Why don’t you go to church?
Well, to be fair, if you are reading this you probably are,
but why aren’t your kids?
I have spent a lot of time talking to kids, to teens, to
young adults, and even middle age people about this; about why they don’t go,
or why they don’t get involved, or where they give their money and the number
one answer is because it is an obligation.
The next generations do not want to be obligated to do things;
they want to do only the things they care about.
It sounds simple, but it seems to be true… pick a day, and
say, "at 10 in the morning on your day off you need to go here"; and no one will.
And when you probe deeper you will find two things to be
true, they don’t get anything out of Christianity and they don’t know where
they fit into it all. There is no personal investment because it simply does
not mean anything to them.
We pretend we don’t have answers to questions like this, but
we do. And we also like to play nice and to be open and honest so we don’t
point out some obvious truths.
Economic and educational class matter a whole lot. If you
are poorer and less educated you tend more towards church participation. The
conservative churches have messages geared to this demographic and have higher
participation.
The mainline churches are middle class and hyper educated and no
one comes.
Again, it is a rubber meets the road why does this matter to
me sort of attitude. The idea that heaven will bring you peace, happiness and
riches sure does sound nice when you are struggling to put food on the table.
There are no athiests in foxholes as they used to say.
But if you are self-sufficient, buy all the things to make
you happy, spend your time thinking about social issues on your own, what
difference does the message of faith make, really?
And even the conservatives have troubles now because the
message goes against the general way we are socialized no matter whether you
are rich or poor, young or old. Nowadays everyone is told we can make it on our
own. That we should do what makes us happy. We are told that we just need the
right car, or the right jeans to be popular. In fact, society is not only all
about me, it is about me and my stuff.
Christianity says stuff does not matter. It drags you down.
Christianity says you are just one person, that God loves everyone and so
should you.
And what we have all failed to do, whether you are Catholic
or Wesleyan or anywhere in between, is really, definitively, come up with an
answer to this. We are not fighting back.
Why should you not be self-centred? Why should you not be
concerned with material things? Because God says so? So what?
Until we can look the younger generations who are struggling
with identity and purpose in the eye and
tell them truthfully, "You are not going to be happy till you start looking
outside yourself", with the greatest of conviction, we are not going to convince
them.
And they won’t listen anyway; people spend billions ensuring
this. If cars do not make you happy, then the auto industry, the economy, and
life as we know it is in jeopardy. So trust me, the auto industry alone is
throwing more energy, money, and intelligence into creating a value system then
the church ever could.
What we need to do, is be there to pick up the pieces. We
need to accept that we can be a dissenting voice in society, but like the
parent of any teen, it is going to take years of experience before they realize
we had something to say in the first place that made sense.
Young people are not the future.
They will be the future of church and religion later, when
their kids have died in car accidents, when their friends succumb to
Alzheimers, when their marriage falls apart because of indifference and
self-absorption.
As sad is it might seem, we have an answer to the meaning of
life that no one hears till they are brought to their knees by the failure of their
current life.
And having that answer is one of the most important things
we are about. We preserve the truth of life, of the Divine nature of the
universe, we are hope incarnate. And we will be here when you need us…
