Though some young people believe in God, it is very hard for them to rid themselves of the bad habit of liking to play computer games. What kinds of things do computer games tend to involve? They contain a great deal of violence. Gaming—that is the realm of the devil. For most, after playing these games for a long time, they cannot do any real work anymore; they no longer want to go to school, or work, or think of their futures, much less do they give thought to their lives. What things are the hearts of young people in society now filled with? Apart from eating, drinking, and having fun, their hearts are filled with playing games. Everything they say and think is absurd and inhuman. One cannot even use the words “dirty” or “evil” anymore to describe the things they think about; they are not things that those with normal humanity ought to have, they are all absurd, inhuman things. If you speak about matters or topics to do with normal humanity, they cannot bear to hear about it; they are neither interested nor willing to listen, and they will even feel antipathy toward you. They do not share a common language or common topics with normal people. All their topics concern eating, drinking, and having fun. Their hearts are filled with worldly trends. What future prospects do they have? Do they have futures? (No, these people will go to waste.) “Waste” is a very appropriate word. What does this mean? Can they engage in the activities in which normal humanity should engage? (No.) These people put no effort into their studies, and if one were to have them work hard at their jobs, would they be willing to? (No.) What would they think? They would think, “What’s the point in working? This work is so tiring. What can I gain by it? Nothing except being tired and in pain. Playing games is so much more fun, relaxing, and enjoyable! When I’m in front of a computer, and live in a virtual world, I have everything.” If you made them work from nine to five, getting to work on time and working fixed hours, how would they feel about that? Would they be willing to stick to that schedule and be bound in this way? (No.) When people are constantly playing games and wasting time on the computer, after a while their will disappears and they become decadent. Unbelievers enjoy following trends and they like fashions, especially young people, and the majority of them do not attend to their proper jobs or walk the right path; their parents are unable to manage them, their teachers can do nothing with them, and there is nothing any country’s education system can do about this trend. Devils and Satan do things in order to tempt people and bring them to depravity. Those who live in the virtual world have no interest whatsoever in anything to do with the life of normal humanity; they are just not in the mood to work or study. Their only concern is playing games, as though they are being enticed by something. Scientists have claimed that as soon as people who play games get into character in a game, their brains start to secrete something that makes them excited and even somewhat delusional, and they then become addicted to playing games and are always thinking about playing them. Whenever they get bored or are in the midst of doing some proper work, they want to play games instead, and gradually, gaming becomes their whole life. Playing games is like taking a kind of drug: Once someone becomes addicted to it, it becomes hard to quit and hard to get away from—it ruins them. Whether young or old, once people pick up this bad habit, they have a hard time giving it up. Some children stay up and play games all night long, night after night, and their parents are neither able to control nor watch them, so the kids end up gaming themselves to death in front of the computer. How did they die? Scientific evidence says that their brain was damaged—they played themselves to death. Would you say that gaming is something that normal people should do? If it were needed for people’s normal humanity—if it were the right path—then why are people unable to quit doing it? How can they be captivated by it to such a degree? One thing this proves is that gaming is not a good path. Spending all day lost in the internet, surfing online for this and that, looking at unhealthy things, and playing games—playing at such things all day can only make people degrade themselves with meaningless things, and hurt and harm people. None of these are right paths. These days teenagers, young people, and even the middle-aged and elderly are all playing videogames. There are more and more people playing them. Though most people are aware that this is not a good thing, they cannot help themselves. This gaming is doing harm to the younger generations, and it has harmed a great many people. And how do games come about? Do they not come from Satan? There are some absurd types who say, “Videogames are a symbol of modern scientific advancement—they’re scientific achievements.” And what of this explanation? It is disgusting! Gaming is not a good path, and it is not the right one! This gaming is not simply a matter of following social trends, even unbelievers say that gaming kills your sense of purpose. If you cannot quit something as simple as this, if you cannot control yourself in this regard, then you are in danger. Nowadays, it is common for people to play videogames and do drugs, regardless of whether they are young or old, and the whole world is like this. No matter how long you have believed in God, if you cannot even keep something like playing videogames under control, then one day, when you feel that believing in God is pointless, boring, and dull, will you not begin to do drugs and experiment with all kinds of stimulants like unbelievers do? This is incredibly dangerous! You may believe in God, but you have no foundation and you have not gained the truth, so you are still completely in danger of betraying Him. You may very well fall down in the face of anything that befalls you. There are so many temptations in this evil world, and Satan uses all manner of ways to seduce those who believe in God but do not pursue the truth. If you do not regularly eat and drink God’s words and your heart and mind are often blank, then you are very much in danger. Is your heart blank most of the time? Young people are blank much of the time! It is very dangerous to leave this problem unsolved. Since you believe in God, you should read more of His words, and when you are able to accept some of the truth, it will be a turning point, and you will be able to escape this dangerous time and stand firm in the church.

