Oliver Twist and Graham Kendrick

Friday night I went to Pizza Hut with the youth club I run as part of my work. A night out with pizza and young people is usually a good fun evening. However, this occasion was particularly engaging. As it turned out I was on a table with just one of our young people - a teenager with cerebral palsy. We often have discussions about faith and the world as his family are members of a local Anglican church. Tonight was no different.

We had a brief discussion about the theology of 'Shine Jesus shine.' He comes at the world from a very literal perspective which really made me think about what it meant to have Jesus shining on us - when he obviously doesn't literally shine on us. It was useful because we were singing this hymn today at church. I wonder how often we pick hymns and songs without fully thinking through the meaning of the words - or how we explain the images they talk of.

However, by far the biggest discussion was about Oliver Twist. This lad is appearing in a production of Oliver at his school. The discussion wasn't much about his role in the play, but rather about how upset the story made him - especially when Oliver wasn't allowed any more to eat. He couldn't understand a world where children didn't have enough to eat, where people had to steal to survive, where children were mistreated. He also couldn't understand why Dickens would want to write such an upsetting story.

This challenged me because I haven't tried engaging the young people I work with in issues of social justice enough. However, it also encouraged me because if we can encourage more young people to feel passionate about such issues as child neglect and poverty, then maybe, just maybe, we may have a better future. Charles Dickens wrote stories to challenge his society, I believe that we need modern day stories to do the same.