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A friend and I were talking the other day about how our generation seems to be a different kind of Christian. We read our Bibles and we discern the meaning for ourselves; we don't just take what we're told at face value. And because of those responses we see things differently and want them to change. I find it intriguing that it seems to be a movement. You can say what you want about me and about what I say -- but I'm not the only one and that should move you a little bit.

In a sermon about a month ago (that I didn't take notes on and don't actually remember) something was said that made me think of all of the times growing up my mom would say "well, we don't believe in [x]." or "we believe [y]."

Proverbs 22:6

Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.

Aaron and I joke that we're amazing parents right now in our lives. If you need parenting advice, we're your best source. Of course, once we have kids, that brilliance will all go out the window. My parents didn't have all the answers, but I'll say again, I think I turned out okay.

On his Facebook not too long ago, my father-in-law asked his friends why they thought college aged kids would often leave church and never come back. A lot of the answers had to do with the Proverb above -- that parents must have not done it properly or their children never would have left the church.

The thing about this verse though is that it is true in every culture outside of our own too.

I remember I had a Jewish friend in first grade and when I asked my mom about it her reply was something like: "Jews are people who don't believe Jesus is the Messiah."

I can just imagine Sarah going home and asking her mom about me, her mom would have said something like: "Christians are people who believe that the Messiah has already come."

Both would have ended something like this: "but we don't believe that because we believe..."

Working at Sonlight I have learned a lot about the value of the parent as the teacher. In families, like mine, where the parent chose to send their child to school, they were still the first teacher. They have every right in the world to raise their children in up in a faith that they believe without a shadow of a doubt is the right way. But the thing about the Proverb to me is this, you can do everything exactly right in raising your child and they might grow up to denounce everything about it, 100%.

When I was a freshman in college, I had the most amazing Old Testament professor. He knew that, as a pre-req for most everything else at a Christian University, the majority of his classes would be filled with freshman and sophomore students. These kids were fresh out of their parents homes, out of the churches they'd gone too for years -- and he used that to his advantage. See, the purpose of his teaching was that by the end of the semester, your faith would stand on its own two feet by its own influence and not by what Mommy and Daddy had always taught you.

People left these classes in tears, they felt like their entire world and everything about the way they had been brought up had been rocked and they didn't know how to handle it. Suddenly "the way they should go" didn't seem so clear. And from that point forward it was either sink or swim. You either knew without a shadow of a doubt that this was the faith you knew to be true -- or you believed that your parents were mislead liars who simply didn't know any better.

Of course, college students world wide didn't all have the identical experience that I had -- but I think my experience makes a valid point.

It's interesting, then, to think back to that conversation I had with my friend the other day. Why does our generation see things differently? Why do we want to know the truth for ourselves?