I was initially encouraged when I read the first few paragraphs of this article in last week’s Time: When God Is Cool: Children, especially teenagers, are hungry for faith. And they’re finding it in very new places. This quote in particular intrigued me: “Kids are very savvy very young,” says Kim Kirberger, author of the 13 million-selling Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul books, a spin-off of the original Chicken Soup series. “We have a very empty culture, and kids are realizing that money, possessions and success don’t necessarily make for happiness. There has been an upsurge in teens looking for answers about life.”
After reading the article, I think the jury is still out on whether kids are very savvy about religion and spirituality, and whether they are, in any great numbers, “… realizing that money, possessions and success don’t necessarily make for happiness.” What seems to be happening is that instead of boring church services and studying/reading the bible, a number of organizations have discovered “edutainment” — the power of radio, TV, videos, the Net, and rock concerts to attract kids. “Religious and spiritual media have, in many ways, become the new missionaries. And they are traveling to wherever their prospective converts live. That means old media are not enough.” But the success of these venues doesn’t automatically mean that there’s “an upsurge in teens looking for answers about life.” It just that those kids who aren’t into more extreme parental rebellion can do God in MTV-like ways — having fun and finding a way to belong. Time mag was duped on this one.
Part of my inspiration for Real Joe was my growing uneasiness with the fact that we didn’t raise our kids in any religion, or expose them to any set of religious beliefs. We were adrift ourselves and could only see hypocrisy if we forced them to attend a church, Sunday school, and the whole bit. I’m not sure we’d do it the same if we had a chance to do it all over again. But it’s water over the dam now, so all I can do now is try to make my own spiritual struggle and search a bit more transparent through Real Joe and talk to them about it when the opportunity arises.