Don't be good

Dr Paul Lim has a wonderful video on YouTube that starts with his early life experience, including time at a church youth club called BBB (Bible, Burgers, Bowling). He remarks that a bad experience here: he was always left to bowl alone. He spurned the church and therefore Christ (if he had even been introduced to him) as a result of this experience.

I reflected on fragments of my own experience.

Now, I'm blessed to have never had that experience. I always had great and godly mentors, had support and caring counsel when I sought it and a very open faith relationship with my mother (my father had long commutes to work, so was around much less).

However, I do observe, that it is often the 'good' kids who get passed over for special opportunities. Very rarely I felt this, but I did on a couple of occasions. Sometimes it seemed that being a 'bad' kid paid off. You got more attention, better experiences, better pastoral care...but if you were 'good' you became invisible and unless you got involved (which I did), you could easily drift away.

Then I think of my friend at youth group. PR. A very smart guy...like, really smart. Very entrepreneurial, socially switched on...never found a person to excite him intellectually or artistically about Christian faith. Like me, he got the kiddie-level 'just believe', but it didn't sustain him and he drifted away once he left high school. He maybe had questions. But he maybe didn't get answers.