Why we SHOULDN'T teach morality to girls

I heard a statement the other day that has resonated deeply with me:

We’ve moralized our children to death. And they’re sick of hearing it.

In one sentence, a single person summed up the problem with many of our churches, ministries, families, and even personal lives.

We’re teaching morality instead of making much of Jesus.

And as a result, we’re raising a generations of students who are left scratching their heads, wondering silently, “isn’t there something more?” They may not be able to articulate their confusion and disappointment in such succinct terms, but their lives bear testimony that we have fallen short in showing them what life is all about—a relationship with Jesus that transforms every fiber of their lives.

That’s why there’s no difference between the behavior of Christian kids and non-Christian kids. We’ve given them a set of do’s and don’ts and nothing else. We’ve told them to act better, talk better, dress better. We were so busy making sure that they understood the right thing to do that we forgot to communicate the reason behind it all.

The furious love of God.

Think about your own ministry, wherever your sphere of influence with teens, whatever gender. What are you teaching them overtly or covertly? When they’ve left your ministry, what are they leaving with? If they can recite the Ten Commandments (which most can’t, by the way), but they do not understand that the God who set forth those commands desperately desires a relationship with them, that His passion is their heart, that He aches and longs for them to talk to Him, then they’re left with nothing.

Why do we focus so much on morality? Because it’s easy to measure. If a girl dresses modestly, then we figure she’s on the right road. If a girl doesn’t send a sexually explicit message to her boyfriend, then we as leaders have done our job, right? Wrong.

When we reduce the gospel to morality, we’ve cheapened the gospel. We’ve reduced God Almighty to two stone tablets on a courthouse wall somewhere in Georgia. We’ve made a relationship with God a mockery, far less than what it truly is: a roller coaster ride, a glorious uproarious adventure, a love affair of epic proportions.

I’m not saying that we don’t teach students the story of the Good Samaritan and talk about the need to love others. But I am saying that we need to teach the story of the Good Samaritan in context of the larger Story, the story of God coming to us in our deepest need and bandaging our wounds and paying the price for our healing.

What would happen in your ministry—maybe in your own life or ministry—if you focused solely on a relationship with God? What if, for a single month (or even a single day), you said nothing about witnessing, dressing modestly, obeying your parents, cheating, language, or sexting? If instead, you fed them (or yourself) nothing but Jesus.

Not the lame Jesus we’ve presented to them. But the Jesus who turned the temple upside down because people had made it difficult to come to God. The Jesus who called the most religious people “white washed tombs” because those very people were misrepresenting Him and had taking all the passion out of a relationship with Him? The Jesus who laughed with children. Who turned water into wine so a party could keep going. The Jesus who offered grace to prostitutes. The Jesus who challenged His followers to give up their lives to find life. The Jesus who drew attention by writing in the sand so that a woman caught in the act of adultery could find a shred of dignity and grace.

I’m willing to bet that things would change. Not immediately. Maybe not even in the next year. But when you and I begin to ooze Jesus instead of a morality-based ministry, we’ll discover that this undiluted gospel is EXACTLY what our students have been waiting for all along.