For all that, we need our Maker. Again, in the words of Lewis, “If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into the thing that has them.” Jesus said that He came that we might have abundant life (John 10:10). Lewis says rather than looking for yourself, “look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”
Moms and dads, like the high schooler above begs us, we must change our culture. We’ve got to quit pointing our children to themselves and we must start pointing them to Him who made them. They are being crushed by the weight of our culture’s requirement that they be the source of their own purpose, meaning, and power.
These suicides are a cry for us to bring Jesus Christ, our Creator, Sustainer, and Savior, from the periphery of life to the center of it. Rather than paying Him homage on Sunday mornings (when we don’t have soccer games) we must bring him into the center of all that we say and do as a family. If we want them to thrive, we must tether our children’s identities, purposes, and futures to the One who made them. All that you and I and our children see and all that we are, “were created through him and for him” (Colossians 1:16).
This means teaching them from the very beginning that God made them. They are an intended “workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand” (Ephesians 2:10). It means when life is hard for our children we call on Him with them—we look to Him for strength for the day at kindergarten and comfort when friends are mean. God is our refuge and strength, not ourselves.
Last year 68 kids killed themselves in Colorado alone. We have no choice but to drastically change our culture. May we parents and teachers and community leaders humble ourselves and begin the revolutionary work of re-centering our lives and our families and our classrooms back to what is true: God created us, He sustains us, Jesus came that we may have life to the full. Until we each embrace and proclaim these ancient and eternal truths, our children will remain untethered, without hope, and in grave danger.
This article originally appeared at jenoshman.com.
