When Youths Have Something for Which to Live
IT HAS been estimated that the second-greatest cause of death among students from the ages of fifteen to twenty-four is suicide. College students in particular seem subject to it, the suicide rate among them being 50 percent higher than among non-college students in a similar age-group. Why do so many young people with life just beginning for them decide that they have nothing for which to live?
One young girl said that there is no meaning to life. A student in Harvard claims that he has no values to believe in. A fourteen-year-old boy that was caught after holding up a grocery store said: “I am tired of home, sick of school and bored with life.”
In many instances parents are to blame because of thinking more of material possessions and of being successful in business than of the need to give their children a system of worthwhile values, something to make life meaningful. One young girl said: “I deeply feel the inadequacy of the values I learned while growing up. Categories of social worth; drive for possession of things and people . . . —all of these break down in the search for what is really important, and for a style of life that has dignity.”
On the other hand there are parents who have given their children a fine system of values. Those young people have found something really worth living for. One such is a young man from Central America. He was offered a scholarship to study music in Austria; this could have led to a promising career in music. Another offer gave him the opportunity to study optics in Germany, with a good-paying job waiting for him. But he turned both offers down because he did not feel that they would make life really meaningful. Having been reared by parents who taught him the fine values of God’s Word and the hope it holds out of a peaceful new system of things on earth he chose the service of God as one of Jehovah’s witnesses. He remarked that “there is no other occupation that can produce so much satisfaction, tranquillity and reason to live as this service.” It channels a person’s energies into helping others.
He had good reason to conclude this. The benefits deeply influence both one’s present life and his future. The very things many young people want to see—peace, justice and honest rulers—are assured by God to become a reality earth wide. (Isa. 2:4; 32:1) This gave the youth a sure hope for the future toward which he could work and plan.
He could also see that the values taught by the Bible are practical now. For example, it teaches one to love one’s neighbor as oneself. Is this not a sensible way to gain peaceful relations among peoples? If such love were practiced by everyone, how could there be war? How could there be murders, rapes and thievery? Is this not something that youths who cry for love instead of war can believe in? It is a fundamental command of the Bible.—Matt. 22:39.
The Bible also commands: “Do not be lying to one another.” (Col. 3:9) Is this not a sensible command that would make it possible for people to trust one another and to live together harmoniously? Such Biblical commands are practical for everyday living and they give meaning to a person’s life. They give him a system of values to guide him.
This proved true for a youth who was once a member of teen-age gangs in New York city. During the time he roamed the streets, getting into trouble with the police, he lived each day as it came. He had no plans for the future and nothing for which to live. His life was patterned according to the dog-eat-dog attitude of the neighborhood.
He had no real friends with whom he could talk and from whom to receive counsel as to what is good and what is bad. He needed love, as do all teen-agers, but it did not exist in his world. It was not until he came into contact with Jehovah’s witnesses and attended one of their assemblies that he saw a way of life as different from his own as day and night. He found them to be warm and loving. They took an interest in him and were willing to teach him right principles, which no other adults with whom he had had contact made any effort to do.
By means of the Bible studies they conducted with him he learned the fine principles contained in God’s Word. These provided him with a system of values that gave meaning to his life. He also acquired for the first time a goal in life because of the new system of things that God has purposed for the earth. Now this young man is helping others to have something for which to live.
Another youth with something to live for became disturbed at the utterly materialistic viewpoint of the students and teachers in the college that he was attending. The students had no real hope for the future, but took the attitude of “living it up” today, for tomorrow they might die. This and the organized cheating on examinations convinced him that what he had been leaning from Bible studies with Jehovah’s witnesses was of greater value than college. He quit college and progressed in his Bible studies to the point where he was able to devote his full time to helping others learn about God’s purposes. The Bible had given him values to believe in and a meaning to life.
There is also the experience of a seventeen-year-old “hippie.” By associating with Jehovah’s witnesses she began learning about the practical principles of God’s Word and the new system of things God has purposed for the earth. This changed her life. She said: “I realize that all this ‘hippie’ world, with its drugs, was just Satan’s trap to destroy us kids.” Now, instead of floating aimlessly and hopelessly about, she has a goal for which to live.
Thus we see that there are young people who have found something for which to live, something that gives meaning to their lives and a system of values they can believe in. Now they have fine guiding principles, loving friends and a glowing future.