Peter and Paul: Why Young Adults Need Grown-Up Models
Adopting Social Responsibility and the Common Good
Our culture has engineered an unprecedented phenomenon: biological adults living as social children well into their thirties. This extended adolescence represents one of the most destructive trends of our time, robbing young people of their potential while society celebrates their prolonged immaturity as some form of enlightened progress.
The numbers tell a sobering story. Young adults today delay marriage longer than any generation in recorded history, postpone having children until their fertility declines, and avoid taking on substantial responsibilities that previous generations embraced in their early twenties. Meanwhile, parents actively encourage this delay, warning their children against “settling down too early” and pushing them to “find themselves” instead of building families and serving their communities.
The Biological Reality We’re Ignoring
Human beings reach biological readiness for reproduction around fifteen years of age. This physiological fact hasn’t changed despite our social engineering. Yet our society treats twenty-five-year-olds as too young for marriage and thirty-year-olds as barely ready for serious commitment. We’ve created an artificial gap between biological capacity and social expectation that spans nearly two decades.
This disconnect produces profound consequences. Young people spend their most energetic, creative, and fertile years in a state of suspended animation: pursuing degrees that often lead nowhere, changing jobs every few years, and avoiding the very commitments that would give their lives meaning and purpose. They’re told this represents freedom when it actually represents a sophisticated form of cultural imprisonment.
Previous generations understood something we’ve forgotten: responsibility creates maturity, while extended freedom creates perpetual adolescence. When young people take on real stakes: marriage, children, community leadership, business ownership: they develop the character and wisdom that can only come from having others depend on them.
The Parental Conspiracy Against Adulthood
Modern parents have become unwitting accomplices in this cultural infantilization. Motivated by genuine love for their children, they deliver advice that ultimately stunts their development: “Don’t get married too young.” “Focus on your career first.” “You have plenty of time for kids later.” “Travel and experience life before you settle down.”
This counsel sounds reasonable until you examine its underlying assumptions. It presupposes that marriage and family represent burdens rather than sources of growth and fulfillment. It assumes that career advancement provides more satisfaction than raising children. It treats responsibility as something to be postponed rather than embraced as soon as one becomes capable.
The result is a generation of adults who reach their thirties having never learned to sacrifice for others, never experienced the profound satisfaction of building something lasting, and never developed the deep character that comes from shouldering real responsibility. They’ve been robbed of their most formative years by well-meaning advice that prioritized individual fulfillment over genuine human flourishing.
Peter: From Fisherman to Church Father
The apostle Peter provides a stark contrast to our contemporary model of extended adolescence. As a young man, Peter took on the demanding work of commercial fishing: a profession requiring physical strength, business acumen, and the ability to support a family. He married young, owned property, and bore responsibility for others’ livelihoods long before he encountered Jesus.
When Jesus called Peter, he didn’t tell him to “find himself” or “explore his options.” Instead, Jesus immediately gave him greater responsibility, training him to become a leader of the early church. Peter made mistakes: spectacular ones, including denying Jesus during the crucifixion: yet Jesus continued to entrust him with increasing authority.
By the time Peter preached at Pentecost, he had developed into a powerful leader capable of inspiring thousands and overseeing the explosive growth of early Christianity. This transformation occurred not because Peter avoided responsibility, but because he embraced it at every stage of his development. His willingness to take on real stakes: first as a fisherman and husband, then as an apostle: created the character necessary for world-changing leadership.
Paul: Radical Commitment in Youth
The apostle Paul presents an even more dramatic example of young adult responsibility and social impact. As a young Pharisee, Paul demonstrated such commitment to his beliefs that he actively persecuted Christians throughout the Roman Empire. While we reject his methods during this period, we cannot deny his seriousness of purpose and willingness to stake his life on his convictions.
After his conversion on the road to Damascus, Paul immediately embraced his new calling with the same intensity. He didn’t spend years in seminary or take time to “process” his experience. Instead, he began preaching within days and launched the missionary journeys that would establish Christianity throughout the Mediterranean world. Paul planted churches, trained leaders, wrote theological treatises, and endured imprisonment and persecution: all while most of his contemporary counterparts would still be considered “too young” for serious responsibility.
Paul’s impact on human history occurred precisely because he refused to treat his youth as a time for extended preparation rather than active engagement. He understood that character develops through taking on challenges that matter, not through avoiding them until some mythical moment of readiness arrives.
The Cost of Extended Adolescence
Our society’s embrace of extended adolescence has produced devastating consequences that extend far beyond individual disappointment. Birth rates have plummeted below replacement levels in virtually every developed nation, threatening the basic continuity of civilization. Young adults report unprecedented levels of depression, anxiety, and existential emptiness despite unprecedented material prosperity and personal freedom.
Meanwhile, the real work of building civilization: starting families, founding businesses, leading communities, creating lasting institutions: gets postponed indefinitely. We’ve created a culture that encourages people to spend their peak years consuming rather than contributing, exploring rather than committing, and preparing for life rather than living it.
This trend particularly damages young people themselves, who are designed to find meaning through service and sacrifice. When we deny them opportunities to take on real responsibility, we rob them of the primary source of human satisfaction and character development. They end up spending their most energetic years in pursuits that provide temporary pleasure while missing the deeper fulfillment that comes from building something lasting.
Calling Out the Adult in Every Young Person
The examples of Peter and Paul demonstrate what becomes possible when young people embrace responsibility rather than flee from it. Both men transformed not only their own lives through their willingness to take on serious commitments while young. Their decisiveness and acceptance of adult responsibility created ripple effects that continue shaping human history two millennia later.
Our culture needs a fundamental shift in how we approach young adulthood. Instead of encouraging extended exploration and delayed commitment, we should actively call young people into responsibility, leadership, and service from their earliest years of biological maturity. This means celebrating early marriage rather than discouraging it, supporting young entrepreneurs rather than pushing them toward corporate careers, and entrusting young adults with real authority rather than treating them as perpetual apprentices.
The goal isn’t to rush young people into adult roles they’re unprepared for, but to recognize that preparation comes through taking on responsibility, not through avoiding it. Peter became a great leader because Jesus gave him leadership opportunities while he was still making mistakes. Paul changed the world because he immediately embraced his calling rather than spending years getting ready for it.
Young adults today possess the same potential for world-changing impact that Peter and Paul demonstrated. They simply need a culture that calls them into greatness rather than encouraging them to postpone it indefinitely. The time has come to abandon our experiment in extended adolescence and return to the timeless truth that responsibility creates character, commitment builds wisdom, and early engagement with life’s deepest challenges produces the leaders our world desperately needs.
The question isn’t whether young adults are ready for real responsibility: the question is whether we’re ready to entrust them with it and support them as they rise to meet it.