“How do young people become adults in a culture that wants to look and act like children?”

After reading Soren Kierkegaard's work, “Purity of Heart: Is to will one thing,” I was impressed with how often he mentioned young people in a work that was written for adults about the practice of confession. What follows are questions a young person might ask alongside quotes from Kierkegaard's work:

Does being an adult mean being busy with lots of stuff?

“For this press of busyness is like a charm. And it is sad to observe how its power swells, how it reaches out seeking always to lay hold of ever-younger victims so that childhood or youth are scarcely allowed the quiet and the retirement in which the Eternal may unfold a divine growth.”

Does being an adult mean accomplishing lots of stuff?

“Let us never deceive youth by foolish talk about the matter of accomplishing. Let us never make them busy in the service of the moment, instead of in patience willing something eternal.”

Does being an adult mean acquiring lots of stuff?

"Let us not make them (youth) quick to judge what they perhaps do not understand, instead of willing something eternal and being content with little for themselves!”

When did you first feel like you had become an adult? Some of the youth in our congregation shared that the only rites of passage our society seems to have are getting your drivers license, consuming alcohol, having sex, or going to college. Each of us can think of people we know in these categories for which the event listed did not equal a transition into adulthood, and maybe that person is us. What event in your own life marked that transition for you? More importantly, have you shared that story of struggle with the young people in our congregation?

Many youth see adulthood as busyness, accomplishing things, and acquiring stuff. We know a different story. One of a father God who whispers to us about that which is eternal, a father who guides us into willing just one thing in the midst of a culture that prides itself on choices. Kierkegaard reminds us that when the disciples began to seem “busy,” Christ set a little child in their midst. God has set a child in our midst.

May the Holy Spirit allow us to grow in Christ as the Christ child grows in us.