MISSION AUSTRALIA YOUTH SURVEY

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The latest Mission Australia Youth Survey has revealed that the environment tops the list of concerns for young people. More than 18,000 people, aged 15 to 19, were questioned by Mission Australia for the survey. 

51 percent of the young responders in the survey named the environment as one of the most important issues in Australia (up from 38 percent last year). One-quarter of those questioned were also “extremely or very concerned” about climate change.

More than one-third of young people said that equity and discrimination were an “important national issue”. Meanwhile, more than a quarter of the young people surveyed said that due to their gender, race/cultural background, or mental health, they had been unfairly treated in the past year.

Further, nearly 30 percent of people reported they had “high psychological distress”, while 23 percent said they felt lonely all or most of the time. And more than half of the responders have required support with their mental health.

On its website, Mission Australia states:

Our purpose

Inspired by Jesus Christ, Mission Australia exists to meet human needs and to spread the knowledge of the love of God.

We are delighted that over the past decade, more than 200,000 young people and more than 1,000 schools and organisations have participated in our Youth Survey. Our young people are our future leaders and it’s essential we hear them and act on what they tell us.”Sharon Callister, Mission Australia CEO

Despite Mission Australia’s stated Purpose, there was not one question in the survey about God or Jesus Christ, and yet the primary reason why these youth are in such poor mental health is they do not know the God who loves them enough to send His only Son to die for them. More than half have required support for their mental health.

Many Christian organisations including most of the denominational churches are no longer relevant and are certainly not living and preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus tells us that this will be the state of the church prior to His second coming. In fact, Jesus says that prior to His return, the world will be like it was in the days of Noah when God poured out His wrath for the first time on an unrepentant world.

“Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.“ Luke 16:26-27

“But understand this, that in the last days, there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.” 2 Timothy 3:1-7

We need to start living eternal now knowing that Jesus is returning soon to rule and reign with the resurrected Saints on this earth for the next 1000 years. My book is available on Amazon as a paperback or ebook. I hope it will help Christians to be “last days” overcomers.

THE MOST FAMOUS 20-YEAR-OLD ON THE PLANET

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This article by Megan Agnew appeared in The Weekend Australian 09/07/2022. My comments are in italics.

Billie Eilish: ‘I craved judgment… or criticism’ As a child she suffered ‘crippling separation anxiety. Now the most famous 20-year-old on the planet, Billie Eilish is finally getting comfortable in her own skin.

She has 11 billion views on YouTube, 47 million monthly listeners on Spotify, 44 million followers on TikTok and 103 million on Instagram.

Eilish is who she is largely because of the internet. At 13 she recorded Ocean Eyes, a song written by her older brother Finneas, which they posted to the online music platform SoundCloud. It went viral, landing a management deal and recording contract. Four years later Eilish hit the mainstream with the song Bad Guy, which they recorded in Finneas’s bedroom. It went to No.1 in more than 15 countries and became the planet’s best-performing single that year. She was 17.

Her music defies genre; a mixture of pop, rock, electronica, hip-hop and Peggy Lee jazz, with lyrics about Xanax, climate change, Invisalign braces, self-destruction, Uber ratings, and burying her friends. It is music for the generation who grew up on the internet, where irony is king and sincerity is lame. It is not ponytail-swinging pop about being a “hotgirlboss” but melancholic and twisted, tender and honest, music about the darkness of life – and her legions of teenage fans love it.

The lyrics of Ocean Eyes (video below) reveal a lot of the craziness of the world we are now living in. “I’ve been walking through a world gone blind”, “burning cities, napalm skies”, “I’m scared”. Also, what do these words even mean, “Can’t stop thinking of your diamond mind”, “Careful creature made friends with time”?

As with most young people God does not feature in her life at all. He is not given a thought. She has no concept of a Heavenly Father that loves her and seeks to be in a relationship with her.

Megan Agnew spoke about one of Billie Eilish’s concerts: “On stage she does not look very little at all, marching around with the jumped-up ­bravado of a boy, an electrifying sort of drag, dementedly crawling on her knees among ­projections of tarantulas, kicking the air in her trademark trainers while the screens behind her play footage of forest fires and droughts. “Stop,” goes one lyric, the crowd of mostly girls yelling in time, “what the hell are you talking about! Ha! / Get my pretty name out of your mouth!”

Eilish is known for her baggy clothes and upside-down version of beauty, dyeing the grown-out roots of her hair neon green. She started out like this because she didn’t want people to judge her body, which she has “hated” since she was a child. She self-harmed “because of my body”, she told Vanity Fair, and her body was a reason for her first depression at about 12. Today her insecurity is compounded by the scrutiny of the internet. On TikTok people speculate whether she is pregnant. When she was photographed in LA going to the shops in a vest top, she went viral for being “brave”.

How is her relationship with her body now? “Gurl!” she says, throwing her head back. “Nowhere good. My relationship with my body has been a truly horrible, terrible thing since I was 11.” This was the age she was diagnosed with Tourette’s, which can be “very exhausting”, she says, brought on in times of stress, manifesting in eye rolls, moving her ears and twitching her head back. “I love that my body is mine and that it’s with me everywhere I go,” she continues. “I kind of think of my body as my friend. My ugly friend! It’s complicated. But what are you gonna do?”

Eilish is cycling through all the insecurities of youth – in front of millions. She didn’t really know who she was “until, like, probably the end of 2019. Then Covid made me go right back down into the spiral of, who am I?” Her tour was postponed and she went home to LA. “I remember thinking, ‘I need to figure out who I am right now’. Then halfway through Covid I felt as if I was starting to have an identity again – Let’s do different things, let’s have different experiences. And then it happened again.” Another identity crisis.

Thank goodness Jesus is coming back soon to restore sanity to a world gone mad.