By Kiefer Dooley
In the book of Exodus, just before he became one of God’s greatest leaders, Moses had an identity crisis. Meeting face to face with the Spirit of God at the burning bush, Moses threw a pity party . . . questioning who he was and who God is. Now, roughly 3,400 years later, we continue to struggle with the same central questions.
We are unsure of our identity both collectively and as individuals. Divisive issues seem to plague our church from the local level to the global organization. The separation is draining our church of energy, motivation, and mission. At some point, we need to face our own fiery shrub. We have a burden to move beyond division in order to further the work of God.
Let me be clear—this is a burden that falls on all of God’s children, regardless of age. This is our church, it is our community, and it is our obligation and duty to see the Good News of the message of God spread throughout our communities. Too often we pass the responsibility from one generation to the other. In the past, I’ve written articles that delineate the young people from the older generation while trying to maintain that my points are applicable to the church as a whole. This article is for everyone, young, old, and in-between.
We should not be surprised at our struggle to unite under a common cause. Jesus knew that we would struggle to maintain unity and pled God on our behalf, saying, “[I ask] that they may all be one . . . so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me” (Jn. 17:21-23).
Jesus’ prayer seems to be increasingly relevant as social and political troubles tear at the fabric of our country and our church. In 2018, it seems as difficult as ever to maintain unity as our world walks in darkness. Young people shoot down their peers in the hallways of high schools across the country. Eighteen percent of the U.S. population aged 18 and older suffers from depression or a related mental illness.1 So it rightly follows that suicide continues to fall between the eighth and tenth leading cause of death, having maintained that status since 2010.2 Furthermore, despite average growth in the economy, more than 2 million people in the U.S. live on $2.00 or less per day, which amounts to less than $1,000 per year.3 And hitting close to home for those of us in the Rocky Mountain Conference, the under- ground sex trade in Denver, Colorado, is estimated to be generating an annual economy of $39.9 million dollars. This market contributes heavily to the over 4,000 cases of sex trafficking that are reported in the U.S. every year with estimates of total trafficking in the U.S. putting the annual number in the hundreds of thousands.
It’s evident that people are divided, hurting and in desperate need.
In the meantime, we often concern ourselves with struggling, fighting, bickering, and having our feelings hurt over generational preferences, selfish desires, and a fair share of trivial matters. I could spend time producing a list of divisive issues that are holding us back instead of propelling us forward, but I’m sure that several issues, whether close to home or far away, will spring to mind for the reader with this simple prompting. As it relates to youth specifically, we tend to do a great deal of talking and listening but can never seem to come around to taking any action. We may pat ourselves on the back for “hearing the youth” or “listening to the church of now,” but it seems that all that ever happens is that we set up another session of talking about change while we wonder, “Is this thing on?”
This year, the Youth Department is choosing to focus on identity. It is our belief that if we could become secure in who we are as children of the living God, the generational differences would melt away and the bickering over politics, doctrine, and equality would cease. Again, this call is to the young and to the old as well as to the progressive or conservative—sacrifice self in exchange for the identity God has for each of us. If we would only be able to make the challenging leap to give up pride and self in order to live by God’s view of our identity, then truth, standards, ideals, love, and unity will follow.
Here are the simple facts of the Gospel regarding our identity:
We are God’s children and our identity is established by His love.
We are valuable because God says so.
Jesus became sin and died on the cross to cut lose Satan’s hold on our world.
We are free from the power of sin.
We are called, above all other things, to love one another.
As a faith community, our purpose is to embrace our identity, and live by connecting people with Jesus, the world’s One true source of light. It is to inspire our communities to recognize the reality of the lives of darkness that people are living and respond with empathy, understanding, love, and guidance. Our purpose is to make it easy for people to know God. To make sure that they have the opportunity to surrender their broken “I am” for Jesus’s perfect “I am.” And to get about the work of loving our hurting and suffering world.
Our calling is to be a community of God, continually dying to self and filled with love. Our world says: “I am hungry.” Jesus says: “I am the bread of life” (Jn. 6:35). The people cry out from the darkness and Jesus says, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life” (Jn. 8:12).
So let’s not wait for another church or another person to make a difference. Let’s not talk about our issues and fail to follow through with action. Instead, let us follow the call of Col. 3:10, setting our minds on heavenly things while throwing off the old self in proclamation that we are new men and new women in Christ. With confidence, we can claim our identity, internalize our value, sacrifice our selfish desires and live for the betterment of others. We may have all of the truth in the world, but it will be for nothing without love. This truly is the central force of our calling, that we love the Lord God with all of our hearts, souls, and minds and that we love our neighbors as ourselves (Matt. 22:37 and 38).
–Kiefer Dooley is assistant youth director and Glacier View Ranch summer camp director. Email him at: [email protected].