Sometimes The Truth Hurts

I had just finished reading a terrific blog post - 10 Reasons Our Kids Leave Church - when I saw a Facebook post from a former youth (who has not left church):

“I know where I'm going and I know the truth, and I don't have to be what you want me to be. I'm free to be what I want.”

Muhammad Ali

One of the points in the blog is that we, the church, have often failed to teach our youth the basic principles of our Christian faith. We too often “dumb down” the gospel message to make it cool, or make it more palatable. In an effort to get numbers, we make the gospel out to be a feel-good message, filled with emotions, self-fulfillment and good deeds. But that is not the gospel message and to our discredit, too many youth walk away from church never understanding the basic truths of the gospel message, or even where to turn (i.e. the Bible) for truth.

Muhammed Ali was a great boxer, but he was also a Muslim. He did not know the truth. The truth of the gospel is not freedom for me to be who I want to be, it is freedom to be who God has created me to me. It is a paradox of submission to God bringing freedom. It is giving up all that I am and all that I want for the sake of who God wants me to become. It is well and good to not be who others want me to be, but it is no better for me to be who I want to be. The only one that matters is God. Hope is only found in surrendering myself to Him and denying self. It is only then that I will experience genuine freedom - a freedom that is completely alien to the rest of the world.

This is the gospel that is found in scripture. It is the same gospel that claims that eternal life comes only through Jesus Christ, Lord and Savior, the Messiah, the one and only Son of God. It is the gospel message that few read in the lines of the New Testament simply because few read the New Testament, apart from isolated passages preached on Sunday morning. In the case of youth it may be even less. For far too many the Bible is only read when it is read to them, and even then few are paying attention. And very few, youth and adults alike, are taking the time to digest the truth, to contemplate what it means and how it must affect their own lives. Very few wrestle with difficult truths of scripture and agonize over the application. And almost no one is willing to take risks, to live radically different when they are confronted with those truths.

Our disservice, as leaders in the church, is that we have allowed that to be okay. We have sold a gospel message that emphasizes a momentary event for getting a ticket to heaven. We have allowed people to believe that minuscule changes are enough, both in how we teach and in how we live. We have allowed people to believe that they can still love much of the world as long as they don’t love it all. We have reduced discipleship to warm, fuzzy, feel-good, relationship drivel. We have allowed passivity, apathy, and laziness, for fear of offense or driving some to leave. But many have left anyway because what we have to offer is not so much different from what they can find in the philosophy of Muhammed Ali.