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Godless girls’ god

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Punk

A USA nationwide survey reveals that over the past six years, girls’ obsession with being thin has become worse.

The fundamental reason for this, according to author Courtney Martin, is that many girls ‘were raised entirely without organised religion … without a fundamental sense of divinity.’1

‘Overlay our dearth of spiritual exploration with our excess of training in ambition and you have a generation of godless girls.’

The result, says Martin, is that girls are filling their spiritual void with an obsessive faith in the power and purity of thinness (‘body beautiful’ according to the fashion industry).

‘In essence, they are crying out to our godless culture, showing us just how damaged a child can be who is thrown to the wolves of advertising and amoral media without the protection of any spiritual armour.’

Spiritual armour? Of course the Bible gives invaluable guidance on how to equip oneself in that regard (Ephesians 6:10–18). But why should a girl take seriously that part of the Bible, if all her life she’s been taught she can’t take seriously the first part of the Bible?

Emphasising that point, one Christian youth leader wrote to us detailing exactly what is happening:

‘A girl in my church who has just started the evolution module in grade 10 at school said that in the first lesson the teacher asked for the Christians in the class to stand up. (Presumably so he would know where his opposition was going to come from?!) Three stood up. In the weeks that followed one of the Christians was having a real struggle with what she was learning …
Photo Zdenka Micka <crestock.com> Girl
‘As the Youth Minister I used to beat my head against a wall wondering why we lost all our young people at about age 15–16. In the last few years I’ve realized that this is when they teach evolution in depth in science. Chatting with some of the students I have also discovered that some of the teachers actually identify the Christian students and make a special point of explaining the differences and difficulties in reconciling Genesis and the “facts” of evolution. It’s no wonder we lost them. I come near tears just thinking about it.’

If only all church leaders were similarly grieved, as Grant Zippel recently lamented in his excellent article Was my salvation unimportant to you?, what a huge difference it would make. Arming our young people with the knowledge of the true Creator will not only equip them to recognize and resist the falsity of evolutionary teaching, but also the godlessness that Courtney Martin so rightly bewails. That’s because, as the Bible says, it’s the knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness (Titus 1:1).

Published: 23 October 2007

Reference

  1. Martin, Courtney E., Spiritual crisis, The Courier Mail (Brisbane, Aust.), 26 April 2007, p. 39. Return to text.