Saturday, 21 April 2012
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Are Christian Teenagers Practicing a "Fake" Faith?
[This is reposted as part of our Best-Of Revelife Week. It was originally posted on August 28, 2010.]Are you a Christian teenager? If you are, according to a recent CNN article, there's a good chance you're following a “mutant” Christianity that features a “watered-down faith” with a God “whose chief goal is to boost people's self-esteem.”
The article comes on the coattails of the recently released book Almost Christian, by Kenda Creasy Dean. Dean was inspired to write her book after interviewing Christian teenagers for a controversial research study. What she discovered, the article says, is that “most American teens who called themselves Christian were indifferent and inarticulate about their faith.”
Dean cites a number of reasons for this Christian apathy, focusing mostly on the faults of adults. “If teenagers lack an articulate faith, it may be because the faith we show them is too spineless to merit much in the way of conversation,” Dean writes.
I have to say, I kind of agree.
When I was in high school, I found myself in the midst of a spiritual crisis. I had always had questions about my faith, and while my parents did a great job of raising me in a Christian home, I found myself wondering more and more if I only believed because that's what I was told to do.
I became friends with a bunch of youth group kids and eventually began attending their youth service. At first, I was like a spiritual sponge. Even today, I look back on those first few months of youth group as some of the most challenging and most spiritually growing times of my life. I dove head-first into sermons, devotionals and scripture, but before long, I got bored.
Youth group had always been about being flashy and enticing. The day we got yelled at for playing “Jesus Freak” too loud during youth group was a day we secretly celebrated. We held concerts and parties after football games, and we lived to draw crowds. I had been one of those drawn in by the initial splendor and spectacle, but I found myself wanting more. I knew the faith of Christianity, but I still didn't know how to live it, and that fact bothered me.
Over time, the youth group dwindled. Many of my best friends – the very people who had encouraged me to attend in the first place – stopped coming around. I felt a distance between myself and them. They had convinced me of my faith, but I saw many of them abandoning it.
In the end, I got out. I moved to college and attended a great church that did challenge me, did provide the spiritual guidance I desired, and did teach me about the spiritual disciplines that have sustained my faith into adulthood, but I wonder what would have been different if I hadn't had that opportunity.
I don't know if this Christian apathy I saw and felt is the same thing Dean writes about in her book, but I have to say, I saw the same symptoms she describes. Perhaps my experience is not an isolated incident; perhaps we misunderstand what it means to teach teenagers. Maybe we put too much emphasis on the being relevant and edgy part of ministry and forget to teach kids how to be Christians.
Did you or do you attend youth group in high school? Or are you involved in youth ministry? What has your experience been? Do you see many people getting bored and leaving the faith? What could we do differently to keep kids involved in Christianity?
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Comments (11)
I didn't fit into my youth group, at all. I would look around the room and feel like I didn't get it. I'm glad I didn't. I see now that it was stupid, and real faith wasn't jumping around acting like your are on fire, or having an emotional breakdown, right after playing games where you eat as much jello as you can without puking. I'd just read my Bible and listen to Latin polyphony in my room and be a weirdo...but my faith continued.
I went to youth group. It was okay but I do wonder how many of the kids were actually believers. I say that because I didn't actually become a Christian until I was 23 even though I claimed to be a Christian when I was in high school.
Most youth groups tend to be weak because the center of focus is not on spiritual development, discipline, and integrity, but centers primarily on entertainment.
I do agree wholeheartedly that the adults and parents are largely to blame for the apathy of the youth toward their faith. Most christians have become spineless and can't' articulate their own faith very well either.
@dustysojourner@xanga - I went to a Lutheran grade school and conformation classes.....the only "spineless" people I met were the so called group leaders - who were only a little older than I - trying desperately to convince the intelligent and skeptical - like me - and through coercion - that a belief in a Jewish Zombie was going to somehow make us live forever.
The terms "watered down faith" is judgmental and seems to imply one knows what it means to be a real Christian. What is the measuring stick one uses to say person X practices a watered down Christianity and person Y is a real Christian? Usually, it is a clash of opinions on what the Bible teaches about how to be a Christian. These clashes of opinions are legion in present day Christendom as one can find by going to many Net Christian forums. Once there one finds more energy spent on attacking someone else's way of being a Christian than is spent on converting the non believer.