More and more young people are joining God’s house and quite a few of them are in their twenties. They are in the prime of life, they have not yet determined their life goals, they have no aspirations, and they do not yet understand what life is. And what is manifested in these people? I have two expressions for you: youthful hubris and undiscerning. And why do I say that? Let us first discuss what is meant by “youthful hubris.” Can you explain what “youthful hubris” is? What sort of disposition is it? What sort of manifestations does it have? (It is when people think that whatever they like is the best, that whatever they imagine is correct, and aren’t willing to listen to anyone.) In a word, this kind of disposition is “arrogant.” This is the typical disposition of people in this age group. No matter what their living environment or background is like, or what generation they are from, everyone in this age group possesses the hubris of youth. And why do I say this? It is not that I am biased against them or think little of them, rather it is that people in this age group harbor a kind of disposition, it is an extremely arrogant, frivolous, and prideful disposition. Since they do not have a lot of worldly experience and they understand so little of life, the moment they encounter some things in the world or in life, they think, “I understand, I’ve figured it out, I know everything now! I can understand what older people are saying and keep up with what’s popular in society. Look how fast cell phones are developing now and how complex all of their features are. I know it all, not like you older folks who don’t understand anything.” When an older person comes to them for help with something, they will even say, “When people become old, they’re useless. They can’t even use a computer, what’s the point of them even living?” What is this? This is a manifestation of the hubris of youth. Young people have better memories and accept new ideas faster, and whenever they learn something new, they look down on older people. This is a corrupt disposition. And is this kind of disposition the disposition of normal humanity? Would it be considered a manifestation of normal humanity? (It wouldn’t.) That is why it is called youthful hubris. Why then is it called “hubris” and not “arrogance”? Because it is a disposition unique to young people—they learn one small thing and they become smug, they do not know their place in the universe, and they treat the thing that they have learned as capital. People are all like this when they are young, until they grow a little older, understand a bit more, and experience more of life’s ups and downs. Then they become more mature and stabler, and prefer to comport themselves in a humbler way—they do not make a big deal of it when they learn to do something, and they do not become upset when they cannot do something. Young people are incredibly conceited: Whenever they learn to do something they have to show it off, and they feel smug. Sometimes, when they get excited, they begin to feel that they have surpassed everybody else, that the world is not big enough for them, and they wish that they could live on another planet instead. This is hubris. Youthful hubris is primarily marked by an ignorance of one’s place in the universe and of what people need and what path they should follow in life, what conditions are dangerous to live in, and what they should be doing. It is as people often say: “They’re undiscerning, and they don’t know about life.” People in this age group have this disposition of hubris, so they reveal these things. There are young people who think that everyone is beneath them, and when you say something that they do not like, they will simply ignore you. It is hard for parents to figure out what young people are thinking—one wrong word and they throw a tantrum and go off in a huff. It is difficult to communicate with them. Why is it that parents these days find it hard to manage and educate their children? It is not because the parents are poorly educated and do not understand the minds of young people, it is that the thinking of young people has become abnormal. Young people all love worldly trends, and they are held captive by them; they are all Satan’s sacrificial victims, they are becoming depraved too fast, and it is hard for them to wake up to this. That is why it is not easy being a parent—some parents even go out of their way to learn child psychology in order to educate their children. Many children nowadays are suffering from strange diseases like autism and depression, making them hard to manage. People do not have a path or a clear explanation for these problems, and intellectuals in schools and society have invented phrases like “rebellious mentality” or “rebellious phase.” Why did these terms not exist in earlier generations? Science today has advanced far, and all kinds of odd phrases have come about; this mankind is becoming more and more depraved, and the things of normal humanity are dwindling—is this not brought about by the evil trends of society? (It is.) And so, the reason why