I was 15 when I first saw pictures of Auschwitz, or the Nuremberg defendants, or the European Resistance Fighters who had dodged Hitler’s wrath and lived to tell.

It was 1970, and my 11th grade History class was studying the Holocaust. While most of my classmates were focusing on the atrocities, I was zeroing in on the Resistance, fascinated and jealous. The photos and testimonies were especially gripping — those faces and tales of stalwart people who’d sheltered Jews, bombed railways, and strengthened the Allies.

“How awesome,” I thought, “to have been part of something so noble and sacrificial!” Suddenly, my own Legalize Marijuana! protests and peace signs looked small and pathetic to me. I was hungry for a muscular cause like theirs, one that could save lives at the risk of my own. Had the right person dangled one in my face, neither Hell nor high water would have kept me from signing up.

Craving for a Cause

So today, watching news footage of university mobs cursing Israel while justifying Hamas, I feel disgust, fear, and a familiar twinge. I have no sympathy for their cause, and yet their craving for a cause of some sort rings a bell. When crusades beckon, the young march. Often they are drawn more by their need for a crusade than by informed beliefs about the crusade itself.

That’s not always the motive, of course. When it is, it’s usually not the only one. Nor are these displays of antisemitism limited to young people on campuses. They’re an international phenomenon with political and philosophical roots we may never fully identify. University life is just one of many platforms for it.

But even there, we find so many tributaries that it’s hard to know which is the river’s main source. Left-wing professors have radicalized our students for decades; covert backers fund agitators to influence the gullible; some students are racially biased against Hebrews; some hate anything connected to a Christian world view — support for Israel included.

For now, though, let’s consider another source: a threefold need felt keenly by the young and somewhat by the rest: the need for a Villain to fight, a Victim to defend, and a Cause to join. It is a source with gray hair.   

I remember, for example, my generation’s opposition to Vietnam. On “Moratorium Day” we’d wear black ribbons to school, extolling Jane Fonda’s antics while vilifying Nixon’s escalations. We rallied and chanted, our slogans strong in unison. American leadership was the Villain; young draftees were the Victims; ending the war was the Cause.

Yet I have to admit that when pressed to explain why we objected to escalation, or what the Vietnam War was really about, or why it was wrong, most of us couldn’t get beyond “Huh?”

We loved being loud and right. We just hadn’t settled on what it was that we were right about.

The “Selma-Envy” Syndrome

Lutheran Pastor Hans Fiene wrote insightfully about this a few years back when he coined the phrase “Selma Envy.” He was referring to young people’s admiration for the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s, combined with their frustration over not having a similar cause to support. Noting how quickly his generation had jumped on the “Legalize Gay Marriage” bandwagon, with so little thought as they did so, he wrote:

We concluded that the only thing necessary to be as righteous as the saints who fought racial injustice was to decry an injustice that no one else was. And we became so desperate to find that injustice, we lost our minds in the process.

In saying “we lost our minds,” I doubt Pastor Fiene was suggesting they went crazy, or even that it was crazy to support same-sex marriage. Backing a wrong idea is wrong, but not necessarily insane.

Rather, he seemed to say, “Instead of disciplining our minds to analyze the cause, we barged ahead with passion for an unexamined idea.”

But what’s this hunger for causes all about? How can it make otherwise intelligent students riot, deface property, and drown out others with screams and threats? And why is the Christian faith, surely representing the most just of all causes, not an appealing option to kids looking for something to give themselves completely to?

I would argue that there are three features a cause offers, all of which meet legitimate needs for something bigger than ourselves.

Clarity, Challenge, and Community

Whatever you may think of Cancel Culture, Black Lives Matter, or Antifa, you’ve got to admit they offer clarity, making no bones about who they call Hero, Villain, or Victim. Join their ranks, and they’ll see to it that you’re well equipped for cultural warfare, with axioms and talking points intact. You may never examine the validity of those talking points, as I suspect many of their followers don’t. But you’ll surely be able to repeat them.

After clarity comes challenge. Call on the young to sacrifice for it, and watch what happens. As columnist Andrew Sullivan pointed out:

For many, especially the young, discovering a new meaning in the midst of the fallen world is thrilling. And Social Justice ideology does everything a religion should. And it provides a set of practices to resist and reverse … oppression.

That “set of practices” includes giving your all to the movement. It means being willing to practice whatever asceticism it requires, and taking up any form of guerilla warfare to further its goals. Boredom is common among the young and the restless (especially if too many things have already come too easily to them). So the challenge of a zealot’s life is most appealing.

So is the community it offers. Describing how affirmation from the pro-transgender cause met her need for community, one former transgender woman wrote:

You get people direct messaging you being like ‘Wow, this must be so hard for you, how can I help you?’ or like ‘You’re so brave.’ There’s just so much positive reinforcement that there’s just no room at all for any criticism or any thought that something bad could be happening.

Causes offer social bonding, in a time when much of what passes as friendship is nothing more than a few online clicks. Join a movement and you’ll get the rush of solidarity, a guarantee that you’re “one of us,” and the built-in privilege of community which comes with it.

Take A Hint, Church!                                                                     

This isn’t all wrong. Clarity, challenge, and community: These are human desires we’re talking about here.

Multitudes were attracted to Jesus because He spoke with unapologetic clarity (Matthew 7:29). What a contrast to the reticence many of today’s leaders show to teach clearly on salvation, sexuality, and justice! When addressing our young, where is our clarity?

Early believers saw the faith as something to live out and die for. They spoke of each other as soldiers, co-laborers, and athletes in training. They were comrades, not “besties.” Are we coddling our young people with distracting activities, when we should be challenging them to deny themselves and take up their crosses for an eternal reward?

The need for clarity, challenge, and community is, I believe, God-given. Many of today’s ungodly causes present themselves as an answer because they speak to those needs. So while grieving the choices of our young to embrace false solutions, we should ask with all humility: Can we complain about them following the counterfeit, if we’ve neglected to present the authentic?

Joe Dallas is an author, conference speaker, and ordained pastoral counselor. He directs a biblical counseling ministry for those dealing with sexual and relational problems, and with their families as well. He is the author of Desires in Conflict, The Game Plan, When Homosexuality Hits Home, Five Steps to Breaking Free from Porn and his latest, Speaking of Homosexuality.