The Time Has Come

We need to start teaching our students rhetoric and not rhetoric. Confused?  It used to be that rhetoric was the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing. To study that, one used to learn techniques and develop skills that made for more effective debate.  Being skilled in this way allowed a person to show the flaws in others logic or arguments. It required good listening with an ability to think clearly about the ideas others present. A society is arguably more healthy when it’s members can hash out ideas in order to come up with the best solutions. The church would be better off today if more of it’s members were able to articulate truth clearly and show the flaws in the non truths that are dominating the conversations of the day. Emotional and irrational arguments are ruling the world we live in at the moment.  This is why I think we need every generation to learn the art of effective and persuasive communication – i.e. rhetoric.

Yet today rhetoric is the term used to describe the words of politicians who make promises and show false outrage over issues. They usually have absolutely no intention of doing anything with those words except gain votes. It is merely the art of getting people on your side without actually doing anything for them. This is commonly referred to as empty rhetoric. This we don’t need to teach our students and we actually need to teach them how not to fall prey to it. The last thing we need in Christianity is a generation of empty talkers.  The world is too full of them and when they are Christian leaders it hurts so much more because people expect better than that.  Sadly, we as a culture have come to expect the empty rhetoric of politicians.  We dare not enter that arena.

Of course the whole realm of good old fashioned rhetoric requires that we are raising students who understand the gospel and know the doctrines of the church.  There is no point arguing out of ignorance. They also need to learn how to listen critically and with an open mind.  Okay, here’s another possible point of confusion.  To listen critically is to seek to understand another point of view so well that we can engage with it. We want to encourage it’s strengths and challenge it’s weaknesses.  In this way, to listen with an open mind is not the opposite of listening critically. I would add to all this that engaging in rhetoric as Christians must honestly be speaking the truth in love. I don’t mean that as an empty phrase as some use it. People need to know how much we care about them if they are going to care about what we have to say.

If youth leaders are guilty of empty rhetoric in any way that I have seen, it is this.  Too often I have heard the gospel presented as the solution to all of life’s problems in a way that implies or directly states that everything gets better afterward.  Just come to Jesus and all your troubles will be gone, right? Students who heard this message from a youth pastor, evangelist, or event speaker more than likely will have found the promise to be empty and possibly decided that the faith is not for them.  Few things are more tragic than someone walking away from the good news because it was presented in such a glossy way that it did not live up to expectations. Clearly articulating the truth of the gospel means being honest up front (like Jesus was) about the challenges one will face if they pursue this path. If I would add one more empty rhetoric example that I’ve seen a few youth ministry folks engage in, it would be this.  When we present things as fact that are not true or present arguments that don’t hold water, we only set up students to someday discover that this faith in Jesus does not hold up. Sloppy apologetics and distortions of truth are often done with the best intentions but they come at a high price.  One we don’t see immediately but that comes back to haunt us later.

The time has come that this generation of youth must learn how to speak truth in love in ways far more difficult than ever before!