you young people are able to sit here now, with a sincere desire to hear Me speak, listening to Me fellowship like this, is not because any of you are great, and willing to choose the path of pursuing the truth—it is because of the grace of God, it is because God has not given you over to the world or to Satan. You see those young people in society who do not believe in God no matter who tries to persuade them to. It would be no use even if I spoke to them. Is that just a matter of youthful hubris? What kind of people are they? If they do not possess conscience or reason, then they are nothing but beasts and devils! If you speak to them with human words, will they be able to understand? It is no longer an issue of them being difficult to communicate with, it is that they absolutely refuse to listen. It is by God’s grace and protection that you are able to accept His work now, to understand His words, and to have an interest in the path of the truth! And so, you must cherish this chance to do your duty, and strive to firmly plant a foundation in your belief in God during this time. Then you will be secure, and you will not be easily swept away by these evil trends. As soon as people are caught by these evil trends, they are easily swept away by them, and when you are swept away by them again, will God want you? No, He will not! He has already given you a chance, and God absolutely will not want you anymore. When God does not want you, you will be in danger, and you will be capable of anything.

Now that we’ve discussed the “hubris of youth,” let us talk about “undiscerning.” “Undiscerning” is a somewhat formal term. Go ahead and explain what it means literally. (It’s when a person can’t tell good from bad, and they think that what they consider to be good will always be good, and that what they consider to be bad will always be bad, and no matter how things are explained to them, they won’t listen.) (It’s when someone doesn’t know right from wrong, and lacks discernment.) That’s more or less its literal meaning—not being able to tell right from wrong, and not knowing which things are positive and which are negative. Because of their youthful hubris, nothing that people say gets through to them, they think: “Whatever anyone else says is wrong, and what I say is right. No one should try to tell me how things are, I won’t listen to them. I’m going to be really stubborn, and I’ll keep being stubborn and insist on my ideas, even when I’m wrong.” This is the kind of disposition they have—they are undiscerning. On the surface, they can spout doctrine after doctrine, and they can talk about them more clearly and comprehensibly than anyone else, so why is it that they always become muddled and confused when it comes time to act? They know full well what is right, but they just won’t listen—they do as they like, and act however they please. This is capriciousness, and it is absurd. People who follow the trends of the world are pretty absurd. They are into parkour and bungee jumping, and they like finding excitement in all kinds of extreme sports. Is this not absurd? Are you all into parkour as well? (I was.) And why did you like it? Did you not know that parkour is dangerous? Did you not know that you’re risking your life when you do parkour? People are not spiders or geckos. If they climb a wall, they’re sure to fall. Humans do not have that ability, and it is not something possessed by those with normal humanity. How could you like it? It is because these things can give people a kind of visual and emotional stimulation, that is why people want to do parkour. What is it that governs this thinking? Does it come from “Spider-Man”? Is there not a mentality and a desire deep within man that wants to save the world, to be a superhero? There are flying heroes in lots of films and TV shows who fly about and flit from rooftop to rooftop, and people really admire them. That is how these things are planted in young people’s minds. And how are they able to be poisoned like this? This has to do with people’s preferences and pursuits. Every person wants to be a hero, to be a superman, to have special powers, so they worship Satan. Tell Me, do normal people like these absurd things? Do normal people possess these special powers? Certainly not. Were all these things not made up and imagined by people? If these strange things actually existed, would those who had them not be possessed by evil spirits? Was there parkour in the time of Adam and Eve? Is there anything about parkour written in the Bible? (No.) Parkour is the product of the wicked, modern society; it is one of the ways that Satan misleads and corrupts people. Satan takes advantage of young people’s proclivity for the bizarre and the exciting, and concocts, dreams up, and plays out some stories. This is how it misleads these undiscerning teenagers, leading them to pursue the weird and thrilling special powers of Satan. Is it not poisoning people? These things become poison the moment they enter people’s minds. And if you cannot recognize this poison, you cannot completely renounce it, and you