Theologically, this just won’t do. In theological terms, maturity is somewhat illusory anyway—since life at any stage will end in death—and its desirability is no forgone conclusion. Jesus himself implied that spiritual “maturity” may look more like childhood than adulthood. He said, “…unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3, NIV). Christian Noval, a Danish catholic priest and practical theologian in Germany, has argued that “…children and youth are complete human beings in their actuality and their value can’t just be seen in their potentiality.”* In other words, we don’t just have to look at what young people are becoming to find their humanity. We are free to look to their actual, concrete and lived experience just as they are. As the theologian Jürgen Moltmann has written, “…fulfilled life is not measured by the number of years that have been lived through, or spent in one way or another. It is measured according to the depth of lived experience.”
It is in the “depth of lived experience” that Christ encounters us and ministers to us. If ministry is, fundamentally, discovering God’s activity and participating in it, then the importance of seeing young people not only as potential persons on their way to maturity, but as full persons in their own right cannot be exaggerated. We have to answer—with an emphatic “yes!”—the question, are teenagers human?
* Christian Noval, “Youth and Creation: A Biblical Theology of Growth & Development” in The Journal of Youth & Theology, Vol. 12, No. 1 (2013), 44.
* Christian Noval, “Youth and Creation: A Biblical Theology of Growth & Development” in The Journal of Youth & Theology, Vol. 12, No. 1 (2013), 44.
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