CNN:
Though three out of four American teenagers claim to be Christian, fewer than half practice their faith, only half deem it important, and most can’t talk coherently about their beliefs, the study found.
Many teenagers thought that God simply wanted them to feel good and do good — what…
Look, I think this is a problem, but I don’t think the author has it right in saying that the problem is that teens need to be exposed to more “real acts of faith.” Unquestionably, this is true, but I think that’s only part of the problem, and sort of an easy answer, because that’s approximately three billion times easier to say than it is to do.
I think the bigger problem is that teenagers have finely honed bullshit detectors. They can tell when they’re being lied to, and they can tell when what most people call “church” is really just a big shell game involving guilt trips for non-attendance and political posturing and an absolute refusal to discuss real problems that real people have. This is why teenagers are becoming “fake” Christians. Not because they’re not being taught the right Bible lessons, but because the people who are teaching these lessons, on the whole, tend not to give a shit about doing what they’re teaching.
Until that gets straightened out, there are going to be a lot more “fake” Christians, because it’s a lot easier to just get baptized at the appropriate age (which is twelve) and go to church camp when everybody else does and wait it out than it is to ask a grown up why they never seem to implement the things they’re teaching in their actual lives.
Not that I would know.
All that is to say this: it’s a learned behavior. The real reason teenagers are fake Christians is because their parents are fake Christians—and if their parents aren’t, then a lot of other people who are responsible for their youth program probably are.
Posted at 12:27pm.