Rachel Held Evans’ article about young adults leaving the church had fifty pages of comments on CNN.com by the time I got around to reading it. The article was beautifully written, but the page after page of comments were equally compelling.
I applaud Evans for articulating her thoughts so well. As someone who feels almost completely abandoned in the traditional church and who also works with teens on the cusp of becoming young adults, I find her general concern valid. I also know that even trying to talk about such things is like playing hopscotch in a minefield. The article’s comments are a perfect picture of that. If you scan the comments after the article, you’ll find both support and derision. You’ll find people who follow Jesus and people who couldn’t care less about the walk of faith picking things apart. You’ll see a lot of different people saying all kinds of things very passionately. Everyone has something to say, but I fear that little of it makes for a good way forward together.¹
Evans seems to promote a kind of 21st century transubstantiation, “not a change in style but a change in substance” at church, an allegiance to the kingdom of God and a deep longing for Jesus, something that “hipper worship bands” can’t necessarily accomplish. But this isn’t just a concern for millennials. I long for the change, too. I know people further along in mid-life who feel the tension. I’m glad that she gets to that point near the end of her article. How, though, would such a change take place? And how can things change when certain truths, like God Himself, are immutable?
I believe that many “traditional” churches are full of good people who love God, support missions, hope to understand the Bible better, and want to raise their families in a way that honors God. But Evans is right: there also exists a need for many people to work out their faith, to be able to ask questions and seek out answers, which is not something always easily done in traditional church culture. At one point she puts it this way: “we want to ask questions that don’t have predetermined answers.” I would venture (and I might err in that venture) to say that many church members do not feel very comfortable asking (or answering) such questions, and that has at least something to do with the nature of religious knowledge and authority. Religious knowledge might seem “tricky” because some of the questions people might ask actually have “predetermined answers.” And if they aren’t predetermined, they are at least previously considered. Christians have been working through issues of faith and practice for two thousand years. So while the universe seems big and the world uncertain, we do believe that God has made some vital things known, some vital questions answered, in Jesus and the Bible. To give quick, matter-of-fact answers to a believer might seem fine, but giving such an answer to a seeker can inadvertently short-circuit the process of seeking itself. Such answers can treat us like beings with brains but not hearts. But for a church leader not to give a matter-of-fact answer can seem like a kind of cultural capitulation and denial of biblical truth and authority.² To even make space for others to consider alternative answers can feel heretical (even though it can be good pedagogical practice). It’s a fine line that few seem comfortable walking in the traditional church (because if they do, they’re back in that minefield). Maybe we would do well to see things like Chesterton wrote of them at the beginning of his book Orthodoxy: we must help seekers rediscover found things as if for the first time. If we don’t, we’ll spend all of our time in a circular-reasoning situation, which isn’t much fun for anyone.
This is hard work. But it is good and necessary work. And it is work to be done together. It is the work of asking and answering questions and then putting those answers into some kind of practice, which is its own minefield. But those conversations are necessary, too. I have a co-worker who speaks often of transformation, and what she says is good and true. God is in the work of transformation, of helping us see bread and wine in a new way, of making new creations,³ of remaking us into the likeness of Jesus through the work of the Spirit. He does that with us one-on-one, but He also accomplishes it through people together. And while He does that with us in the chaotic present, He does it with an anchor in the ancient. I pray that He will continue to transform us, to make us new through ancient truth, that we can rediscover good things already found before, fresh and new for us all.
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¹ You can find RHE’s own response to things here. She lists some of her sources and other things that people asked questions about in response to her article.
² And in those cases, our inadvertent “well, d’uh” can become a sign for them to say “see you later.”
³ That’s a big thing for the Apostle Paul, especially in the last couple of chapters of Galatians.
P.S. All of this feels like an over-simplification of a complex issue, which it really is. That’s part of the reason why RHE’s original post has garnered such commentary. There’s more, so much more, to say about God and Jesus and the Spirit and the Bible and about truth and revelation and interpretation, about following the living Jesus. To focus on one thing to the neglect of others is in some way to distort the very thing you are talking about. But it is a worthy and necessary conversation that we need to have more often and in person, even if it is one feeble sentence at a time.
Space Enough, and Time 