How to Lose Your Faith By 30
For the last two decades, research has consistently found that two-thirds of young adults who were following Jesus at age 20 will walk away from the church for at least a year before they turn 30. Increasingly, those who left are staying away for much longer than a year, and many are not returning at all. In this episode, we explore some of the top reasons that young adults struggle to hold on to the Christian faith, and we suggest practical steps we can take to avoid becoming one of those statistics. The issues we highlight in this episode are: (1) our tendency to ask tough questions without making the effort to find good answers, or the temptation to use unanswered questions as an excuse to jettison the Christian faith; (2) being unprepared for suffering and the troubles that may befall us in this life, and not having worked out in advance how to think biblically about these realities for those of us who are trying to following Jesus; (3) overcorrecting for the hypocrisy in the church by assuming that everyone we hold up as an example of what is wrong with Christianity is a true disciple of Jesus, or attributing to God the flawed human efforts we all make as we follow him; and (4) bulking up on a faith fueled mostly by spiritual highs or sentimentality without knowing anything about the character of God, the teachings of our faith, or God’s will as it is revealed in the scripture. Our hope is that you will identify some of the pitfalls to avoid and a few best practices to adopt to help preserve your discipleship to Jesus throughout your 20s and for the rest of your life.
DISCUSSION GUIDE
This episode highlighted some of the top reasons that young adults struggle to hold onto their faith. Those reasons included: (1) our tendency to ask tough questions without making the effort to find good answers, or the temptation to use unanswered questions as an excuse to jettison the Christian faith; (2) being unprepared for suffering and the troubles that may befall us in this life, and not having worked out in advance how to think biblically about these realities for those of us who are trying to following Jesus; (3) overcorrecting for the hypocrisy in the church by assuming that everyone we hold up as an example of what is wrong with Christianity is a true disciple of Jesus, or attributing to God the flawed human efforts we all make as we follow him; and (4) bulking up on a faith fueled mostly by spiritual highs or sentimentality without knowing anything about the character of God, the teachings of our faith, or God’s will as it is revealed in the scripture.
Questions for Discussion:
Do you have people close to you who can relate to one or more of the reasons we highlighted in this episode? Do any of these reasons resonate with you personally?
If you are part of a faith community, does it welcome questions and leave room to open with doubts? If you are part of that kind of community, how does that openness bolster your faith? If you are not part of that kind of community, what steps could you take to find a place that invites this kind of honesty?
Are there experiences that you have personally experienced which caused you to doubt the existence or the goodness of God? Do you agree that many expressions of Christianity focus only on benefits of following Jesus, without discussing the hardships we will face in this life?
Since we often cannot know the heart of a person, Jesus taught us that the only way to tell a good tree from a bad tree is to wait to see whether the tree produces any fruit. What kind of fruit does a true disciple of Jesus produce? What kind of fruit would be absent in the life of someone who claims to follow Jesus but is not be obedient to his commandments?
