). The primary purpose of this life is essentially to date God, proving to ourselves and to him whether or not we want to allow Jesus to make us part of his Church/Bride at his own heavenly wedding banquet (John 17:3, Rev. 19:6-9, 21:2-4). Reminding students that God is the goal – not the endless distractions of physical life – reminds me too. And I need that.
For greater exploration of these themes and God’s great purpose for you, my Healing Hereafter e-book series is free and instantly available here!