will never be rid of its influence, disturbance, and control. Can this poison be removed easily? (Not easily.) How can this problem be solved? Some people are loath to let go of these things. They think these things are nice and not poisons, and they can’t let go of them when they think like this. Therefore, to keep yourself from falling for Satan’s temptations, you must do your utmost to keep away from that which can corrode your heart and poison you while your stature is still small, because you lack discernment, and you are still silly and full of hubris. You have not equipped yourself with enough positive things, and you do not possess any of the truth reality. To speak in the words of faith, you have no life and no stature. What you have is only a bit of readiness, a willingness to believe in God. You think that believing in God is good, that it is the right path to walk and the way to be a good person, yet you ponder: “I’m not a bad person among unbelievers, I like parkour but I haven’t done anything wrong, I’m still a good person.” Does this accord with the truth? Do you think that you do not have a corrupt disposition just because you have not done anything wrong? You live within evil trends, that is enough to show that your heart is filled with evil things.

Tell Me, is a person influenced much by their environment? You are doing your duty in the church now, that is the environment that you are in; you are with your brothers and sisters every day and surrounded by people who believe in God, and you are steadfast in your belief in God too. If you were placed among unbelievers, if you were made to stay among them, would you still have God in your heart? If you were in contact with them or lived among them, would you not follow trends just like they do? Some say, “It’s fine, I have God looking after me and protecting me, so I would never walk down that path.” Do you dare to make that pledge? So long as you love and pursue these things, you are capable of willfully following trends. Even though you will know that it is wrong in your heart, you will just casually say to yourself, “Forgive me, God, this was wrong of me.” Over time, you will stop feeling guilty or anything else at all, and you will ponder: “Where is God, anyway? Why have I not seen Him?” You will constantly doubt God, and the faith that you once had will disappear, bit by bit. By the time your heart thoroughly denies God, you will no longer want to follow Him or do anything to do with your duty, and you will even regret that you chose to perform a duty in the first place. Why are people able to change so easily? In truth, it isn’t that you changed—it is that you never had the truth reality in the first place. Though, on the surface, you believe in God and do your duty, the worldly and satanic thoughts, views, ways of interacting with people, and corrupt disposition within you have never been cleared out, and you are still filled with satanic things. You still live by those things, that is why you are still small in stature. You are still in a dangerous stage; you are not yet secure or safe. So long as you have a satanic disposition, you will continue to resist and betray God. To resolve this problem, you must first understand which things are evil and of Satan, how they are harmful, why Satan does these things, what kinds of poison people suffer when they accept them, and what those people will become, as well as what kind of person God asks people to be, what things are of normal humanity, what things are positive, and what things are negative. You will only have a path if you have discernment and are able to see these things clearly. Moreover, on the positive side, you must also perform your duty proactively while offering up your sincerity and loyalty. Do not be slippery or slack off, do not approach your duty or that which God has entrusted to you from the perspective of unbelievers or with the philosophies of Satan. You must eat and drink more of God’s words, seek to understand all aspects of the truth, and clearly understand the significance of performing a duty, and then practice and enter into all aspects of the truth while doing your duty, and gradually come to know God, His work, and His disposition. In this way, without you knowing it, your inner state will change, there will be more positive and active things within you, and fewer negative and passive things, and your ability to discern things will become stronger than before. When you grow to this extent in stature, you will have discernment of all kinds of people, events, and things in this world, and you will be able to see through to the essence of problems. Were you to see a film made by unbelievers, you would be able to perceive what poisons people might suffer from after watching it, as well as what Satan intends to instill and plant in people through these means and trends, and what it intends to erode in people. You will gradually be able to see through to these things. You will not be poisoned after watching the film, and you will have discernment of it—that is when you will truly have stature.

