Need for guidance and orientation

Spirituality as a Journey of Human Maturation and Faith: Genetic-Psychological Approach

African-Asian Amalgamated English-speaking Group
Paolo Liu Qing Chun, Sebhat Hadgu Kahsay
Chalana Kalanga Aththidyage, Grea Duzon Mendoza

The following points were central to our discussion of Chapter 4 of Jacques Schepens volume on Youth Spirituality.

Family importance: In our group we discussed the importance of the family for the education of their children during adolescence. Family is the first school where the children can learn about their faith, tradition but nowadays parents are so busy with their work so they cannot even notice the physical and psychological growth of their children. They leave everything to baby-sitters who cannot replace natural human parent. She/he works only for the material needs rather than spiritual and psychological needs of the children, there is a little space for the experience for a love of the mother and a love of the father where they grow without receiving and giving what they did not receive. So we want emphasize the importance of family in teaching faith and traditional values. The family or other adult leaders have to follow them according to their stage of life and lead them to face the crisis which come in different levels of youngsters. In society as well as in the church people work for the young but they don’t make efforts to involve the young in society. Adults seem to prefer to just teach, manage or administrate rather than guide or act as “pedagogos” who can lead the young by the hand.

The identity of youth: In the case of the young people, we noticed that there is a lack of identity according to the various stages of life. It is noticed that the young people who are starting adulthood behave like they did in childhood, for example carrying the toy and playing with animals. This shows us that the young people are not searching for their identity. We see very few dreams for the future of their life because it is very rare to see young people who are committed to invention and creativity. In many cases we don’t see ardent zeal to be someone. So they need an encouragement from the side of the adults (parents, educators, animators) to think, to plan and to act for a better future.

Submitted by Chalana