Irrelevant God?

In October, one national newspaper headline declared: ‘Generation Y has no use for God’. The piece said that religion is irrelevant to most young people. Quoting a study published by the Church of England, it explained that youngsters rely on themselves, their family and friends rather than God to give meaning to their lives.

Presumably the church is meant to be worried, to wring its hands and to question how it can become more relevant to those born after 1982. But if the apostle Paul saw that headline would he react in quite that way? I think not. In fact I can imagine him smiling and asking, ‘So what’s new?’ He not only taught us that the world by its wisdom does not know God, but that to the person without the Spirit the gospel is foolishness.

Christians increasing

Before proceeding it is worth reminding ourselves of God’s work more broadly across the world. It’s a very different picture from that implied by the headline. According to the current issue of Future First, a newssheet majoring on church statistics, in the last 20 years the number of Christians in the developing world increased from 940 million to 1,400 million. This is an increase of 50% or the equivalent of 64,000 extra Christians a day.