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Christians Should Make a Difference

Here you and I are, just starting our day with a bowl of Cap'n Crunch, and people are out there making changes in the way we are governed. And there are other people out there studying the impact it makes on people. 

So what changes and what impact are we talking about today? The impact made on high school students when states change the policies about same-sex marriages. You can read the article here for yourself, but here is a summary of their findings;
This difference-in-differences analysis of representative data from 47 states found that same-sex marriage policies were associated with a 7% reduction in the proportion of all high school students reporting a suicide attempt within the past year. The effect was concentrated among adolescents who were sexual minorities.
Translation: They asked adolescents who would identify as something other than heterosexual if they had attempted suicide before and after the legalization of same-sex marriages. 

Please note, that while I regularly look to use snark in my writing, this isn't one of those times. Suicide is the second leading cause of adolescent death. Is the research limited? Yes, but isn't all research? Do they acknowledge that there are many reasons adolescents attempt suicide? Yes. 

The research isn't what bothers me, nor are the findings. I'm not surprised to hear that adolescents who believe they can attain what they see as a normal life, including the possibility of marriage, would be less likely to want to end their lives. 

Check out part of their analysis on the findings;
Legalization of same-sex marriage is also often accompanied by media attention and increased visibility of sexual minorities, which is associated with increased social support for the rights of sexual minorities. This increased social support could translate into improved familial and peer acceptance of sexual minorities, which has been shown to be associated with improved mental health.
What does it say about the church and our society that teens who identify as homosexual need the government to step in and tell them they are acceptable as a part of society.

We can argue all day about what is right and what is wrong, but I believe the church, that is, the people that make up the church, should be the difference makers in statistics such as these. We should be the ones that people point to and say, 'They really made a difference in my life. They showed me that life was worth living.'

I fear that we, as Christians, would instead be labeled as those who made others feel judged and insignificant. If we, who know the Creator, can't pass along to others a sense of purpose and belonging, then what exactly are we spending our time on?
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