Article September 22, 1997 Issue

Healing for troubled youths

Joy L. Nack

Many people are making good efforts to help young men and women, through social programs and education. But many youths who are swept up in crime, violence, gangs, drugs, alcohol, and teen pregnancy aren't reached by these efforts. More can be done, and with farther-reaching effects, through consistent, daily prayer for youth—the kind of prayer that refutes negative beliefs about man.

Think, for instance, of what is most needed in the unhappy homes, the dysfunctional families, from which many troubled youths come. In Science and Health Mary Baker Eddy writes, "Honesty and virtue ensure the stability of the marriage covenant" (p. 64). Yet dishonesty and immorality are often the ruling factors in dysfunctional families, making homes unstable.

But these attributes can be challenged as false beliefs about man. Dishonesty and immorality are not part of the true, God-created identity of anyone. Integrity and virtue, on the other hand, are inherent in man. They are spiritual attributes, which God originates and expresses through His offspring. It could never be true that some individuals are blessed with the ability to be honest and virtuous while others are dishonest and immoral. Mrs. Eddy writes of man's Maker: "Love is impartial and universal in its adaptation and bestowals. It is the open fount which cries, 'Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters'" (ibid., p. 13).