I posted the following on a Facebook message board for kids attending the "Battlecry" events around the country. If you are unfamilar with these events, a google search will tell you everything you need to know. I attended one of these events during my volatile early teen years. It was an unhealthy experience, which I realize even more in retrospect. This post started up a conversation briefly on the site, but was deleted within a few days by the administration of the site. I don't know when they decided I had gone too far... when I told a young girl that she was better off learning how to have a healthy sexual life than trying to avoid one entirely, or when I announced that Satan was an exegetical fabrication and one of the most useful Evangelical tools for keeping the faithful afraid and full of doubt about their own analytical processes.
I guess I will just have to post it again...until they "report" me for spamming. It was orginally posted under the title "Think": a word that never fails to piss off the religious.
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Please do not allow yourself to get swept up by this movement. It is extremely manipulative, and it preys on the volatility and impressionability of teenagers, just like the secular influences they decry. They are no different: they are essentially trying to sell you a product -- "Jesus" or "salvation" or whatever else you want to call it. They are going to convince you that many of the harmless things you enjoy in life are evil, and that the world is out to get you.
Above all, they are going to discourage you from thinking for yourself or from thinking critically at all. Sure -- they make it sound like they are helping you to make a "stand." But what you are making a stand for is not yourself. You are making a stand for the Judeo-Christian religion, in which you are being enlisted.
It is interesting to note the militaristic language of of this movement. Armies are indifferent to the individuals whom they enlist; a military must absorb the individual and conscript his or her will in order to gain unquestioning and total obedience. This movement wants you to shun the "world" so that you can give yourself completely to their god/Christ/religion.
If this movement really cared about YOU, it would not be trying to bait and switch you this way. Please beware of any person or movement that tells you that anything other than objective, critical examination of the world around you is necessary; anyone who claims to have an exclusive solution, whether it is for "your own good" or not, is trying to manipulate you. Accepting this religion and its puritanical moral dictates at face value "because the Bible says so" (or "because god says so" via the Bible) is NOT going to help you navigate the difficulties and dangers of this life, and will cause you great anxiety as you try constantly to interpret the complex matrix of the world through the narrow and limited tenets of this religion and the people who try to feed this religion to you.
What WILL save you from making unhealthy decisions and detrimental choices are a sound mind -an informed mind- and the guidance of your own reason. THIS is what you must develop and trust. The teenage years are rough -believe me, I know- but shutting down critical thought will only make it harder. This movement does not want you to THINK, it wants you to BELIEVE. It does not want you to question and explore, it wants you to FOLLOW, with total trust. And it has the audacity to call this good, and the will of god.
This organization does not want you to critically question or examine what it is trying to tell you. It will suggest that, without Jesus or god or faith or whatever else, you will end up knocked up, drug addicted, sick, or otherwise in bad shape in this life. But YOU have the power to make the healthy decisions to make sure this doesn't happen to you, and you don't need a religion (or "relationship with Jesus") to make those good decisions. They will also insinuate that, if you don't accept this god/Christ/religion you will be punished eternally in hell. Please, see this for what it is: A threat. Emotional abuse. Manipulation. Bullshit.
I was raised as a Christian, and I was an enthusiastic Christian teenager. I understand everything that is said and done in the name of this religion, and all the so-called rhetoric that is used to justify these beliefs and positions. I was one of you. It breaks my heart to see that children and young people are still being jerked around this way, instead of meaningfully equipped with real knowledge and support for their own intellectual inquiry. Please -- if any of you are doubting this, if it feels even a little bit off...trust that. Once the music and pyrotechnics get started and the adrenaline is pumping, it is so easy to get swept up into...just about anything. Don't trust the hype. And that is what this is...more hype.