Youth and the city

Jose Bernardo

(Reading: 2 minutes)

City life has an intense impact on humanity, their worldview, their expectation, and their behavior. These changes define the postmodern person. In Brazil, urbanization currently concentrates more than 82% of Brazilians in cities (IBGE2010), which is associated to the industrial acceleration of the fifties. At the same time, we’ve had the expansion of the Evangelical Church, which is also an essentially urban and postmodern phenomenon. Within this reality, we perceive the youth and the evangelical youth.

The first trend of urbanization hits faith. People of various styles of learning and depths of knowledge pile up in the compactness of cities. While striving to survive, they compromise tolerance of different beliefs, so that faith ceases to be a significant element of connection and community building. In this crisis of faith, people are thrusted into individualism and relativism; young people are lost in double mindedness, conflicting values, deceptive faith, transient commitment and profane deviations.

The crisis of faith generates a crisis of hope, which in turn, generates a crisis of love. Not knowing what to believe, people do not know what to expect, not knowing what to expect, they will not know what to do. Love becomes a mere feeling; it’s no longer practical, no longer the behavior of kindness. People do not decide what to do; they are dragged by the crowd on a flood of common sense and consumerism.

The evangelistic and evangelical response to this triple crisis of postmodernity is being the Church, being the true Body of Christ. This means that young people have the opportunity to find a spiritual body formed by members solidly united by peace bonds. In this context, they can truly know, wait and act: "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest (longer lasting) of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13:13.

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Jose Bernardo is the OneHope vice-president for lusophone countries. OneHope is a global agency of the Bible that has worked in 145 countries giving the Word of God to every child.