Book Review: So the Next Generation Will Know (2019)

Introduction

As Nick Foles points out in the Foreword 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 — once one recognizes it and begins to build 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 another (representing life's adversities), wiping away whatever one has built.

This book builds on Foles's words in the Foreword to show why faith matters and what the young generation can do to obtain it. This review provides a summary of the book and a critique that examines its arguments and their merit. Overall, So the Next Generation Will Know is a well-written and well-constructed examination of how to prepare the next generation to have a foundation in faith.

Summary of Themes and Purpose

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 make some personal sacrifices, because it is not an easy thing to put young people first — especially when one has work to do or other personal needs and desires. Yet that is what must be done.

The other central theme is that Generation Z does not have much of a foundation of faith because the culture they grow up in is, by and large, antagonistic toward God. That is a serious obstacle that must be addressed. According to the authors, the way to address it is to show young people that God exists by showing them love. God is love, and unless young people experience love in their lives, they will not believe in God. Thus, the book's other major theme is an exploration of what love is: love reaches out, love listens, love responds appropriately, love builds relationships, and love empowers. Ultimately, love is what inspires one to move toward God.

The purpose of the book is to explain to adults all the ways they can — and need — to be engaged with 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 draw on personal experience as well. They want the reader to genuinely see that young people need to be adults' top priority.

Statistics are provided when necessary to support specific claims — for example, the observation that Gen Z is largely without faith. Alongside these, various dialogues illustrate why Gen Z might be angry about religion or why these young people are skeptical. These dialogues are included to show the reader what the adult is up against and why love must be the answer. Love is the thing that allows understanding to take place, and without it no real progress is ever made. Thus, while the book's overarching aim is to help Gen Z lay a foundation in faith, its deeper purpose might be described as convincing the reader to reignite his or her own love for others for the sake of Christ.

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 approached these themes in their own lives. This gives the argument an anecdotal power rooted in lived experience. The authors spend time showing how, from their own vantage points, these issues and themes carry real meaning. This is what gives the book its overall imaginative power. It is not vague, abstract, or depersonalized; it is not formal or academic in tone. It is friendly — as though the information were being shared over a relaxed dinner conversation.

The book refers to Scripture frequently enough to root the work in a religious perspective, but it is not so saturated with Scriptural quotations that the reader loses sight of the authors' argument. On the contrary, the Scriptural references feel organic, as though they arise naturally in the course of thought. The entire book feels unforced and natural, as though the authors were communicating without barriers or pretension — it is simply the reader and the author in conversation.

Some books bear the obvious marks of a thousand revisions and edits, leaving little life in their pages. They are uninspiring to read and often suffer from a stodgy self-importance. That is not the case here. This book is quite comfortable in its own skin and does not attempt to come across as something more than what it is.

One of the stronger arguments in the book is the case for giving the young generation a meaningful worldview. This is no easy task, but it must be done — and that means showing young people why they need Jesus Christ. As the authors suggest, Christ does not make sense if there is no such thing as sin, no Fall, and no Heaven. If all there is is this world, then Christ becomes little more than an insignificant myth that mattered in a previous era but is irrelevant in today's rational, progressive society, where the best one can do is work toward social justice.

The authors argue that one must show why Gen Z's existing worldview is insufficient — why death is a real fact of life that must be reckoned with, and why judgment follows. Without that understanding, Gen Z risks becoming nihilistically minded materialists who labor toward a socially just society while ignoring questions about where the world came from, what it means to live in it, and where it is all heading. Many in this generation have been conditioned by their education to repeat the assumptions of atheism almost automatically, without examining them critically.

To convince them that there is an answer requires meeting them at their level and demonstrating that if there is no God, there is no love — because love makes no sense in a universe without a source of love. If all things come from something, then all goodness must ultimately have its source in God. If one can show Gen Z that love is real and true, one can begin to show them that God exists and that this world is not their final destination. 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 book's best and most important argument. For further reading on this apologetic approach, Christian apologetics offers a broader framework within which McDowell and Wallace's argument sits.

Another strength of the book is the chapter that focuses on developing a passion for truth. If anything can draw the young generation back to God alongside love, it is truth. Truth and love genuinely go together, and it is a testament to the book's cohesion that it unites these two aspects of a God-centered worldview across its chapters.

Conclusion

The book by McDowell and Wallace is a good one for showing why Gen Z needs adults in their lives who can help them see how God relates to them through love and why truth matters. This is a generation that has become mired in skepticism, and that is a problem because their souls are thirsting for God. Adults cannot allow the young to venture out on their own and hope they will find truth. Adults need to support the young and guide them toward God. That is the main argument McDowell and Wallace make, and they back it up rather well with personal anecdotes and Scriptural references throughout.