I was asked recently why does your blog post come with an image of the two hecklers from the balcony on muppets? My answer is I don't take myself all that serious and I strive to understand the world through the filter of the Scriptures. It is good to have others around you to ground you, challenge you, and bring laughter to life. Which leads me to the younger generations and workforce crisis. In the past few years, employers have struggled mightily to find a viable hard working labor pool. In one study common findings include: young people are unable to think critically, when confronted with difficult situations they quit, and they often feel entitled for little output. 

This should not be confusing because of the education of our young people in the last few decades has focused on positive feelings and self-esteem building. This approach ignores the fact the world is hard, will not make special accommodations, comes with uncertainty and suffering. (By the way the Bible is clear on all of this as well.)

When young people enter the job market, if they're required to work at all, most are unable to cope with the realities of life. Employers often are forced to be more like counselors. The labor market has been created to be more concerned with feeling good and rewarded for showing up. 

In the last few years focus on reading, writing, arithmetic has been replaced with more child-centered compassion and a reduction in problem solving, resiliency, and personal responsibility. In short, schools have abandoned the reinforcement of character building and make no mistake parents have partnered in this as well. When grading is too hard its called things like "racist" or unfair. When problem solving is too prominent in subjects like math, the response is positive feeling word stories. Participation trophies replaced accomplishment. It is so upside down that students with the highest grades and proficiencies are rejected entrance into colleges with preferences given to quotas of race and diversity.

Now think about that, do you want your airline pilot to fly not because of mastering physics, math, and problem solving, but feeling good about subpar grades and their ethnicity being rewarded? The longer one is an adult the more we come to realize the world is what many call "unfair" and extremely challenging. How can someone coddled during their most formative years stand a chance? The clear answer is they don't and employers are echoing this sentiment. Is it any wonder more and more young people love the call or socialism and "equality" so that they don't feel inferior or need to perform at a higher standard, we just lower the standard. 

Is it not troubling that so many young employees expect so little of themselves? The "world's greatest generation" is passing away their legacy of self fortitude, service to others, and powerful responses to great challenges ends with them. Schools and parents try to protect children from disappointment, unfairness, and adversity like they can be avoided all of life. In reality they are making sure they are victims instead of being a generation that can overcome them. We should prepare the future generations for reality, not shelter it from them.

Jesus did not hide the fact that suffering is part of life and should not be avoided but embraces so that we can grow in our faith and character. Faith is a reminder that there is little "fair" in the world. Jesus cares little about our comfort and much more about our character. Only if the schools and programs for our young ones did the same. Without the life's lessons of disappointment the thought instead shifts to it must be someone else's fault. I struggled greatly in school but no one let me coast, if they had I am not sure where I would be now, probably blaming someone else. 

Instead of puffing up young people we should be building into them that true confidence only comes in Christ. Everything else is the hollow offerings of the world that leave people dejected, without hope, and finding the wrong's all over their life. Christ makes us victors and not victims, our world needs Jesus.