If you watch the news today you can definitely understand why atheist's have their ideas. The world seems to always be in turmoil and most times hides or advertises the turmoil through religion.
The future seems uncertain for many of our younger people. Many 20 something's that I talk to are very anxious about their future. It seems that growing up under the shadow of 911 has affected them. They question US policy and its' role in the rest of the world.
It is call to the neighborly aspect of the Gospel. A call to the conscience of the United States.
For the most part, greed and power always brings back man to religion, and man, always misinterpreting religion, makes a mess out of the world.
World history always comes back to greed and power, of which no previous and current religious institution has ever held an immunity. And so atheist and many young people pose a good question.
Where is this God of yours who allows homelessness, death and destruction?
In a sense, the atheists' unbelief might be a plead to God himself.
Many of the 30 something's now look for certainty and affirmation through the "proof" given to them through science. Anxious for what the future holds, feeling and seeing the the previous institutions fail them... I can't blame them.
They question their taught beliefs because the very institutions that were supposed to protect them, for the most part fail them.
Our children are smart, creative and think in different ways. Their way of communication has changed. They push all the institutions to think of the human person. To think for those who have for the most part been ostracized from what seems conditional love.
I have had the opportunity to meet some of these young folks, like my nephew, my son and his friends and they surprise me with their openness. Their relationships seem genuine, different from the relationships that I had when I was younger.
It's different. Is it good? I don't know, but it is who they are.
People call them Millenials, and maybe that's exactly where they will take the world... into the next Millenium and maybe, just maybe, God will reveal himself through them.
