Identity debate goes beyond identity politics. It begins with the bathroom mirror.

Each morning young teenagers look at themselves in the mirror and grimace that they are not as beautiful as the celebrities they follow on social media.

Mental health

This narcissism is leading to mental health issues that cost the tax payer as well as ruining the lives of young people.

Narcissism is also being identified as a detrimental element in corporate and political life, but it is not being traced to its roots. Adult narcissism begins in youth.

To solve the detrimental effect of narcissim, teenagers need to be told that they are valuable in God’s sight whatever their peers may think of them.

Jesus Christ teaches us counter-cultural thinking as well as critical thinking, which release people from the bondage of peer-group pressure, and the narcissism it promotes.

The colour debate

This would also help those upset by the colour of their skin, or the sex that they are born with, and even where they are born and to whom they were born.

Let these young people know that Jesus Christ has good news for them. They need to hear His teaching, but cancel culture is doing what it can to stop it reaching their ears.

There are some things that we cannot change in life, and some that we can, to which Reinhold Niebuhr drew attention in his oft quoted and oft modified Serenity Prayer. It drew attention to the courage needed to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be, and the insight amd wisdom to know the difference.

This wisdom is at a premium in our woke society, which claims to wakening up from a deep slumber. At least there is an acknowledgement that people have been asleep. Jesus drew attention to this two thousand years ago and the apostle Paul after him: “Awake, and Christ shall give you light.”

The Bible tells us that the beginning of wisdom is reverence for God.

A sense of proportion

For a sense of proportion, how does the colour of one’s skin in the mirror compare to little children dying in Gaza?

It is time to deliver young people from the false religions that give them little hope as they grow up.

The mantras of secular religion, so well publicised on social media and reported by the mainstream media, are misleading young people. It is time to introduce them to the true love explained by Jesus Christ instead of the specious substitute offered by secular society.