Jason Clark

Trying to make safe spaces for diverse and healthy conversations about church, culture, mission, theology and motorbikes

More teens becoming 'fake' Christians?

via edition.cnn.com

I got sent this by a few people, and it's been picked up online in a lot of places.

I know it's a US survey, and mostly about the experience of young people in christian families in the US, but it has a lot in common with faith practices here.

Two areas the article picks out from research that have a connection in all western contexts:

1. Families: Unless parents are living 'radically', which the article suggests might be letting your kids see you not choose a job just because it pays the most money. Our western consumer dream is the 'vision and mission' for most Christians.

Great job, great house in a great location, and relationships that support 'me' in that is what life is often reduced to.  No wonder when Christian parents order life around that reality their kids do too. And Christianity becomes about therapy and support for that reality.

2. Church: Unsurprisingly and related, what are churches (traditional and emerging) modelling and ordering life around. A radical commitment to the Gospel or support for a way of life in consumer society. Families located in radical communities, helping each other live radically, is what we need.

And again that radical is so unglamorous, putting others first, placing our work and where we live in service of a life together for mission. Is our form of faith and mission, still all about us, our happiness, or the transformation of the world? What are our kids seeing our lives ordered around?

What do dieting and christian discipleship have in common?

A large part of my reading the past few years has helped me understand theologically how Christianity and church is about training and ordering our desires.  The Christian life is not just believing the 'right things' but in having our very passions and desires re-directed towards their correct location, Jesus.

It takes habits and practices, of worship, and ministry to re-train our desires, so we learn to love the world 'rightly' fully and deeply.  Christianity in that respects is a deeply material religion, and about re-connection to the world, in the face of a post-modern culture that so often instrumentalises the world, using it for superficial experience. As Augustine would say, it's not that we love the world too much it's that we don't love the world enough at all.

Our shopping habits, leisure habits, recreation are all ways we give time, energy and money to what we think life is about, and those practices are an ascetic that shape an forms us in certain ways.  The saying, 'when the going gets tough, the tough go shopping' reveals that training and who we cope with stress and life and desire.

But beyond theological descriptions, can we see those habits playing out in other areas of life, described and evidenced in other ways?  I came across this article about why will power isn't enough for dieting.  I think it brings a great deal to bear on how we understand our Christian and not so Christian habits, especially  with the most vital of desires, eating and food.

Will Power is not enough
The premise of the article based on research is simple enough, our conscious will power is not enough to overcome our emotional and unconscious experiences of food.  We are permanently overwhelmed by desires that are stronger than our decisions.

The article goes on to say, 'the conscious mind is only able to process approximately 50 bits of information per second, while your unconscious mind processes approximately 11 million bits per second.3 This means your unconscious mind processes information about 220 THOUSAND TIMES FASTER than your conscious mind.'  There is so much going on inside that that overwhelms what we want to do and be.

Most immediately we might consider how despite our best intentions and decision about the Christian life, in some of the most profound moments of life, we are unable to follow through on them and have them become part of who we are.

The responses in the article offer hope for how we might begin to form life around the desires we deem as the most important.

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