The Christian Bubble

Listen up protective parents and pastors! There is something tragic going on at our public Universities.

Christian students seem to be getting spiritually slaughtered in their classrooms and dorms.

About 2/3 of Christian teenagers will quit attending a church once they leave home and go to the big city for college (barna.org).

Why are so many Christians leaving the faith after high school?

Bayard Taylor, in his book “Blah Blah Blah”, would suggest that it is because a lot of Christian students are coming out of a bubble that we’ve put them in. We have kept our students in “safe” environments – away from culture and all other worldviews. But eventually, the high school students have to step out onto the college battlefield, and when they do, it’s not pretty.

Imagine what would happen to us physically if we walked around with a plastic bubble around us so that we would never be in danger of getting sick. What would happen if someone came up to one of us and popped our bubble? Our immune system would be exposed to multiple diseases and we could possible die!

The flue shot is another good example. When you get a flu shot, you actually are injected with something harmful so that your body can learn how to better protect itself when a bigger dose comes along in the future. By “being exposed” our defenses grow stronger.

Applying this analogy, it would make a lot of sense to let our students out of “the bubble” to be injected with a dose of culture so that they can better learn to love it and critique it. Perhaps then their spiritual immune systems would grow stronger with each “exposure” and become more ready for the spiritual battles that lay ahead.

Some practical ideas:

• Pray about sending your kid to a public high school
• Allow your kid to have non-Christian friends
• Watch popular movies and have a good discussion afterwards about the biblical themes and non-biblical themes
• Allow your kid to listen to a variety of music that isn’t produced by a Christian label
• Allow them to question the Christian faith without getting angry at them (these questions will sharpen them and you)
  

Evangelicalism: The “How” But Not The “Why”

Parents who tell their children what to do but don’t explain why - are parents who breed rebellious children. A lot of evangelical churches have done the same.

Matt Chandler explained in a recent talk at the Resurgence conference that evangelicals decades ago, in response to the liberalism that was growing, started to retreat from culture and vigorously study systematic theology. Thus, truth began to outweigh grace by a hefty margin.

Now days, churches will preach exegetically through big books of the bible, drawing out hundreds of applications (the “how” of the Christian life) without ever unpacking the person and work of Jesus Christ (the “why” of the Christian life).

When parents give commands to their kids, the kids usually respond, “Why?” And then the parents usually respond back saying, “Because I said so.” This command and control method, which a lot of evangelical churches have adopted, breeds big heads and shriveled hearts. And as we have tried to re-engage the culture the past few decades, we have found ourselves in the midst of a very rebellious people, still angry at the church.

Only by unpacking the person and work of Jesus will we be able to regain the trust of those people who have been burned by the church. Focusing in on who Jesus was and what he did will inspire us to live for God’s glory and align us to his Kingdom purposes.

I am very convicted by Matt’s talk and am re-thinking how and what I’m teaching the students I work with. Am I preaching moralism? Or am I preaching Christ?