Some years ago I became aware of a problem within the evangelical church community. Specifically, young people were leaving church once they were on their own and no longer under their parents' control. It appears I was part of this problem that I was unaware existed. There have been substantial changes made to the evangelical church model since I was a child, many of which are meant to help believers transition from childhood to adulthood, while maintaining their faith. Some of these measures should be helpful, but we still see a good bit of attrition among the older the students at our church.
My family attended a coventional Southern Baptist church, and I was quite devout in my beliefs, particularly during my senior year of high school. After high school, I left for college, rooming with one of my best friends, who was also a believer. Then, as seems to happen with some frequency, I hit a brick wall of questions, doubt and anxiety, followed by a long season of agnosticism. There will be plenty of time to describe my dark travels through agnosticism later. For now, I want to concentrate on the issue of young people leaving church, and perhaps their beliefs, and what can be done to help them return.
It would be a mistake to water down beliefs to make them more palatable, or to bring them in line with the skewed morality of political correctness. Rather, I believe part of the answer is to create resources, via multiple media methods (and delivered in person) that will help young people, or perhaps any person, with a crisis of faith. For an intelligent, truth seeking young person, any advice to simply believe and not doubt will likely be met with skepticism, and will probably do more harm than good. I can only speak for myself, but if I went to someone seeking answers to legitimate questions regarding the Christian faith, such a response would have only led me to agnosticism more quickly. Fortunately, I did not receive much advice of that type, and I now realize that the few people who gave me such advice most likely had an unexamined faith, and were simply unable to answer the questions. Still, it would have been better to simply tell me that they did not know an answer to the questions.
My idea is to gather real questions from real people, in order to find out a few things. Specifically, I want to know what questions and/or issues have led them to question or lose their faith. I have already begun seeking such questions, and I have a few of my own that were bothersome to me as a young adult. Basically, I want to create a resource that would have been useful to me in my time of need.
By way of example, I will share what my first big question was, and what responses I received. While attending a Bible study my freshman year of college, which interestingly was held in my dormroom, I had a series of seeming contradictions congeal into a single question, the answer to which was very important to me. What I knew of the nature and characteristics of God, primarily omnipotence, omniscience and unconditional love for His creation, seemed contradictory in light of the human need for redemption, and the fact that many would not seek such redemption, and would therefore spend eternity without God (or, hell, if you prefer, whatever that really means.) More specifically, how could I reconcile God's omnipotence and omniscience with his claim to love his creation without condition? In plain English, how could an all powerful and all knowing God, who creates people He loves without condition, create such people knowing that some of them are damned? I'm still not sure there's a complete answer to that question, but I can assure you that the response I received during that particular Bible study was most unhelpful: "let's just stick to the workbook."
Seriously, that was the response I received. I realize now that my question exceeded our "leader's" knowledge, and that he simply didn't have an answer. Unfortunately, I wanted one, and immediately decided that I would be leaving my own room on Wednesday nights, but that the group was welcome to continue holding Bible studies there without me. It wasn't that I was offended that the guy had no answer. I was offended that he wasn't even willing to discuss it with me. For all I know, such an exploration may have challenged his own faith, and that he may have been unprepared or unwilling to face such a challenge. All I knew was that I would seek alternate counsel, and unfortuately, the place I looked most frequently was inside myself.
That was not a particularly good idea, and literally got me nowhere. It did, however, cause me great consternation and spiritual pain, the scars of which I still carry today. If there is a way for me to create a resource that would help other people who encounter such questions and doubts, it would give me great joy, and perhaps make my own descent into doubt have some genuine meaning. I am very happy in my renewed faith, and I suspect that many of the young people who leave their beliefs would like some answers to reconcile their beliefs with their questions. I would like to try and provide them with some answers.
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