Real Act

I just read an article citing statistical characteristics of kids who grow up in church and don't leave it when they get older.  This is a huge phenomenon, if you don't know.  Kids grow up going to church, doing good things, then leave either quietly or not so much, or fall into problems that most Christians think they should have been insulated against such as drugs, pregnancy, atheism, etc.

This article cited three main characteristics of those that stay. 1. they have had a conversion experience. Makes sense because those who simply grow up there can talk it and walk it, but it isn't necessarily a real thing for them.  So can they truly be called Christians in the first place?  As the Supertones said, "if you say you used to be a Christian, then you never were."

2. they are equipped to deal with life and not just entertained.  Again makes sense because most contemporary protestant churches and probably many of the nonprotestant bent focus so much on drawing them in that they lose all but the merest shred of content and become nothing more than "clean" social clubs. Which apparently aren't that clean either given the ways in which so many I've known have fallen out.  There's an infamous case (which could be rumor, though I don't doubt it could well be true) where a girl got pregnant in the church I grew up in while playing a youth group game...it resulted in a ban on any games that left us out of sight for more than like 5 minutes...which interestingly enough didn't stop any of those who fell out in my day from doing so...hmmm.

3. they are taught at home.  Again makes sense.  If a family is leaving their children's spiritual education up to professionals and volunteers who see them maybe 3 hours a week...c'mon.  But even still this is not fool-proof and I know several very stable families who did everything right to no avail.

This struck me.  I don't disagree with the article.  Makes sense, right?  But still doesn't seem to hit the nail on the head.  So how many will read that article and try to engineer these traits?  The thing is, I can point to many of my own friends who have had a so-called conversion experience who now reject the faith utterly, even those who came and left it far after their teens.  I know people with advanced religious education who have done the same.  These ought to be "equipped", yeah?  And as I pointed out, even the best families can't control everything.  I've seen the controlling ones who drive kids away and the more moderate who lose them still.

I don't know the answers here.  But I do know I am one of those kids who didn't leave, and I know why.  I did hit a wall in my faith as a teen.  I shouldn't say wall...it was more like a desert.  I had the so-called conversion.  I had the equipping and the family training in the form of hours of formal discipleship and biblical training as well as the fortunate gift of logical training and reason.  But it still all just seemed pointless.  As my questions deepened and broadened, the answers I was getting were mostly insufficient because people who were teaching me didn't understand or couldn't articulate themselves.  I naturally began to explore other things after my own peculiar flavor of poison.  But in my case, God pursued me.  He broke through my reality in seen and unseen ways.  He brought notable people who would speak powerful lasers of truth into me...sometimes just one statement at a critical time.  He sent me dreams...vivid visions.  And he allowed me to break myself so that I would be receptive when he stepped in for a greater revelation.

That was when real conversion happened.  Oh yes, it happened.  But it isn't something that can be engineered in a building with lights and music and retreats.  It is a deeply personal, tragic, painful sort of conversion in which I had nothing left and was given a new hope...a new life.  This is why I say like CS Lewis, I was drug in kicking and screaming.  In reality, I was more carried in after I had passed out and given up, but I was kicking and screaming up to that point in that I would accept nothing less than reality, Truth.

A few years after this, a mentor of mine posed this question that reveals for me how I felt prior and after.  He said, "If you came to a fork in the road and Truth went one way and Jesus went the other, which way would you go?"  My answer was a resounding "Truth".  But here's the trick of the question:  I've found that every time I perceive this dichotomy, it's because I have a false conception of...Jesus.  (I bet you thought I was going to say Truth.  If so, you need to stop drinking your evangelical koolaid.)  You see, every time I went toward what I saw as Truth and left Jesus behind, I'd find a clearer, brighter, realer Jesus standing right around the bend.  I couldn't get away from the guy!  And Thank God!  Because when I was utterly undone, he brought me back.

You see, it isn't a choice.  It isn't a point of decision...though I guess that exists somewhere or for some people.  It's an acceptance of what is.  A giving up to what I couldn't change.  The point of decision for me, has come multiple times after that as I am forced to decide whether my experiences are real or if I was/am psychotic.  But when I think about it, I can't choose otherwise.  There is nihilism, the nothing of no meaning, no caring, no feeling, emptiness of unrequited existence, or there is God who has revealed himself to me in the man Jesus.  Psychotic or not, I'm not going back in the pit...probably couldn't if I tried.  He'd just pull me back out again.

So, is Calvin right?  Am I just Elect and these kids, men, women are not?  I'm not building theology, here, just asking a legitimate question.  Or are they just not at the point yet?

Really, this question isn't what we should focus on.  Rather, what are we going to do about it.  If Calvinistic, we don't know who is elected and have a duty to relieve the suffering of all anyway.  If Evangelical, they're just not ready and no amount of coercing or engineering will change that.  So I suggest we start with one thing.  Be real.

Shed the pomp and hoohah.  Cut the bright lights and fancy marketing tactics. Get off the rockstar pedestals and deeply search.  Find out what's real.  I'll help you.  Come talk to me one on one, I promise I won't pull any punches.  You'll walk away questioning things you never thought you could.  Then, once we're gates of hell, standing in the burning pyre, flayed alive sure of what we believe, we simply act.  In the moment, in the real, act.  Feed, clothe, pray, comfort, support, help, encourage, love, bleed, cry, die in proportion to the faith we each have.

This is Jesus, by the book, man.