rethinking biblical christianity...
Here is a link to the December 2011 issue of the online journal, Perspectives: A Journal of Reformed Thought. It contains a review by me of C. John Collins’s Did Adam and Eve Really Exist? Who They are and Why You Should Care (Crossway, 2011).
Collins and I spoke at the same event in October (gathering of pastors in NYC). Collins is thoughtful, well-spoken, and articulate, but we certainly saw matters very differently. Those differences are laid out more clearly here in this review.
Dear Self,
Here are things you can’t control:
Here is something you can control:
There’s more, but this should be enough to keep you occupied in 2012.
Sincerely,
Self
I don’t normally get emotional at the Dollar Tree. I mean, the prices are great, but I usually don’t get choked up about it.
I was getting into my car, and parked beside me–crooked–was a white Civic. A elderly woman got out. She walked around the car slowly.
She was carrying an oxygen tank with those damn tubes coming out of her nose–the ones that tell everyone “doctors are keeping me alive.”
She was about 5’4″, white haired, hunched over, clearly having trouble, but stubborn, independent, determined, and entirely alert.
She reminded me of my mom.
“Do you need some help?”
“Well….I’m just wondering if I need to pull further in.”
“Nah, you’re fine. A little crooked, but that’s OK.”
“You think so?… Which way are you headed?”
“Nowhere in particular.”
“Could you lend me your arm and walk me to the Dollar Tree?”
“Sure….”
“My mom used to have an oxygen tank.”
“Oh. How does she do with it?”
“She passed away a few years ago. She lived alone and I always wondered if people were helping her when they saw she needed it.”
“I live alone, too. I get a lot of help. I go to mass everyday. People help me and they have an elevator.”
“Where do you go to mass?”
“St. Stan’s.”
“….What level are you set at?”
“Pretty high. 3.”
“Oh that’s not so bad. My mom was like an 8, I think. Well…here we are. Do you want a shopping cart to hold on to while you’re walking?”
‘Yes. They help a lot….Thank you. Have a good year.”
I wondered whose mother this was and whether she will see 2013.
A brief moment–talking to and holding the arm of a woman who reminded me so much of my mom.
It’s the week between Christmas and my birthday. Maybe I’m subconsciously more alert to such things. I’ll bet that had something to do with it.
I might not have noticed her next week–which would have been a shame.
Have you seen the 2011 Barna survey on American Christianity? Below are the six primary reasons why young adults leave the church.
With Christmas upon us, I may have to hold off on making some comments (though I have highlighted some things that struck me). All of these reasons resonate with me on some level as I have interacted with college students over the years. The question is, how should these issues be addressed?
I have written a fair amount on #s 3 and 6–the latter in blog posts and the former in blog posts and my upcoming book, The Evolution of Adam, where I try to address this very problem.
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Reason #1 – Churches seem overprotective. A few of the defining characteristics of today’s teens and young adults are their unprecedented access to ideas and worldviews as well as their prodigious consumption of popular culture. As Christians, they express the desire for their faith in Christ to connect to the world they live in. However, much of their experience of Christianity feels stifling, fear-based and risk-averse. One-quarter of 18- to 29-year-olds said “Christians demonize everything outside of the church” (23% indicated this “completely” or “mostly” describes their experience). Other perceptions in this category include “church ignoring the problems of the real world” (22%) and “my church is too concerned that movies, music, and video games are harmful” (18%).
Reason #2 – Teens’ and twenty-somethings’ experience of Christianity is shallow. A second reason that young people depart church as young adults is that something is lacking in their experience of church. One-third said “church is boring” (31%). One-quarter of these young adults said that “faith is not relevant to my career or interests” (24%) or that “the Bible is not taught clearly or often enough” (23%). Sadly, one-fifth of these young adults who attended a church as a teenager said that “God seems missing from my experience of church” (20%).
Reason #3 – Churches come across as antagonistic to science. One of the reasons young adults feel disconnected from church or from faith is the tension they feel between Christianity and science. The most common of the perceptions in this arena is “Christians are too confident they know all the answers” (35%). Three out of ten young adults with a Christian background feel that “churches are out of step with the scientific world we live in” (29%). Another one-quarter embrace the perception that “Christianity is anti-science” (25%). And nearly the same proportion (23%) said they have “been turned off by the creation-versus-evolution debate.” Furthermore, the research shows that many science-minded young Christians are struggling to find ways of staying faithful to their beliefs and to their professional calling in science-related industries.
