On Teenagers, and Sin
Why do people become Christians? Is it just that they grew up in a Christian home?
I was having a debate a few years ago and my opponent made this comment:
I think it’s actually quite clear that the overwhelming majority of Christians became Christians because they grew up in a Christian culture (namely they had Christian parents).
Sorry, I lost the link
To which I replied…
I wonder, do you have teenagers yet?
You are perfectly correct, and yet perfectly incorrect, here. The vast majority of people who now claim to be Christians grew up in Christian homes, or at least a Christian culture.
I would venture to claim that the vast majority of people who claim to be atheists grew up in atheist homes. But definitely Muslims, Buddhists….
However that does not actually contradict my statement. For two reasons:
1) Because I was actually talking about Christians, not people who claim to be Christians and
2) Teenagers.
There are many things in our life that we can manage to accept whole cloth from our parents and pass on to our children unchanged and basically unchallenged. The vast, indeed overwhelming, majority of people, for example, are not nudists. They have, indeed, never even considered it. They have certainly not had to struggle over it, wondering whether to be open and honest and teach it to their children as one of the valid ‘clothing views’.
They simply were raised by non-nudist parents, aren’t nudists, and have non-nudist children (who go through a nudist phase at about two years old but are disciplined out of it).
There are a lot of people who accept many of the trappings of Christianity, and indeed much of the culture and world view of Christianity, in the same way. But Christianity, true Christianity, is not something which can merely be caught, lived, and passed on. There comes into ever Christians life a ‘teenage’ phase… where they are forced to decide if they, too, will accept this view of life and pass it on. Ironically there are some who decide not to accept it, but to pass it on to their children anyway.
I got on my knees and prayed, why didn’t I feel God?
ibid
Let’s look at these two subjects, your feelings and teenagers, together. And let’s go through my list. I wrote that the first step was:
1) They are sinners. They have an instinctive knowledge of good and evil, and realize that they do evil every day.
So when you asked ‘why didn’t I feel God’ you seemed, to me, to be starting at an odd place. I don’t even recall writing about ‘feeling God’ anywhere in my list. My experience with teenagers (including myself, altho I was eight years old at the time) is that they start where I said. They start, not with a realization of God, but a realization of sin.
Sin is a concept that the modern world hates, and one that is ruled out of bounds by materialism. You said, earlier, something like that if you were to accept my point of view you would have to deny that which you hold most dear. Did that include materialism?
Because the concept of sin makes no sense in a materialistic world. We are surrounded by it every day, it is one of the most obvious of the Christian doctrines, but it doesn’t fit in a materialistic world. If all there is is matter in motion, then there is no failure to live up to a moral standard. Indeed morality is meaningless.
Evolution teaches that the ‘purpose’ of every species is to pass on their genes, and the purpose of individuals of that species is to pass on their particular subset of those genes. If you succeed in living, mating, and having successful offspring… then you win. If you don’t, you lose. So the only ‘sin’ would be failing to pass on your genes. Ironically, in light of your above posts, evolution would teach that rape would be wrong only if it didn’t succeed in getting her pregnant and having her carry the child!
The child who grows up in a Christian home, no matter how many times they have sung ‘Jesus loves me’ and ‘the B-I-B-L-E’ eventually comes to a point where they ask themselves, “But do I believe I am a sinner?” If they don’t so so… they never become an actual Christian. If they, and you, do not pass step 1, they can never even get to step 2, let alone the Christian life.
Thank you for reading Von’s Substack. I would love it if you commented! I love hearing from readers, especially critical comments. I would love to start more letter exchanges, so if there’s a subject you’re interested in, get writing and tag me!
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If you get lost, check out my ‘Table of Contents’ which I try to keep up to date.
Von also writes as ‘Arthur Yeomans’. Under that name he writes children’s, YA, and adult fiction from a Christian perspective. His books are published by Wise Path Books and include the children’s/YA books:
The Bobtails meet the Preacher’s Kid
and
As well as GK Chesterton’s wonderful book, “What’s Wrong with the World”, for which ‘Arthur’ wrote most of the annotations.
Arthur also has a substack, and a website.
Thanks again, God Bless, Soli Deo gloria,
Von