Column | The message of ‘sin and grace’ provides guidance in an increasingly wider world, certainly to young people – says the 33 pastor

I am again in value on South Beveland, Biblebelt, and I am with Pastor Leendert van der Kuijl (33) among the Bibles in the parsonage. His wife and Van der Kuijl-Joosse (32) has just brought coffee and will thus get their four youngest children from school for the afternoon boterham, for which I am heartily invited. The oldest two, fifteen and thirteen, already go to high school and do not eat in the afternoon.

Why young people seem to feel more attracted to the Orthodox Faith, I want to know that. It Central Bureau of Statistics reported in April that the secularization has not increased further and on for the first time in years and on A Sunday evening in May I saw that the Adullamkerk was in value until last place with Forty, in their thirties, people in their twenties, teenagers, small children. The old days were in the minority. And nothing Happy Clappy and Jesus is Love. A sermon of an hour about the sixth commandment – « you will not kill » – and psalms sing on whole notes.

What does the pastor say? That he wonders whether the secularization is actually turning. « Also in our column » – Orthodox Reformed – « Is everything under pressure. In the past, everyone had a television and now everyone has a smartphone. The world also comes in with us and what do we get to see? What is being promoted? Without generalizing: that you have to be autonomous and must live according to your own morality, not according to God’s commandments. » And yes, the temptation could prove to be greater than the attraction of faith. And then? « That is bad. But the Lord will always maintain His Church, there will always be young people who get the belief in their hearts. And then it will not let them go. And what” – He sounds like He speaks from the pulpit – « Has God to offer? Very simple: that a life with him is the best life. »

Whether I know the first question of the catechism, the book in which the principles of faith are explained, and before I have shaken no, he quotes by heart: « What is your only comfort in life and in dying? That I am not of myself, not autonomously, but that I am owned by my Savior Jesus Christ. » That message of ‘sin and grace’ can, he says, provided that it is genuinely brought, giving it to which so many young people long for, in a world that becomes a day of the day.

He grew up in Alblasserdam, and although he went to church faithfully and read the Bible, the faith was not in his heart. « Not then yet. » He watched films and series in which it was cursed, in which it was about extra -marital sex, about murder and manslaughter, all sins against God’s commandments. In 3 HAVO, on the Reformed Guido de Brès in Rotterdam, he got to know Enike, the daughter of a pastor. They cycled home together, they had serious conversations and « one thing led to the other. » Enike became pregnant. That was again against God’s commandment, yes. They married and Leendert started working in a fish shop. And when, at the age of twenty -one, their second child was already born, the third was coming, everything changed. « Enikes Grandpa died. I stood by his grave and looked in my own grave. The word spoke to me: you will also have to die once. Yes, I thought, and then? How should I appear before God? »

Be continued.

Jannetje Koelewijn Replaces Gemma Venhuizen today

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