A Reasonable Doubt

I have just discovered for myself the reason that so many teens turn away from God. If you grow up going to church, you never really question why you do it. It is something you just do, because you always have, it is something that you do because your parents do, or maybe even because your parents make you. There comes a time in life when you start to question why you do things, and one of those things is bound to be church, why church? Most why questions can be answered pretty simply with a rational, reasonable answer…but the question of church cannot be answered very simply. You start to decide that you go to church to worship God, but then comes the time when you have to explain to yourself why you worship God and who and where God is. Not easy questions to answer. And soon it turns into an internal fight trying to decide if you can believe in something you can’t see or hear and the answer, (unless you have fervently kept up the spiritual disciplines of praying, studying scripture, and experienced things in life that build up your faith so it isn’t just a faith passed on through parents) is no. How can a teen rationally and reasonably believe in God when his faith is one learned in Sunday morning bible class? Faith cannot be achieved through gold attendance stars or even gold memory verse stars…faith must be built up by a personal quest to find out who and what God is. No wonder so many people look at the job of youth ministry and run from it…how do you teach that? I look at this problem and I can’t decide whose fault it is, the teens for not taking ownership of their own faith or all those who decided to teach the teens since infancy without mentioning this personal quest to find God. If you went to school to become a chef and then you apply for a job as an auto mechanic, the hiring agent will laugh at you because you haven’t been trained in the area of auto mechanics. If you were trained in church to memorize the Bible, and then you realize that you want to have a relationship with God, you may not have any idea how to do it because you weren’t trained that way. I understand the doubt that can ensue following this predicament, but unless teens realize the responsibility behind the Christian faith in having a real relationship with God, all they will know are Bible stories and that is not enough to keep them faithful. I see the cause, I just wish the solution were easy to come by…