Reason #4 – Young Christians’ church experiences related to sexuality are often simplistic, judgmental. With unfettered access to digital pornography and immersed in a culture that values hyper-sexuality over wholeness, teen and twentysometing Christians are struggling with how to live meaningful lives in terms of sex and sexuality. One of the significant tensions for many young believers is how to live up to the church’s expectations of chastity and sexual purity in this culture, especially as the age of first marriage is now commonly delayed to the late twenties. Research indicates that most young Christians are as sexually active as their non-Christian peers, even though they are more conservative in their attitudes about sexuality. One-sixth of young Christians (17%) said they “have made mistakes and feel judged in church because of them.” The issue of sexuality is particularly salient among 18- to 29-year-old Catholics, among whom two out of five (40%) said the church’s “teachings on sexuality and birth control are out of date.”
Reason #5 – They wrestle with the exclusive nature of Christianity. Younger Americans have been shaped by a culture that esteems open-mindedness, tolerance and acceptance. Today’s youth and young adults also are the most eclectic generation in American history in terms of race, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, technological tools and sources of authority. Most young adults want to find areas of common ground with each other, sometimes even if that means glossing over real differences. Three out of ten young Christians (29%) said “churches are afraid of the beliefs of other faiths” and an identical proportion felt they are “forced to choose between my faith and my friends.” One-fifth of young adults with a Christian background said “church is like a country club, only for insiders” (22%).
Reason #6 – The church feels unfriendly to those who doubt. Young adults with Christian experience say the church is not a place that allows them to express doubts. They do not feel safe admitting that sometimes Christianity does not make sense. In addition, many feel that the church’s response to doubt is trivial. Some of the perceptions in this regard include not being able “to ask my most pressing life questions in church” (36%) and having “significant intellectual doubts about my faith” (23%). In a related theme of how churches struggle to help young adults who feel marginalized, about one out of every six young adults with a Christian background said their faith “does not help with depression or other emotional problems” they experience (18%).
Nearly twenty years ago, my oldest was six years old. One of our bedtime routines was a
brief Bible reading.
One evening we found ourselves in the Garden of Eden story—Adam and Eve, a piece of fruit, and a snake with vocal chords.
As I read, my son kept sighing, as if impatient with my reading. Being the only Old Testament expert in the room, I ignored him and kept going.
But he kept sighing. He even had the audacity to interrupt me.
“Daddy, snakes can’t talk.”
The woman said to the serpent, “we may eat fruit from the tr….”
“Daddy. Snakes. Can’t. Talk.”
With a sense of foreboding, I stopped reading and asked him, pray, to continue his remonstration
. For the next few minutes I listened to a six year old deconstruct his faith, which amounted to the following:
Two naked people, magic fruit from a magic tree, and a talking animal. C’mon. This is obviously a story, not too different from the cartoons I watch or the other books you read to me, none of which you expect me to accept as reality. So, it seems to me that the Bible is a story, which gets me dangerously close to thinking that maybe God is a story, too. Hence—follow me here, Dad—I’m not sure why I should really believe God is real, which is to say, please stop reading, and can I have a glass of water?
My six year old was having a faith crisis.
Well that’s just perfect. I can see the headlines now: “Controversial Old Testament professor raises heretic son” (trial footage at 11:00).
My first instinct was fear: “Shhhhhh! Keep your voice down! He may hear you.” But, in one of those moments that for me constitutes sure proof of God’s existence, my mouth was kept from saying what my brain was telling it.
I tried a different approach: “You don’t really believe in God anymore? O.K., well, tell him.”
Let’s not talk about the problem, just tell God. Be honest with him.
My son wasn’t expecting that. He looked at me like I had spiders crawling out of my nostrils. He also looked a bit relieved.
Over the years, I have been thankful to God that I didn’t correct my son’s theology, for that would have been utterly stupid. Had I shamed him or coerced him into saying the right thing (so I would feel better about my parenting skills), I would have been responsible for creating another religious drone, another one who, at a young age, was already learning to play the religion game.
I would have taught my son a crippling lesson, that faith in God requires him to be dishonest with God and with himself.
I am proud of that little six-year-old, who trusted himself enough not to play games. And I am thankful that I, by a flickering moment of God’s grace, didn’t blink (too much).
Life in Christendom can sometimes feel like a show. We can be quite concerned to put on appearances—even though the Gospel humbles the proud and unmasks the hypocrite. Dishonesty cheapens the Gospel as yet another commodity to be controlled and manipulated for personal gain. It ceases being that which gives us our true identities to that which is manipulated, along with everything else, to hold on to our false selves.
We construct many reasons for maintaining a posture of dishonesty. For many, the failure to utter before God where we really are and what we are real think reflects a lifetime of corrupt spiritual teaching: God went through a lot of effort to save you, so the least you can do us have your act together so as not to disappoint him.
In a perverse twist, “holding on to the Gospel” becomes a motivation to hold on to self-deception.
I have learned that God, for our own sake, does not let that condition continue indefinitely.
This post is adapted from my recently published commentary on Ecclesiastes (Eerdmans, 2011).
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