The eCrozier

If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we’ve to pretend that Jesus is just as selfish as we are or we’ve got to acknowledge that he commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition. And then admit that we just don’t want to do it. – Stephen Colbert

Many young adults, if surveys are accurate, get their news and opinions from people like Stephen Colbert, who, if you do not know, is the host of a faux-news show on the cable channel, Comedy Central. As funny a cultural critic as he is, no one could recommend him as a source of accurate, unbiased news. In fact, his whole affected stance is an ironic satire of the talking heads of cable news. Yet, his popularity among young adults indicates that he is exposing a reality, or at least a learned perception, about much of contemporary Christian practice in the Church. David Kinnaman, President of the Barna Group, in his research has discovered that many young adults too often see Christianity as “hypocritical, insensitive, and judgmental.” So, clearly, Christianity has a real perception problem among young adults in our culture.

We Christians are called to represent to the world Jesus’ life and teaching as normative for all human beings, and his death, resurrection, and ascension as salvific for all creation. Kinnaman’s research, however, suggests that we in the Church are not doing that well for people under 30 years old. Young adults in this country, as noted above, increasingly use words like hypocritical, insensitive, and judgmental to describe their view of the Christians they meet. And these same young adults readily contend that they observe a form of Christianity in the Church that they believe Jesus never intended. Kinnaman, states that: “Millions are cutting their connection to church—and even their faith—during their young adult years.” He observes that no previous generation has experienced such dramatic, compounded cultural change. And their anti-institutional mindset is different than that of young adults in past generations.

We in the Church could look at this data and facilely conclude that young adults are fickle, immature (some are, to be sure), and that they’ll come back to us once they get married and have children. We could dismiss their critique of Christians and the Church as overly generalized or, at least, grossly uninformed. We could ignore their observations of hypocrisy, insensitivity, and judgmentalism. We could wait until they see how wrong they have been and then humbly come to us asking us to take them in. We could do all of those things. Or, we could hear what they are saying to us and be open to the possibility that some of what they are saying just might be true.

Maybe, just maybe, there is a significant gap between what Jesus taught and how our Church presents itself to the world? Maybe young adults (and everyone else, for that matter), if they encountered our congregations, would not recognize Jesus in the words and actions of the people there? If that is the case, then we have in us the power to do something about it. We can begin to fashion our life together in the Church in a way that reflects the image of Jesus in all that we say and do.

+Scott