To the Christian youth leaders i write - uju okorie

As a teenager, I was the most inquisitive human you’d have ever met.

Madam questioner!

I asked about and researched everything.
From the Bible to the Koran. From the ancient kings of England to the rulers of the old Kanem-Bornu empire. From menstruation to pregnancy.

I would take a hundred naira from my savings, cross the busy road to visit the cyber café facing my street, buy some time, sit down and just ask google as many questions as possible.

Oh my!

I once typed this into the search box:

“Where was I before I was born?” 

You possibly reckon I was a handful at home.

Mummy soon got tired of me and then coined a classic response to my many enquiries:
“Oo ju m oo!!” (“Here she asks again!!”)

“Mummy, is it true that men have less number of ribs than women?”

And she goes: “Oo ju m oo!!”

LOL!

And what a good thing it was that my church always welcomed questions. I would search the scriptures to lay my hands on as many questions as I could, write them down and then wait for an opportunity to get a response.

“If God is omniscient, why then did he regret creating mankind? Why would I regret doing what I know would most definitely fail in the end?” I asked one day.
It was a youth revival service and the hall was packed full of young people running into their hundreds.

The pastor gave me a response that had me nodding not very satisfactorily. But he gave me a response nonetheless, a patient and disarmingly meek response. Not the kind I have seen quite a number of youth leaders give, leaving the questioner embarrassed and regretting ever posing the question.

Which brings me to my keske for the day.

Youth leaders biko, young people are the most inquisitive human beings on the planet.

The moment you signed up to be a youth leader, you automatically sentenced yourself to a life of research and study. I am telling you this in case you were not inform.

Please answer their questions.

If it happens that you do not know the answer, please swallow your ego into the blackness of hell, tell the youth that you would do some research and then answer his question in the coming week.

Please, please, please, stop embarrassing our youths because you were caught off guard.

Do not lose your temper, refer to their enquiries as stupid questions, or throw tantrums and sarcasm on the Lord’s altar.

That doesn’t make a shred of sense.

The pain I felt in my soul when a pastor embarrassed a young man in church one day, has not yet left me. The teaching was on marriage I think, and the lad asked what the church’s stand was on inter-racial marriage. An honest question, behind which was a great deal of courage, considering the mammoth crowd in church that Sunday.

But the pastor said that was a foolish question and commanded the youth to go find his seat and sit down.
I was like: “Why? Why do this, Sir?”

The Lord Jesus Christ, God in human flesh answered all manner of questions, sincere or dishonest, stupid or wise, making sense or not making sense.

Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians was largely a response to a letter the church had written to him, posing loads and loads of questions!

This arrogance and downright toxicity from the pulpit is unbecoming of Christianity, and that’s putting it very mildly.

Dear youth leaders, those tender plants are delicate. Like a hen’s freshly laid eggs, they are vulnerable.

Please answer their questions.

I became well versed in the scriptures as a young woman, willing to debate any atheist or agnostic, because I was taught the word, my questions were answered, my doubts were nipped in the bud.

We cannot afford to raise young Christian people without solid bones in their spines, especially as secular humanism prepares to engulf the planet.

They have to be absolutely sure.
Please answer their questions.

Thank you.
Blessings!