After watching a few superhero and fantasy movies, some young people are infected with a desire—they wish that they could have extraordinary abilities like the main characters. Are they not poisoned like this? Could you be harmed by that poison if you did not watch those films? You could not. What do I mean by this? It is that you live in an evil society, so when you are small in stature and lack discernment, you can be dominated by things that belong to evil trends because you encountered them first, and you will treat them as positive things, and as normal and proper things. This is one way that Satan poisons people. Tell Me, is Satan not evil? Satan has so many ways to corrupt people! It may be said that anybody who has seen these kinds of movies has this sort of desire. There was one kid who saw a fantasy film and would run around his yard riding a broomstick whenever he had some spare time. At first, he could not fly however he tried, and then one day he really began to fly. He did not fly on his own, it was an outside force that was making him fly. After he started flying, he could not help but let out the same strange scream as the character did in the movie; a kind of spirit had entered into him. Is riding a broomstick part of normal human life? You can ride a horse or a donkey, why do you have to ride a broomstick and fly? Is this something that is possible? You can tell right away that it is not something that normal people do. Broomsticks cannot fly, they can only fly with the help of evil spirits, so it is the work of Satan and evil spirits. Satan and evil spirits do astonishing, strange, and ridiculous things that normal people do not do. Do you have a little discernment of the things that Satan does? What sort of attitude should you have toward those things? Should you not renounce them? You should reflect on yourself when you have time, checking to see what bizarre things remain in your mind. Why do you have many strange things in your mind? Because people of your generation have been poisoned so much—you all want to flit from rooftop to rooftop, to be Spider-Man or Batman, and to become a superior being. This is not what people with normal humanity should have or possess. If you insist on seeking things that are not needed by those with normal humanity, and if you work persistently to try and experience them, you may attract the work of evil spirits. People are in trouble when they become possessed by evil spirits, they are taken captive by Satan, and then they are in danger. How can this problem be solved? People should regularly call upon God. They must not fall into temptation or be misled by Satan. In this evil age where demons and unclean spirits swarm and run rampant, if you can pray for God’s grace and protection to always be with you, and ask Him to look after you and protect you, so that your heart does not stray from Him, and you are able to worship God with honesty and with your heart, is this not the right path? (It is.) And are you willing to walk this path? Are you willing to live always under God’s care and protection, and under His discipline, or do you want to live within your own free world? If God disciplines you, it may at times make you suffer a little physically. Are you willing to undergo that? (Yes.) You say that you are willing now, but you may start grumbling when you are faced with the reality of it. It is not enough to be willing to suffer, you must also have the will to strive toward the truth. You can only stand firm when you understand the truth. It is concerning that young people are so unsteady, that they do not attend to their proper duties or have the proper things in mind, and that they are not willing to read God’s words or to strive toward the truth—this is dangerous. It is hard to say whether their outcome will be life or death. There are some young people today that have listened to sermons for several years; they have begun to take an interest in the truth, and they are willing to take notes when they listen to sermons. They feel a kind of hunger and thirst for righteousness, and they are able to understand the truth. This means that they already have a foundation, and so long as the truth takes root in their hearts, they will be much more secure. If they keep striving toward the truth, this will guarantee that they are able to understand the truth, enter into the truth reality, and achieve salvation.