5 Reasons Young People Walk Away From Their Faith
Sunday, March 1st, 2009One of the most common questions I get is, “Why do kids who grow up in the church walk away from their faith?
I’ve asked a number of students over the years this simple question, “What’s the hardest thing about the Christian life?” While many of them say something like, “Staying away from sin” or “Trying to do the right thing,” a number of them simply answer with one word… “Nothing.”
Really? Nothing? When Jesus said, “In this world you will have tribulation” (John 16:33) do you think He was talking about bad hair days, pimples, and not making the starting lineup on the football team?
Paul was very straightforward when he told young Timothy “All who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” (2 Tim 3:12)
Did you know that 1/3 to ½ of students will reject their Christianity by the time they graduate from college (these are students who go into college stating that they were Christians). These are students, who at some point in their life, stated that they were Christians and now state that they are not. While I don’t believe anyone who is truly saved can lose their faith, I think the sad fact is that many parents think they’re kids have saving faith when instead, they’ve never come to a true knowledge of Jesus Christ.
Surely this trend needs to stop and I’m going to give 5 reasons why I believe students leave their faith.
Reason 1: They don’t know whom to believe
The number of voices present in our everyday experience is overwhelming and no information is neutral. All information is telling us what to believe and how to behave. Consider the commercials that bombard our television sets. If one says they aren’t influenced by commercials, they are deceiving themselves. Why would a corporation pay millions of dollars for 30 seconds of air time during the Superbowl? These corporations know that we are influenced!
We have to look at the world of entertainment and what they are telling our children. If you look up lyrics to groups like Green Day or Lincoln Park you’ll see things that are appalling. I’m not surprised at the kids of non-believing families who listen to this stuff but I’m shocked at the Christian families who are allowing this in their homes.
Why does this music play such a big part in our children’s lives? God has so designed us that music plays a big part in influencing us. When you wake up in the morning and hear a song, you’ll sing that song all day long…even if it’s a song you hate. At the age of 41, I still remember the lyrics of songs I haven’t heard in decades but cannot seem to remember formulas from algebra or the chemical elements that make up the periodic table even though I purposely memorized those things.
Plus we must remember that this is a generation that has been let down (the home and the church has let children down). This is the generation of broken promises! The Christian home is full of divorce even though the lovely couple promised to stay together until death do us part. The Christian church has been overrun with legalism and hypocrisy even though we are promised of the joy that comes with being a Christian.
The #1 answer for way our children are walking away from the faith is the family. We must change our homes and our churches.
Reason 2: Hidden moral failures
Failures of parents and adult influences that kids find out about and are forced to hide. Many parents today have the attitude that, “I may not be right, but I’m never wrong.” Parents are not authentic in their failures. No child expects their parents to be perfect but every child wants them to be authentic. I was speaking with a dad the other day that said, “I’ll NEVER apologize to my kid…NO MATTER WHAT!” Now, this guy was an unbeliever so it wasn’t real surprising. I’ve never had a believing dad or mom say this but I’ve had them act like it.
As parents we must communicate that God loves us just the way we are but refuses to leave us that way. Sin runs through our own hearts. God doesn’t wake up the morning after we sin and say, “What did he do? If I would have known that, I wouldn’t have died on the cross for his sins.” God doesn’t just forgive us of our sins, He redeems us of our sins.
In Isaiah 6… I saw the Lord – - – and his response was… Woe is me (I’m dead meat). He thought he was going to die because he was a man of unclean lips. His sin was atoned for and his guilt taken away and then asked the question…whom should I send? A lot of times we see Isaiah as the hero but Isaiah is not the hero here, God is. I think its marvelous that God wanted Isaiah to be His spokesman even after he was a man of unclean lips. Isaiah readily admitted his weakness and sin. Because of that, God was faithful to forgive, to cleanse, and to use him.
Reason 3: They worship the wrong God
God has created us in such a way that we become what we worship. If we worship God, we become godly. If we spend our time playing video games, watching television, surfing the internet, we will become what we worship. This generation has an identity crisis. They’ve forgotten (perhaps they’ve never heard) that God created us in His image. The reason the fall matters is because we were created in His image. We have a warped idea of what it is to be human. With the explosion of facebook, myspace, twitter, AIM, xanga and the likes, we regularly see people who do not have the ability to communicate one-on-one who seem like extroverts when you see them on one of these social networks. This is where students create their identity
You can tell a lot about a young man’s soul by what he laughs at (nothing’s sacred anymore). And if nothing is sacred then nothing is worth dying for. If nothing is worth dying for than nothing is worth living for. Instead, they live for their selves and ultimately, worship themselves.
Reason 4: They lack a sense of significance
They forget who they are and what they were created for. They think they are identified by the way they behave. The goal in life is not to be good, the goal in life is to be like Jesus Christ. This generation of students is distracted and the biggest culprit of this is entertainment. We are addicted to entertainment and it robs us of who we are.
Entertainment makes us silly and Christianity is not about being silly, it’s about being significant!
The point of the Bible is not to know what it says, it’s to tell us how to live, move and have our being. We must teach our children why they believe what they believe…they need to see the world from God’s view. They need to see that they were created for a purpose. They are significant, not because of what they do, but because of who they are. If they are believers, they are a child of the King, and a joint heir of Christ. They have been given the very righteousness of Christ (2 Cor 5:20) so when God looks down on them, He doesn’t see their sin, He sees Jesus Christ who has covered their sin.
Parents cannot imagine the damage that is done by saying words like, “You’ll never amount to anything!”
Reason 5: They lack a mentor
Our kids would do well today with mentors…especially older people. Don’t get me wrong. I am not one who would say that it takes a village to raise a child. It doesn’t take a village. It takes a mom and a dad who are committed to the Scriptures and authenticity in their Christian lives. Because we are such a transient group of people, our children don’t interact with grandparents like those in previous generations did. Unfortunately in most of our churches, the older people and younger people are never together. The older folks don’t know the younger people well enough to actually see their hearts. Instead, they see a hairstyle, a piercing, or clothing and immediately make a judgment.
The same is true for the younger generation. They see the older folks and immediately think they would never understand. For some reason, young people think older folks have always been older folks. We need our youth to interact with senior citizens.
Conclusion:
As parents, teachers, mentors, neighbors, and friends, we must be committed to bringing up this generation to love Jesus. We’ll do that through an authentic Christian life, clear instruction of who the God of the Bible is, encouraging young people to find their significance in the God who created them, and doing whatever we can to mentor those whom God puts in our path.
Mike DeGuzman is a biblical life coach who speaks on a variety of topics that relate to marriage, parenting, and teenagers. Contact him at cbcdeguzman@gmail.com or (843) 812-7690.
tagged under: Parenting
