I'd Rather be an Adult
I’ve been asked what’s wrong with youth culture. I don’t like to complain, and in the spirit of constructive criticism of well-meaning youth-oriented offerings, answer with a comparison. I don’t need to justify my preference for the qualities I feel distinguish the ‘adult’ from the ‘youth’ model, and only present them to start interesting conversations.
The Youth Model aims to entertain me, perhaps to lift me higher in the company of my peers. The Adult Model attracts me by the power of my interests toward those quite different from myself.
The YM strokes me and embraces me in mother-like goodwill. The AM challenges and critiques me, embodying a more father-like and bracing call.
The YM may be a help in preparation toward personal freedom, but the AM is an actual experience – maybe even an experiment! – in freedom.
The YM is safe, the AM risky.
The YM offers activities we can do together. The AM offers work.
In the YM, self-development may be the goal. In the AM it is the means. In the one, we seem to be trying to attract people to take up the task of cooperation in their own becoming. In the other, we take people who are engaged in the work of becoming, and link their self-work into community-work.
A Youth Model seems to need a leader – someone who represents God, organizes the activities, understands the goals (and praise God for the people who do this work!). An Adult Model should expect that we can come together as free agents and generate something by the power of our own interests, desires, passions, actions, agency.
I honestly don’t know which comes first: the dearth of adults, or the dearth of Adult Models. I’m always saying we will all be children, youth, and adults at once, as we grow up. I have nothing against Youth, but just a longing for opportunities to grow further into adulthood with others attracted to that stage. I think many Youth might actually be more attracted to adulthood than they are to what is offered up in the Youth Model.
I wish we were not all so age-segregated, and that more young people could participate in some meaty, adult conversations and work. I am told they would feel judged and inadequate, compared and found wanting. Amen! How else do any of us grow except by finding giants who show us our smallness? I’m also not above being instructed by young people.
Anyway, this is my response to the charge that I am snobbish in my preference for the Adult Model of things. I hope I am not, and that the more I grow into an adult, the more I’ll be able to attract and welcome people to that possibility.
By the way, the Youth Model should not be confused with the Child Model, which is delightful and which every true adult should be capable of enjoying thoroughly.