Kids (already) are religious.

I had the honor of serving as a chaperone at a religious retreat for high school aged kids.  Watching them together participating in their own formal worship and fellowship, I came to a realization that these are very religious people, it's just that their religion looks different than adult worship.

As I considered what I was witnessing, I was reminded that babies are a manifestation of God, their path to adulthood is often a drifting away from their inner deity which too infrequently they manage to find again later in life.

These kids seemed to me to be deeply connected to each other.  Adult worship is oriented primarily to the individual and produces collective by-products.  These kids' worship was primarily collective with individual by-products.  It is we adults who force divisive notions of right and wrong into their heads.  For us, religion is a math equation.  For them, its an exploration of each other and the rest of things.  They fight it at first, but eventually, they give up and we win.  I guess.

Maybe, at church, the real worship is done by the youth while we adults sit in a row and face forward.  Maybe we don't send them out of our services to get a little peace and quiet, they send us out of theirs to get rid of our silliness.  And then when we take that away from them, they disappear, never to be seen again.