Why Millennials Are Having Trouble Connecting to Religion
By: Sade Graham
The grandiose life and mind of a Millennial is one to admire.
We are big dreamers, ambitiously bold, creative groundbreakers, adventure-seeking free thinkers, fast-tracked- moving way ahead of our time. The most technologically advanced, educated, surpassingly health conscientious with a larger, much diverse community of financially savvy income generators, so well equipped with research and information at our fingertips. We are immensely blessed and unbeknownst to us, very much catered to. Granted bigger voices, bigger platforms, leaving much impressions, we have extended reach and greater influence, power.
But with any position of power, comes the conceivable certainty of corruption – that is an evidential truth, there is historical proof. Delusions of grandeur. Like the case of a certain political leader who referred to himself as “God” after taking office, overthrowing all previous legislation, ruining his country through totalitarian rule. That story is incessant and a continual threat to the world today, especially in the hands of those who aren’t rooted in good soil - those who lack good character.
As Millennials, we are the heartbeat to keep things going in a certain direction, it can be dangerous to break away from our initial core. While an impressive influx of progression is recompensed by Millennials, there is a gap that is surging due to a certain attitude, a whole lot of ‘things that Millennials just don’t do’.
The vast majority don’t cook, we don’t do big families, and no nine-to-fives; we loathe commitment – as far as certain things i.e. Cable TV, for many - marriage, car payments, and a growing conversation, religiosity. Millennials don’t do religion.
In the US, religious affiliation has been on a decline for years, transcending beyond the surrounding waters - that number highly driven by Millennials. With our loud voices screaming game rebellion lyrics and setting new trends of our own, more and more American’s have distanced themselves from the religious doctrine of which this country was founded that is Christianity. We are no longer ‘One Nation Under God’ – instead, we have number of gods to choose from, divided on our original foundation. And yes, there is much to say about how religion might have been used to manipulate in negative ways; but wait a minute, there is also much to say to the absence of it and why Millennials are looking the other way.
Millennials don’t have time for Religion. We are way too busy doing everything other than. Traveling is cool, getting money is a must, growing your brand is great; enjoying time with family & friends, all that is necessary to a filled life, but how exactly are we making time to refresh & restore one’s self? People generally equate this with quiet time, devotion, meditation, self-evaluation, reflection – all of which are constants to religion. An excellent quality of life requires this.
And with even less time to attend church, there is the mindset of some that ‘God doesn’t act fast enough’ leading many to seek a particular satisfaction or fulfillment elsewhere, even if through the most defiling means; those things our parents use to shield us from are now the channels of which a multitude are apt to prematurely expose. The priorities that have created the pace of today’s normal is drastically different from what was before us. As time goes, might you see what the inexistence of religion would pose?
Religion has too many rules. Millennials take great pleasure and recognition for breaking all the rules, we don’t like them. To us, religion constitutes for plenty limitations, but is it not due to some daily intake of instruction that we are cultivated into the winners we hope to be? Without assistance, we are like the blind, walking aimlessly. It takes some set of rules that we are to abide in order for an expected outcome to transpire as the foundation of which we are brought up generally sets the tone in how we prioritize, and rationalize. Not knowing better leads to a myriad of mistakes; mistakes that give way to a more strenuous constraint. Consider the state of the society of which we live in where jails are stocked up by the day – whether guilty or innocent, the only way out of that instance is through religion.
True religion is a love language of correction, it should be one to contemplate.
Millennials want to call all the shots. As a Millennial, I can totally attest to this. But leaders are made, they are not born. The whole working a nine-to-five thing, making someone else rich and wealthy isn’t remotely attractive than running my own ship, but the fundamental of a good leader is to first serve. You cannot be a master before putting in that good work. It takes skill, experience, and listening; it takes religion.
Millennials thrive and gloat on hate & shade – that’s not religion, it’s quite the opposite. Apparently, it’s no longer God who gets us through the day. With the ingest of social media memes, a selection of grotesque molds of demonstration, gossip & shade is the new medium for meaningful discussion, invaluable counsel, and destination entertainment. Most religion speaks on loving one another as we love ourselves, the word encourages us to celebrate eachother – but looking at how we continue to hurt each other through inflammatory methods of condemnation, I can see how religion and a Millennial might opt or veer off for separation.
And of course, let us not neglect to mention all those conflicting views that Religion is said to oppose.Millennials being the most open generation to date, social topics like homosexuality, inequality, questions like ‘what is sin?’, ‘who is God?’ can have a person throw away the whole thing. Setting kinfolk against kinfolk, used as a tool to rebuke, designs of distraction, vehicles to diabolically infiltrate & confuse. When the essential purpose of religion is to bring together through love & faith, to me, these social issues should not be the reason to come against it, but to incite more inquisition. For lack of knowledge, my people perish. There is such a huge misunderstanding, but if you dig a little deeper, religion explains all of it.
Religion is the basis to established order, where every system is inherited. However, it is through the timeless principles such as righteousness & justice, obedience, security, service, checks & balances, down to equality & freedom that the detestable veracities of those with authority tend to raise up, further revealing why Millennials are having trouble connecting to religion. Induced by society since the beginning of days, the implications of ‘abuse of power’ is what weakens the divine infrastructure of religion, therefore encouraging some type of new world order. And we Millennials have enlisted.
Born into a life thanks to some fashion of tradition, inheritance, custom, ritual, and lest we not forget ethics. It is through ethics, a set standard, value, if even through the womb of the worst circumstance, Millennials continue to come to as supplications of the past sanction for new blessings. We are opulent thanks to religion. To go against the grain is cool until we start forgetting how to tie our shoes. It’s not always considered evolution; it can totally be an explicit expression of defiance too. Attached to us from birth, unrelenting, passed down like bad genes - the act of defiance has long been our iniquity – if there was ever a blemish to cosmetically or prayerfully remove.
So, if you’re not following a religion, then what or who are you following? Because let’s be clear, we all are following some suit and you should know what that is, as there is an absolute imbalance with thinking you can be ‘a little bit of everything’. Every great force draws from a particular source – what is yours?