You may have seen the video posted above or read the transcript from David McCullough Jr.'s graduation speech from Wellesely High School this May titled "You Are Not Special." In it, McCullough speaks against a culture that has coddled children, handed out trophies for participation, taught children to seek accolades over genuinely pursuing their interests.
He challenges the graduates to develop a moral sensibility, to seek the larger goals of life, for in the pursuit of those larger goals one discovers a fulfilled life. He speaks against serving others or travelling abroad to boost a resume but to do those things out of curiosity to experience something new. And he challenges the graduates to seek to serve others instead of pursuing their own self-interests.
The speech has received much praise from the broader public, for there is a pervading notion in much of our culture that "young people today" are too entitled, work too little, expect too much respect, believe that each of them is God's gift to the world. McCullough challenges that notion by placing each person within the larger context of high school graduations around the country, our individual place in a world inhabited by 6.8 billion people, and the fact that our galaxy is merely a part of an ever-expanding universe with no real center.
Yesterday, I was pointed to a response by a young woman named Sierra, a member of the Millenial generation that McCullough is calling to account. It is certainly a heated response, but in it she outlines some legitimate complaints about Mr. McCullough's argument.
In it, she argues that Millenial young adults recognize that they are not special because they were raised in a hyper-competitive culture where they learned that sometimes hard work is not enough, that jobs do not exist at the end of college, that A's do not necessarily come from a job well-done but from teachers who fear the wrath of parents who will not tolerate their children being referred to as anything but exceptional.
In many ways, Sierra describes an entitled generation that was raised to be such by their parents, were taught that they were individually special. This was not some conclusion 18 to 25 year-old adults made up for themselves but were told over and over again throughout their childhood and adolescence (with an implication that love depended on their stellar performance).
In the hyper-competitive culture in which they were raised, these young adults needed resume padding in order to get into the best college. They were taught that sports was more than having fun but was a specialized field wherein they had to excel above the rest.
In a particularly poignant paragraph Sierra writes (addressing the generation of her parents),
"When you told us that you loved us and that we were smart, beautiful, creative, independent, and destined for greatness, what you implied was that we must be all of those things or that you would cease to love us. That our lives would cease to be worth anything. That we might as well die if we’re not the best.
We are drowsy with medications that we take to calm the fear that if we are anything less than the best, we will fall through the cracks. We spend our days fighting each other, always fearing our invisible duplicate who has everything we have on her resume, plus one. We don’t even know what’s down there in the zone of failure – we just know that our failure scares you so much, we’d better never dare to fall. So we work twice as many hours as you did for half the pay and come home to your taunts about how we’re twenty-six and still can’t afford an apartment.
I believe there is a wisdom in Mr. McCullough's critique of young adults in our culture, and I think Sierra posits an appropriate criticism, that the culture of young adults was not entirely created by them.
But what does this have to do with faith?
What we know is that young adults (think 18 to 35 years old) have been raised in a performance-driven culture. You are what you achieve, and so if you cannot achieve then you are of little value. You must be the best in order to have any worth.
If there is ever a time for young adults to hear the Good News of God's grace and unconditional love, it is when they live in a performance-driven culture. As Christians, we are not what we achieve, nor are our lives defined by the happiness we pursue. Instead we are children of God, claimed in the saving death of Jesus Christ, and called out of our desire to be the best and into a relationship of acceptance and rest. Our lives are not defined by what we achieve; they are defined by whose we are.
That is freedom, to know that we are loved beyond measure and do not have to form our lives around impressing others. Instead, in freedom, we can live for God's purpose in the world.
This is our challenge as the Church in the twenty-first century, to convince a generation of young adults that grace is even possibile, because their life experience has been that it is not. Young adults have been told they are special only to discover they do not measure up to someone else's expectations. They have sought to be the best only to discover there is always someone a little bit better. They have learned from our culture that love is earned by achievement and never freely given.
The Gospel is just the opposite:
Hear the Good News!
Who is in a position to condemn?
Only Christ.
And Christ died for us.
Christ rose for us.
Christ reigns in power for us.
Christ prays for us.
Anyone who is in Christ is a new creation.
The old life has gone; a new life has begun.
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