What makes people aware of their vacuum is encountering a person who is Christ-like. Young people can tell when they are being processed through a church program and when they are encountering self-sacrifical love. True saints will unsettle people because they make people aware at how pathetic their lives are. The sad part is it is often the most religious people who won’t admit that and instead turn on the saint.

So my question not would be whether young people are hungry for God but whether anybody in the church has enough God to whet their appetite. Are we more focused on making dead programs work or do we dare to truly love the kids starting with the ones society says are unlovable.

Evangelism is hard. There are no shortcuts. Most church programs are designed to keep working even when nobody involved believes. People teach. People send their kids. Kids respond and say they believe. It can all happen year after year but be completely dead.

I don’t disagree with your overall point, but I think you are taking the greek tri-partate description of human beings into the old testament. I normally urge students to not displace terms into times and places when they were not used, but to understand them in context.

I also try to not “follow the logic” if the logic doesn’t land on a plain statement of scripture.

In Adam we all die is the Biblical message, plainly stated.

peace

MS

Now nowhere does it say that they died as Gen 2:16-17 states. However, you believe we are “dead in sins” which Paul so clearly states in Ephesians 2:1. What does it mean to be “dead in sin”? Is your body dead – no, neither was Adam’s. Yes sin produced death in the physical sense but I believe the death talked about especially in the concept of being “dead in sin” is a spiritual death.
Paul states in Romans 5:12-14 “Therefore, just as death entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men because all sinned – for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come.”
He goes on in verse 17 to state, “For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.”
It all goes back to identity. In Adam we are “dead in sin” which means we are sinners.
Continue reading what Paul wrote to the Ephesians in chapter 2:1-10. We were dead in our sins but are made alive with Christ. He goes on to say that we ARE seated with Christ in the heavenly realms.
What does all this mean? How can all that be possible? It’s about our spirit. We were dead in our spirit and made alive in our spirit.

I can’t find a statement in scripture that says this. I believe we are dead in sins as human beings. I’ve never seen this distinction made.

Am I missing a text?

Our other friend piped up with, “Before I became a Christian I didn’t feel like I was missing anything.” It was very thought-provoking. I don’t even remember her response when we asked her why she became a Christian, because I was so blown away by her simple and gentle debunking of our church-kid assumption.

Many of these answers have different meanings at different ages. This goes beyond any consideration of Christianity being true or not. But an article on more secular themes that shifted from talking of 15 to 25 year olds to people in general would be making a jarring shift, too.