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Your Teen Needs To Know Why They Should Keep The Commandments

By Chuck Zulanas

The top five commandments that I know that teens will likely struggle with (based on personal experience) are the following.:

  1. The Law Of Chastity
  2. Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness
  3. Keep The Sabbath Day Holy
  4. Pray Always
  5. Be Not Drunk

I believe that teens struggle keeping these commandments because of the question, “Why?” And because people have not been adequately equipped to answer this question, this has been a likely reason why religious attendance has been declining throughout the world: 

  • From 1986 to 2016, the number of American young adults (ages 18 to 29) that were unaffiliated with religion had almost quadrupled (10% to 39%) (Riess 2016). 
  • 70 – 88% of children from Christian families become unaffiliated with religion by the time they end their freshman year in college (Gunn & Fernandez 2012). 
  • A majority of Europeans ages 16 to 29 do not affiliate with a religion (Sherwood 2018). 

I hope that your teen is not as easily dissuaded about their faith as these students I’m citing. To try to help you with reasoning with your teen to help them strength their faith, I wrote a book documenting the main quantifiable academic research benefits of keeping the commandments. I also included some of the basic Christian scientific evidence of God. Jesus stated that evidence is a touchstone of Christian faith:

  • “If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him” (John 10:37-38).

It is truly in seeing the results that we can have additional faith. So here’s some academic explanations for why your teens should keep these top 5 commandments that they likely struggle to keep, taken directly from my book “Why You Should Keep The Commandments”:

The Law Of Chastity

Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness

  • Studies found 2x less stress, fewer headaches, better sleep, fewer sore throats, and better relationships among study participants that were not allowed to lie for 10 weeks. The participants who had the most benefits were coached on how to not lie if they were in a situation when they wanted to lie, which included omitting truths, keeping secrets, or refusing to answer questions. However, the participants were not allowed to say anything they knew to be false (Kelly & Wang 2012).

Keep The Sabbath Day Holy

Pray Always

Be Not Drunk

  • Alcohol may be consumed before 18% of suicides, 18% of interpersonal violence incidents and 27% of traffic injuries (World Health Organization 2018). 
  • Alcohol may be responsible for 13% of epilepsy cases, 48% of liver cirrhosis cases, 26% of mouth cancer cases, 26% of pancreatitis cases, 20% of tuberculosis cases, 11% of colorectal cancer cases, 5% of breast cancer cases and 7% of hypertensive heart disease cases (World Health Organization 2018).

I hope that you may teach your teens about the benefits and evidence that God exists and that He wants what’s best for them. If you would like to learn about some more of the academic research benefits for 22 other commandments in the Bible, you can read my book: “Why You Should Keep The Commandments: Evidence Of God, The Bible And Research Benefits Of Keeping The Commandments”