Is God good?

Am I enough?

Will you accept me?

Do all people matter to God?

Can I trust you?

What is true?

Am I safe?

This is what Gen Z wants to know.

Drawing on twenty-six years of serving adolescents with Young Life, Tanita Maddox identified these seven ​“questions beneath the questions” that the next generation is asking about life and faith.

I relate to some of these questions. Others irritate me. It is a great spiritual challenge not to resent the generations that come after you.

Anticipating this challenge, Maddox gave solid advice for cultivating compassion instead of condescension: make the effort to understand the context from which Gen Z asks its questions.

Take, for example, the question Am I Enough?

Some of us reflexively answer, No, of course you’re not ​“enough.” All of us fall short. That’s what grace is for.

That’s a true enough answer, but it misunderstands what’s being asked.

The question isn’t Am I good enough to earn my way to God? 

The question is Am I worth enough for God to love?

It isn’t a matter of self-righteousness but of value: Does God want me? Am I worth God’s time? 

If we only take a surface sample of the next generation, we may jump to generalizations — screen-addicted, self-centered, anxious, entitled, over-therapized. 

While those labels have some broad validity, they don’t tell the whole story. And part of that story is that the next generation is discovering — earlier than most — that nothing the world offers can satisfy the soul. 

Chris Hall once remarked that his post-smartphone-era students were old in ways they should be young and young in ways they should be old. This tragic state may have a silver lining. They don’t have to wait until later in life for a deep spiritual hunger to develop.

Maybe that’s why there is a spiritual stirring in unexpected places around the world. Take post-Christian UK, for example. Anglican priest and Alpha founder Nicky Gumble notes the New Atheism so in fashion years ago has given way to an openness to Jesus, particularly among Gen Z men. We can pray it’s a foreshadowing of what may stir in America.

My computer wallpaper has a C.S. Lewis quote: 

“Despair is a greater sin than any of the sins which provoke it.” 

I confess I sometimes submit to despair when I think about my kids’ generation and the world they’re inheriting. It’s time I repent and redirect my emotional energies elsewhere — toward understanding the questions the next generation is asking and why, and toward watching for where the Spirit is stirring and joining God there.