I found these words of Socrates written in the 5th century BC.
“Youth today love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, no respect for older people and talk nonsense when they should work. Young people do not stand up any longer when adults enter the room. They contradict their parents, talk too much in company, guzzle their food, lay their legs on the table and tyrannise their elders".
I'm sorry, but not all youth can be written off so easily, for I do see hope resting on the shoulders of the youth of today. I see such potential!
I was thinking about the influence that young people have on society and more importantly the role of youth in initiating change in society. While we don’t really see a powerful youth movement in Australia, all around the world young people are leading revolutions and change. This caused me to do a little research on some of the impacts of young people around the world and I came across the following information. I am in no way supportive of these movements, but they serve to illustrate the potential of youth to influence change.
- Youth and students have played a vital role in revolutionary struggles in the past and continue to today. In Latin America, young people are energetic leaders and participants in the social movements, and in Venezuela, view themselves as being the “foot soldiers of revolution”. In France last year, we saw youth, in particular university students, respond to an attack on the rights of young workers and prompt a general strike of workers that mobilised millions in an expression of the popular dissent against neoliberal policies, and the determined leadership of the youth meant the movement was successful. In the past year we’ve also seen the massive student strike in Chile, the Los Angeles school walkouts for immigrants' rights, and the student strike in Auckland for young workers' rights.
- More recently, in Indonesia in 1998, from March to May, student protest played a key role in turning discontent over the economic collapse and lack of democratic rights into a full-scale political crisis. The universities in Indonesia played a vital role as the point where the middle class grew and consolidated as a group, and this consolidation was severely threatened by the economic crisis. A movement for reform had grown in the 1980s and 90s on the campuses, and during that period many students turned away from the traditional elitism of the old student movement, and came to the conclusion that it was necessary to form an alliance with the workers and peasantry and urban poor to transform society, a political strand that was of course influential in 1998.
These examples along with many others around the world go to show that youth and students can have a social significance much greater than their numbers and are often moved to action faster than other sections of society.
This year the theme of the United Pentecostal Church of Australia National Youth Department is “Power to Become”. The year 2008 will be a year of youth realising their potential and becoming what God intended us to become.
I read in my Bible that Jesus said “and greater works than these shall he do” (John 14:12). Furthermore, Jesus said “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you”. (John 15:7)
What is this power that enables us to do these things – it is the power of the Holy Ghost!
My desire as the National Youth President is that the youth of the United Pentecostal Church of Australia would realises that being filled with the Holy Ghost is more than just speaking in tongues and it is more that just getting saved and going into maintenance mode until Jesus returns. But when we are filled with the Holy Ghost we have the power of God inside of us and we can do great things!
John 15:16
[16] Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit (potential), and that your fruit should remain (good potential): that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.
That's my five minutes!
