What Adults Can Do to Guide Gen Z to God

Book Review So the Next Generation Will Know

McDowell, Sean, and J. Warner Wallace. So the Next Generation Will Know: Preparing

Young Christians for a Challenging World. David C Cook, 2019.

Introduction

As Nick Foles points out in the Foreward to McDowell and Wallace’s book, faith is something that needs a foundation. It has to be more than just a mere influence: it has to be the rock upon which one’s whole life is based. It is only once that rock is in place and one realizes it and builds on it that one’s life takes on real meaning. Attempting to live without that rock is like attempting to build a life on sand, where the waves come up one after other (life’s adversities), wiping away whatever one has built. This book builds on the words of Foles in the Forward to show why faith matters and what the young generation can do to get it. This review provides a summary of the book and a critique that examines its arguments and their merit. Overall, the book is a well-written and well-constructed examination of how to prepare the next generation to have a foundation in faith.

Summary

Themes

One of the major themes of the book is the need to make young people a priority in one’s life. They have to be educated and guided, and they need to be taught what it means to love God. If they are neglected there will be no one to show them the way. To do this job, however, one must be willing to do some self-sacrificing because it is not an easy thing to put young people first—especially when one has work to do or other personal needs or desires. Yet, that is what must be done.

The other big theme is that Gen Z does not have much of a foundation of faith because they culture they grow up in is anti-God. So that is a serious obstacle that has to be addressed. The way to address it, according to the authors, is show that God exists by showing them love. God is love, and unless they have love in their lives they will not believe in God. Thus, the other major theme of the book is an exploration of what love is: love reaches out, love listens, love responds in appropriate ways, love builds relationships, and love empowers. Ultimately love is what inspires one to move towards God.

Purpose

The purpose of the book is to explain to adults all the ways they can and need to be engaged with the young people of Generation Z so that Gen Z is given the foundation in faith through love that it needs to make its way in the world. The authors use Scripture to help make their case from a biblical worldview, and they rely on personal experience as well. They want the reader to really see that young people need to be adults’ top priority. Statistics are given when necessary to support a point that the authors provide, such as the fact that Gen Z is without faith more or less. However, there are other dialogues that show why Gen Z might be angry about religion or why these young adults are skeptical. These dialogues are given to show the reader what the adult is up against and why love has to be the answer. Love is the thing that allows for understanding to take place, and without it no really progress is ever made. Thus, the book’s overall aim is oriented towards helping Gen Z lay a foundation in faith, but the purpose of the book could be said to convince the reader to reignite his own love for others for the sake of Christ.

Critique

Where the Argument is Convincing

The book is written from the personal perspectives of its two authors, each taking turns explaining what the various themes have meant to them and how they have been approached in their own lives. This gives the argument an anecdotal power that is rooted in the personal. The authors spend time showing how, from their own perspectives, these issues and themes have meaning. This is what gives the book its overall power in the imagination. It is not vague, abstract, or depersonalized and formal or academic in tone. It is friendly in tone, as though the information were being shared with one over a nice friendly dinner.

The book refers to Scripture frequently enough to help root the work in a religious perspective, but it is not so full of Scriptural quotes that one loses sight of the argument that the authors are making. On the contrary, the Scriptural references feel organic as though they were coming up naturally over the course of the stream of thought. The entire book feels unforced and natural as though the authors were communicating without any barriers or pretensions—it is just the reader and the author and the author is talking while the reader is listening.

Some books it is obvious that they have undergone a thousand revisions and edits. They have little life in them as it has all been drained out over the course of the editing process. They are uninspiring to read and often suffer from a stodgy self-importance. That is not the case with this book. It is quite comfortable in its own skin and does try to come across as something more or other than what it is.

One of the better arguments made in the book is the argument to give the young generation a worldview that is significant. This is no easy thing but it must be done, and that means showing the young people why they need Jesus Christ. Christ does not make any sense if there is no such thing as sin, if there is no Fall, and if there is no Heaven. If all there is is this world, then Christ is just an insignificant myth that mattered in the Old World but in today’s rational, enlightened, progressive society the best that anyone can do is work towards social justice.

One has to show why the worldview of Gen Z is not enough, why death is a real fact of life that has to be considered and why judgment comes after. Without that understanding, there is not going to be much for Gen Z to hold onto. They will all end up being nihilistically minded materialists who believe in laboring towards a socially just society, even if they will die and disappear from it all in the end. There is no thought among them about where it all came from, where the world came from, what it means to live in this world, because they are not interested in answering these questions as they have been convinced that there is no real answer.

To convince them that there is an answer requires one coming down to their level and showing them that if there is no God then there is no love for love makes no sense in a universe where there is no source of love, which is God. If all things come from something, then all goodness must ultimately have its source in God. If one can show the young Gen Z that love is real and true, then one can begin to show them that God exists and that this world is not their final destination. Much of Gen Z runs like an automaton, pre-programmed by education to repeat verbatim the truths of their atheism. This has to be shaken out of them by love for love is the one thing they do not have any sense of, since there is no love in materialism. Love is a spiritual quality and if it is real then so too is the spirit, which means God is real as well. That is the best argument of the book and it is the most important one to consider.

The other strength of the book is the chapter that focuses on recognizing the need to develop a passion for truth. If anything is going to get the young generation back to God along with love it is truth. Truth and love really do go together so it is a testament to the book’s power that it unites these two aspects of having a God-centered worldview together in the chapters.

Where It is Lacking

Where the book is lacking is in a single point of view. Part of its strength is its multiple viewpoints as it shifts between the experiences of the two authors. However, that is also the book’s weakness. The constant need to clarify who is speaking now is something of a distraction and can take the reader out of the moment. It does not totally diminish the power of the book but it does weaken it at times in terms of remembering which author is speaking now and what his background is. Having to shift back and forth between perspectives can be a bit of a task.

The book could also stand to have a bit more support in terms of showing how an adult could create that passion for truth and that vision of God that is rooted in love using some of the tools that have existed for centuries throughout the history of the world. One of the mistakes that people make in the 21st century is that they act like this is the first century of human existence and that everything that came before is not worth anyone’s thought or time. But that is a very narrow approach to life and this book somewhat suffers from it as most of the discussions are rooted in the here and now.