Young People

Perhaps the most commonly asked question we hear in the church today is "where are the young people?" Professor Marcus Borg in his book "Reading the Bible again for the First Time" ⁽¹⁾ describes in simple language what I believe explains better than anything else why young people in the Western World are abandoning the Church. That is, that we don't have the know-how or the courage to lead our young people into a mature faith.

In the book, Borg talks about 3 stages of faith development. The first is what he calls 'Pre Critical Naiveté'. This is the stage of faith that occurs in our early childhood. It focus' around what we might call simple faith. We believe the stories we are told in Sunday School or Religious Education in our schools without question. It is in this stage of faith that Borg suggests "we simply hear the stories of the Bible as true stories." ^(p49)

To illustrate this, Borg says, "I recall the way I heard the Christmas stories when I was a child. I assumed that the birth of Jesus really happened the way Matthew and Luke and our Christmas pageants portrayed it. Without difficulty, I took it for granted that Mary really was a virgin; that she and Joseph really did travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem, where Jesus was born in a stable; that angels really sang in the night sky to the shepherds; that wise men guided by a special star really came to Bethlehem bearing gifts; and so forth." ^(p49)

How many of us can identify with this. It was easy to believe then. We never asked the question of whether or not this actually happened, we simply accepted the authority of those who told it to us and revelled in the mystery of it all. This in fact was the primary faith mode of our ancestors in a pre-modern world.

But part of our natural development, a part that is strongly encouraged by the modern education system and Western culture, is to move to what Borg calls "Critical Thinking", the next stage in our development where we no longer simply accept things at face value but ask questions about the factuality of everything. This occurs normally in adolescents and by late teens is usually pretty well developed.

It is what happens to those stories and explanations of life we have been told in our earlier years when they are confronted with the reality of how we are beginning to understand our world that sets the scene for a collapse of faith. "In this stage," Borg suggests, "consciously or quite unconsciously, we sift through what we learned as children to see how much of it we should keep. Is there really a tooth fairy? Are babies brought by storks (if children are ever told that anymore)? Did creation really take only six days? Were Adam and Eve real people? ^(p50)

It is this stage of development that has become disastrous for the modern Christian church. Quite clearly, from the young persons experience and education, the sort of things they had taken for granted in childhood no longer fit very well into their new world view. Stars, they are taught, are other distant suns of galaxies that never move slowly through the skies guiding people to a particular destination. The world was not made in 6 days but took billions of years and has no particular significance in the universe other than being a planet revolving around a star known as the Sun.

It is not hard to see the sort of conflict that starts to develop, either consciously or sub-consciously within the adolescent mind. For most, this will be the end of their faith journey. The church will have no further role in their future development.

To make matters worse, for those who might continue to have church links, most of the Christian influence they get will be instructing them that they must simply believe that what they have been taught regarding the Bible to be true and to disregard what reason and our education system is telling them. To maintain faith, now becomes hard work. Very hard work indeed. Peer pressure will add to this and will ensure that it is most unlikely that they will be able to maintain any real faith at all their mid teens.

Borg then goes on to describe the third stage of faith development that he calls "Postcritical Naiveté". Postcritical Naiveté is all about being able to see the truth in the stories without having to believe that they are literally true stories or actually 'happened that way'. He notes, "Importantly, postcritical naiveté is not a return to precritical naiveté. It brings critical thinking with it. It does not reject the insights of historical criticism but integrates them into a larger whole." ^(p50)

In the state of postcritical naiveté, Borg goes on to say, "one knows that the truth of the birth stories lies in their meanings as metaphorical narratives. Using both biblical and archetypal religious imagery, the birth stories speak about the significance of Jesus and about the divine-human relationship. ^(p51)

The real dilemma facing us today, I want to argue, is how to help our young people move comfortably through the critical thinking stage of faith and then into postcritical naiveté where they can comfortably explore their faith (or spirituality) without having to struggle with a literal interpretation of their canonical stories. It seems to me that the majority of the people who might be instructing our young people in matters of faith are themselves stuck in the precritical naiveté stage of their own development. The thought, for them, of encouraging young people to move into critical thinking would be seen as a dangerous flaunt with secularism. Any mention of faith in the sort of terms that might be classified as postcritical naiveté is simply regarded as heretical. It is little wonder that people in the Western world are abandoning Christianity at an ever increasing rate. As this happens, much of the remnant is coming under the control of those who are locked into the precritical naiveté stage of thinking.

The challenge before mainline churches, I suggest, is a huge one. If they want to be a valuable source of developing a meaningful Christian Faith then we have to learn how to teach and encourage all our people to move into postcritical naiveté where the conflict between conservative and liberal approaches to scripture will no longer exist. We will then understand and boldly proclaim that whilst a literal approach to our Biblical stories may well be necessary in our early childhood, such an approach will only ever hinder the future development of a strong mature faith. Such a faith will be happy to walk in a world where scientific discoveries and reasoned argument go hand in hand with a deep experience of the spiritual life.

(1) Marcus J. Borg 2002: Reading the Bible Again for the First Time. Harper Collins, New York.

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