The signs are everywhere. America's youth are in trouble. According to social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, Americans who were born after 1995 "have extraordinarily higher rates of anxiety, depression, self-harm, suicide and fragility." By 2020, more than 25% of teenage girls had a major problem with depression. Haidt points to social media and a victimhood culture as the culprits.
They obviously play a major role in our youth crisis. Our children are also suffering from a breakdown of the family. Forty percent of U.S. children are born out of wedlock. They come to age in a culture that itself has gone off the rails. They are educated in public schools that are officially hostile to faith, and taught that they live in a country that is systematically racist and evil. They are also taught they exist because of mindless biological processes that somehow transformed primal slime into sentient human beings. The miracle is that depression levels among America's youth isn't 100%!
Many of these problems will take years, if ever, to solve. While we are waiting for American renewal, there is something important we can do right now: take our children to church! That is the theme of an essay in the Federalist by Mary Rose Kulczak.
The author cites a study done in 2018 at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health that concluded children and teens who regularly attend church are more likely to be happier and satisfied with their lives and less likely to use drugs and engage in other socially destructive behavior.
But we don't need a Harvard study to convince us that a child who knows and accepts Jesus, and who comes to understand that he or she was created and "knitted" in the womb by a loving God, is a child more likely to thrive in this life and be saved for eternal life with Him.
Here's a great 2023 resolution. Take your children and grandchildren to church. Ask your child to bring a friend along. Volunteer in children's ministries. Save America's children in this life and for life eternal, and by doing so, save America, too.
They obviously play a major role in our youth crisis. Our children are also suffering from a breakdown of the family. Forty percent of U.S. children are born out of wedlock. They come to age in a culture that itself has gone off the rails. They are educated in public schools that are officially hostile to faith, and taught that they live in a country that is systematically racist and evil. They are also taught they exist because of mindless biological processes that somehow transformed primal slime into sentient human beings. The miracle is that depression levels among America's youth isn't 100%!
Many of these problems will take years, if ever, to solve. While we are waiting for American renewal, there is something important we can do right now: take our children to church! That is the theme of an essay in the Federalist by Mary Rose Kulczak.
The author cites a study done in 2018 at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health that concluded children and teens who regularly attend church are more likely to be happier and satisfied with their lives and less likely to use drugs and engage in other socially destructive behavior.
But we don't need a Harvard study to convince us that a child who knows and accepts Jesus, and who comes to understand that he or she was created and "knitted" in the womb by a loving God, is a child more likely to thrive in this life and be saved for eternal life with Him.
Here's a great 2023 resolution. Take your children and grandchildren to church. Ask your child to bring a friend along. Volunteer in children's ministries. Save America's children in this life and for life eternal, and by doing so, save America, too.
