I’m 24, going on 25 next month, so I’m right in the bullseye for this topic. It’s interesting to read this report, as some of it I can certainly identify with. I was homeschooled by caring parents who instilled in me a healthy sense of self-worth, and I’ve basically been working since my pre-teen years. Seriously. I have done freelance Web development and graphics design, performed music, and made real cash for years already. I haven’t even gone to college, yet I own my own home. It’s definitely a strange new world from the one my parents inhabited.

The key question is whether all this opportunity, skill development, technological prowess, and self-esteem translates to having a genuine impact on the world or simply produces a bunch of selfish brats. Thankfully, my parents always challenged me to pursue what is noble and excellent and not settle for personal indulgence and trite fluff. Believe me, if I started to act like a hotheaded jerk, I definitely knew about it.

But I can see how us kids growing up on video games, iPods, wads of credit cards, and a doting parenting style end up thinking so highly of ourselves that we think the world owes us a living and how dare anyone expect us to tow the line and prove we got what it takes. And as for submitting to any kind of authority, ha! It’s a YouTube world now. Everyone is a celebrity, and we got it all figured out.

But what if the Millenials have a point? The “adults” don’t have it all figured out. Our world is on the verge of economic, spiritual, and governmental collapse because of failed institutions that were unable to live up to their expected potential. And whose job is it going to be to fix all of this? Us. We’re starting to become the next generation of leadership. We’re now beginning to launch the companies, the churches, the creative culture, and the policies which will dominate the first half of the 21st century. We’re moving forward so fast with our new technological, decentralized, equalized vision of the world that our mindset is completely different from those people 15-20 years older. They’re comfortable with e-mail. We’re on Facebook, AIM, Twitter, Digg, and bunch of other sites I can’t even keep track of (scary, isn’t it?). Heck, we’re inventing whole new planets in places like Second Life.

I don’t claim to know what the future holds, but one thing is for certain: Millennials are not impressed with the dregs of the 20th Century. It’s a bold new world out there, and we’re going to reinvent everything from the ground up. No stone will be left unturned, and why should it? The adults screwed up, right?

Except soon we’ll be the adults…and we’ll have kids…and thus the cycle repeats itself all over again….

We preach a lot about denying self, but what we don’t preach about as much is what joy, reward, and self-fulfillment there is in taking up the cross and following Jesus. Nothing that the world has to offer actually is self-fulfilling: it’s a lie. The glory of God and the beauty of His handiwork is more exciting, more diverse, and more worthy of extreme passion than rock music, Halo 3, Las Vegas, organic food, degrees, skateboards, or any other thing that Americans worship rather than the One Who created billions upon billions of stars, set the planets in orbit, designed the human brain, and loved each one of us so much that He materialized as a man just like us and died so that we might live forever.

I’m 25. Want to get people like us involved? Give us an idea worthy of our time. Sittin’ in a pew on Sunday morning and listening to another dull “spiritual” sermon or feel-good pop psychology pitch ain’t gonna cut it.