Another reason why Children's Ministry and Youth Ministry are important
School Bullying Prevention: Teach Empathy at Young Age – TIME.
But like language, the development of this inherent tendency may be affected by early experience. As evidence, look no further than ancient Greece and the millennia-old child-rearing practices of Sparta and Athens. Spartans, who were celebrated almost exclusively as warriors, raised their ruling-class boys in an environment of uncompromising brutality — enlisting them in boot camp at age 7 and starving them to encourage enough deviousness and cunning to steal food, which skillfully bred yet more generations of ruthless killers.
In Athens, future leaders were brought up in a more nurturing and peaceful way, at home with their mothers and nurses, starting education in music and poetry at age 6. They became pioneers of democracy, art, theater and culture. “Just like we can train people to kill, the same is true with empathy. You can be taught to be a Spartan or an Athenian — and you can taught to be both,” says Teny Gross, executive director of the outreach group Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence in Providence, R.I., and a former sergeant in the Israeli army.
One of the reasons that I think Youth and Children’s Ministry is important is that I suspect that this idea can be expanded beyond empathy. We can choose whether we want to teach our kids to be selfish, to treat each other as sex objects, to be racist, etc. We choose what the world, into which our children are born, looks like, and what that world looks like, affects what the next generation will grow to become.
This is also why college ministry is important, because it is during this time where people make the decisions about what they want their world, and thus the world, to look like in the next ten years. It’s why the work of organizations like the Children at Risk Foundation, Jose Abreu’s El Sistema, Bolder Options, Frontier Youth Trust and Union Gospel Mission are important, because they are helping to teach values to kids, many of whom live in environments that are significantly more “Spartan” than “Athenian”.
Anyway, I thought the article was interesting, and it intersected with some things I care about. Take a look at it, tell me what you think (particularly if you see some interesting implications of the article, I’d love to hear and discuss them).
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