I’ve argued (here) that doubt has instrumental value since, when handled properly, it leads to truth, knowledge, and (since I think Christianity is true) to a greater faith. Though it seems a bit ironic, confident faith is, in my view, the result of asking deep and difficult questions.
One worry here is that this all sounds a bit risky. Is it wise to tell people, people young in the Christian faith, that they should doubt their faith? Admittedly this sounds a little crazy. And you should know that the last thing in the world that I want is to find out that someone walked away from the faith given my suggestion to doubt. It feels a whole lot nicer and safer to just have them remain as they are.
But here’s the problem, kids are walking away from the faith in droves! The statistics are not good. The most conservative numbers say that 3 out of 5 (60% of) Christian kids walk away (Barna). Other studies have it up to 75-80%. One study of Southern Baptists puts it as high as 88% of kids walking away by the age of 18 (SBC Family Life Council). I have four children. And I can do math. So this stat keeps me up at night.
It may be a bit risky to encourage some doubts. But let’s just be honest, what’s riskier? Having them consider deep and difficult questions that may cause them to struggle a bit or just loading them up with all the “right” answers and never have them seriously consider opposing beliefs? The current statistics suggest that the “let’s hope for the best” strategy is far riskier.
Now we’d be fools to think that these kids walk away from the faith only for intellectual reasons. There are a lot of things going on in college, and let’s just say it’s not all studying. You put a few thousand 18-22 year olds on a campus with little moral supervision and we can all guess what’s going to happen. For some students, it is a never ending party with a few papers and exams sprinkled in from time to time. Students, of course, find this tempting and choose the party over their faith. That happens and I’m not sure more apologetics will address what’s going on here.
But there are some (and many who this is true, at least, in part) are confronted with ideas contrary to their Christian faith and, lacking any satisfying answer, walk away for intellectual reasons.
These students often feel betrayed. They grew up in church learning about Christianity week in and week out. They were given the impression by pastors and parents that there were no legitimate challenges to the belief in God, the biblical claims about Jesus, the reliability and accuracy of Scripture, etc. They thought it is only the fool who denies the existence of God, or that there’s not a shred of evidence for Darwinian evolution, and that Scripture can withstand any and all tests. And then they find themselves amongst some of the smartest individuals they’ll ever meet in their lifetimes who defend each of these ideas in compelling and thoughtful ways.
I’ve got to be honest here, I think that our kids have been betrayed if they were told only idiots believe these things. Since many adults haven’t wrestled with the deep and difficult questions, it seems they try to get their kids into the same cognitive place of making the Christian assumptions. But it’s not working. It is a different world with our kids. It is not enough to assume its truth and hope for the best. Our kids are pummeled with hostility towards a conservative Christian faith. I believe that apologetics will cease to be just some hobby discipline for only the heady few. It will be the way of intellectual survival for the next generation!
But there’s an alternative.
We can help our kids, and those to whom we minister, feel the weight of the objections to Christianity. Will it cause them to doubt? It probably will, at least, a bit. But would you rather them have doubts while in your care or when they’re surrounded by thousands of hedonists pressuring them to all things unchristian? Here’s the beautiful thing, when they are in your care, you can walk with them through their doubts.
To be clear, I’m not recommending that one should be a mere skeptic, asking “But why?” for every claim that is made no matter what it is. It is of course great to ask why, but it is not great when the person is doing this only to be stubborn and deflect from really engaging in the reasoning.
I believe that apologetics will cease to be just some hobby discipline for only the heady few. It will be the way of intellectual survival for the next generation!
What I am recommending is that, together with our kids, we seek…I mean really and genuinely seek after…the truth by asking the deep and difficult questions. We take it slow and we do it together, but we begin to allow our kids to feel the force of the hard objections to Christianity. They are going to feel it at some point and so let’s have them feel it with you in the room. We also allow our kids to ask any question and push on any claim they don’t understand or find satisfying. We are seeking the truth and so we are not afraid of any question whatsoever. We show them the best answers we can for those questions. When (not if but when) a question comes and we don’t know the answer, we look into it together. We show our kids how to resolve, as best we can, these tensions. I want my kids to experience that. I want them to feel the force of an objection but then I want them to feel what it’s like to resolve that tension with robust answers. This is the way of confident faith.
Now it may seem like I’m just assuming that everyone will find every answer to every issue and everything is going to be super great. To the contrary, I think that this is hard and messy work. This is where there is indeed a risk. But I just have to speak from my own experience. I have found that Christianity’s resources to be deep wellsprings. I have devoted most of the last 20 years to this exact pursuit and I’m continually blown away by Christianity’s ability to provide an answer to the deepest and most difficult problems. This is not to say that everything is a slam dunk. There are a variety of issues where I find myself, in a way, minimally satisfied by the Christian answer even though some tension may remain. But there are apologetic slam dunks and when I consider the cumulative force of the case for Christianity, I find myself deeply satisfied intellectually (despite having a few questions that lack, so far, a deeply satisfying answer) and I know many others who would say the same thing.
Christians stand in a long and rich tradition of considering the hardest objections and offering thoughtful responses. In fact, there are many objections to Christianity historically that were best articulated by Christians! The shame of it all is that many Christians today think that this is somehow contrary to faith. But asking these questions was done historically as an effort for the purpose of a greater faith. The thought is that if Christianity can address our hardest questions, we come out with a deeper and more abiding faith. It can be a difficult process and almost certainly will include some doubts along the way. But we come away with truth and a deep faith. And that’s a great value indeed!
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