Janie B. Cheaney: Setting aside the burden of self

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, June 14th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. WORLD Commentator Janie B. Cheaney now on seeing our identity in light of Isaiah 46.

JANIE CHEANEY, COMMENTATOR: Our youth-oriented culture tends to idealize children as complete and unspoiled, lacking only the proper encouragement. Sometimes the message is explicit, especially when it’s aimed at marginalized groups: You are perfect, just as you are. But who really believes that? Don’t we all know that children are works-in-progress, or why bother to educate them?

In fact, much of today’s education is bent toward shaping a particular kind of citizen with a particular (leftward) worldview. And it’s working, sort of. But instead of bright, confident young people with clear ambitions and goals, teens are increasingly anxious and pessimistic. More and more research indicates this, including a fascinating study reported in Social Science & Medicine – Mental Health. The study used cross-sectional data of 86,138 high-school seniors from 2005 to 2018, marking a significant decline in well-being over that period. The decline registered across the political spectrum but was decidedly higher among liberal students.

Why are liberal teens so depressed? And not just in the United States. The journal American Affairs did a deep dive into the Social Science study, and others like it, and found the same pattern in 87 out of 92 countries: conservatives were happier than liberals.

American Affairs lists several possible conservative advantages, including faith, patriotism, family stability, resilience in hardship, and more. But here’s the one that struck me, particularly in regard to young people. To quote from the article, “In contexts where traditional forms of life, traditional social roles, and social structures are undermined, the acts of self-presentations, self-management, and self-creation become much more demanding and fraught.”

When kids are seen as being rather than becoming, the “act of self-creation” is both more urgent and less thoughtful. Identity is a decision for you and you alone—nobody can tell you who you are. Or who you aren’t. In fact, if you decide you’re a boy in a girl’s body or a permanent victim of an oppressed group, any challenge to that position is an assault on your very being.

Idols are heavy, whether gold or oak or personal identities. In these last days we’ve devised the heaviest of all: the burden of self. To tell adolescents that “You are perfect as you are,” or to, “Follow your dream and live your truth” is to weigh them down with expectations they can’t begin to meet.

“[T]hese things you carry are borne as burdens on weary beasts,” says the Lord to Israel of their idolatrous ways. “Listen to me, O house of Jacob: . . . even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and save” (Is. 46: 1,3-4).

Identity is a burden even grownups were not made to bear alone. No one entirely knows himself; it’s the Lord who knows, and the Lord who carries. May our overburdened youth find him before it’s too late.

I’m Janie B. Cheaney.

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