If you’re a 2008 high school graduate raised in an American evangelical church, chances are you may have been inadvertently poisoned by those idols which Francis Schaeffer warned us of 40 years ago – personal peace and affluence. Get good grades, go to a good college, get a financially stable job, get married, have 2.5 kids, and live in suburbia, so as to isolate yourself from the reality of poverty and a post-Christian culture. It’s not that any of these things are necessarily bad, but idolatrous Christians tragically nurture kids to live for perverted ideals like “a nice life” rather than the costly priorities of the Kingdom.

With the threat of “flipping burgers,” many Christian parents guilt-manipulate the children God has given them into pursuing safe majors like “business,” instead of what God has laid on your heart – maybe political science, psychology, music, sociology, and so on, because God’s sovereignty is not enough to “fall back on.”

After speaking at a Christian youth conference, a high school senior proudly confessed to me that he wanted to be a lawyer because that would enable him to own a nice house to provide for his family. What a depressing vision. It made me nauseated. In John Piper’s words, that’s a wasted life.

I would like to apologize to any high school senior taught to serve the Christian version of the American Dream. You were created for mission and you were never encouraged. In high school, you were baby sat, entertained, shamed, taught how to be “nice,” kept busy with lots of programs, told not to sin (have sex, watch porn, get drunk, have long hair), and ventured on 10-day missions trip to Jamaica over Christmas. But you were never given a picture for your role in the mission of God to redeem His creation. Your faith has been totally undermined by a Christianity of privatization: you and Jesus. You were given the monastic vision of Christianity as a life of personal piety in isolation, raised to live in the Christian ghetto where it’s safe.

Pursuing the adventure of being “salt and light” is not something you were encouraged to do, especially if that meant sacrificing your personal safety and material comfort. Many of you have been discouraged from sharing your life with non-Christians because it was not modeled for you. This is not the way of Jesus, and for that I apologize. Class of 2008, seek first the Kingdom, not putrid idols like a struggle-free life and upward mobility.