What many studies show is that young people--surprise, surprise--tend to be politically progressive. For many of them the question of same sex marriage, abortion, sex education, contraceptives has been decided in the affirmative. Some of the most dominant Christian voices today are opposed to all of these and others as well. So they reject an institution they see as conservative and reactionary, that is the church. But they are a very spiritual generation. They do believe in God, feel an affinity to Jesus the man and have a strong belief that they are called upon to do good and to love one another.
All in all, I don't really think Jesus would have called their beliefs watered down. But no doubt someone else's Jesus may do so.
Good post. Thanks for sharing your ideas.
I used to occasionally go to a Youth group while I was in High school, but it didn't really cut it for me. I agree with you in that many young adults/teenagers have NO IDEA how to articulate their faith, and this is absolutely terrible. But how I see it, I used to be like that for a long time. I was what some people call a "Cradle Catholic" and just did the bare minimum to be considered a Catholic. It wasn't until I became really good friends with someone who considered himself to be "Anti-Catholic" that I really started to dig deep and learn more about my faith.
I think many people live out a faith without ever "owning" it. I can honestly say although I was born and raised Catholic (Mass every Sunday/ Confession every 2 months/ followed the Commandments/ Knew the main stories of the Bible) I didn't OWN my faith until I was a Sophomore of College. The beautiful thing about the Catholic faith is that is so rich. After reading the Bible, there's the Catechism, so many writings of so many Saints, so many encyclicals from all the Popes... etc. Literally, if you thirst for more, it is available for you. You will never get bored. And that's where I am now. Always learning more, always growing, and trying my best to strengthen my friendship with Jesus in my journey of Faith. If you search for Christ with all your heart, you will without a doubt, find him. And if you continually search for Him, you will never get bored. How can you get bored with someone who is eternal and omnipotent? The Way, the Truth and The Light?
I think most teens/young adults need to figure it out themselves... or maybe have a stronger reason to look for it.
Young people are naturally enthusiastic and ignorant at the same time. Despite appearances, that is not a criticism but a mere observation. Put more positively, they are full of youthful energy and still learning about what they are enthusiastic about. Without adult guidance, adolescents tend to go off the deep-end; but adult guidance tends to be restrictive and so another natural young condition arises spontaneously: rebellion.
Regarding belief, whether political or religious, the young should recognise their own propensity to over-do most if not everything. Adults should be tolerant as far as possible and remember their own youthful enthusiasms about one thing or the other. It is also important for both to maintain humility. There is a form of ignorant arrogance going on with both groups: young people tend to think they know what's going on and that adults have somehow missed it; and adults tend to think they know something the young don't, when in fact it is often just weariness.
I've been a teenager a handful of times and have come to the conclusion regarding the essence of set idealistic themes, eg, political ideals and religious truths, that I really don't know any more than the first time I was a teen. I'm tempted to put labels here to denote where I think I stand on such matters but I've been fighting for a lifetime not to put things in boxes for convenience and usually fail due to idleness. But I'll try this time.
As has become a irregular habit of mine, I'll put this comment on my blog to elicit further thoughts by me and possible contributions from others to better extend my own understanding of what the blazes I'm on about here.
I think Christianity is just evolving and changing. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that because the sects that are more open to accommodating for the times we're living in are having it much easier than those who are still holding onto rules from the past that are hard to apply in today's times.
As a non-Christian teen, I HAD to fake it because of the persecution and trouble I would face. I was raised in an environment where nonbelievers were evil scumbags.
All of my youth groups drove me insane because they were packed with non-thinking Stepford children who would believe anything an adult in the room would tell them.
lol... so close yet so far.
I think that the trouble with owning your faith really doesn't come into play unless you've been through enough life experiences to test your faith to see how strong it is.
Personally, I never went to a youth group. But I knew one girl who claimed to be Christian and has done very unlike Christian things. But, while I've never directly seen her do inappropriate actions, I had my doubts about her actions, not her beliefs.