We are just a few days away from launching one of the most important series we have ever done as a church, The Problem of God: Answering A Skeptic’s Challenges to Christianity, and I am excited to see how God uses this in your life and the life of your friends and family that need it. There are so many reasons we are doing this series as a church: equipping followers of Jesus to be able to answer these legitimate questions, speaking directly to the skeptics who make up most of our post-Christian Canadian population, etc. But there is another reason in particular on my heart today that I wanted to share.
In a recent sociological study, teens were asked why they fell away from the religion in which they were raised. The question was open-ended with no suggested answers. Nearly a third (32 percent) said they left the church because of doubts and questions.
“It didn’t make any sense anymore,” they said. “I think scientifically, and there is no real proof.”
A Barna study recently showed the same thing: 36 percent of young adults felt they could not ask “life’s most pressing questions in church.” As a result, 23 percent said they had “significant intellectual doubt” about Christianity.
We want to equip every age and stage in our church by teaching them that there are very good, and rational reasons to believe in God, and Christianity in particular, in the marketplace of ideas. But we don’t only want to teach them what to think, we also want to teach them (and us!) how to think. That is what this series is all about. Answering the most popular challenges to Christianity, about God, science, sex, hell, the hypocrisy of the church, etc., but also equipping us all how to think a little better about these things and so many other things in life.
This is the way to serve and arm kids of all ages (from elementary school to university) as they face the challenges of the world they live in every day. Yes, it’s on them to think deeply, but it’s also on those around them – parents, grandparents, and us, the church at large. On this point, I am reminded often of the challenge from the great philosopher William Lane Craig:
In school and college, Christian teenagers are intellectually assaulted with every manner of non-Christian worldview coupled with an overwhelming relativism. If parents are not intellectually engaged with their faith and do not have sound arguments for Christian theism and good answers to their children’s questions, then we are in real danger of losing our youth. It’s no longer enough to teach our children simply Bible stories; they need doctrine and a defense of the faith. It’s hard to understand how people today can risk parenthood without having studied apologetics.
Unfortunately, our churches have also largely dropped the ball in this area. It’s insufficient for youth groups and Sunday school classes to focus on entertainment and simpering devotional thoughts. We’ve got to train our kids for war. We dare not send them out to public high school and university armed with rubber swords and plastic armour. The time for playing games is past.
It is precisely because the time for playing games is over, that we are doing this series. It is my hope and prayer that it will serve you, your families, your friends, and your neighbours with big questions, well.
See you Sunday, as we begin The Problem of God, by exploring the problem of science!