Kenda Creasy Dean, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, warns that more and more American teenagers are embracing what she refers to as: “moralistic therapeutic deism,” which translates as:

a watered-down faith that portrays God as a “divine therapist” whose chief goal is to boost people’s self-esteem.

Dean concludes:

If this is the God they’re seeing in church, they are right to leave us in the dust. Churches don’t give them enough to be passionate about.

This should come as no surprise to anyone. Our young people embrace “moralistic therapeutic deism” because that’s what they’re parents have embraced, taught and lived. Our young people consistently leave the “church” when they have the chance because we have not given them a better story, we have not captured them with a better vision and we have not presented them with the real Jesus.

Re-capturing the hearts of our young people has nothing to do with being hip, contemporvant or relevant (see yesterday’s post). The fact that so many churches have tried this approach simply betrays the problem. We don’t love God enough. I know that sounds harsh and it paints with a very broad stroke, but the more I live in America, the longer I minister among America’s “Christians” the more I am convinced of this (except, of course for the people at Church of the Cross!) We are not enamored with God, so our young people become enamored with the world (much as we are).

Much of modern American Christianity is not about Jesus at all; it is about us. We are the center of the story. We are the point and the “gospel” is now that we deserve better treatment and things because God is gracious and wants the best for us. God becomes nothing more than a cosmic Santa Claus in a therapist’s chair, there when we need him, staying out of the way when we don’t.

Martin Luther famously said that there is no such thing as breaking only one of the Ten Commandments. That’s because if we break any of the last nine, it’s because we’ve already broken the first. We love ourselves inordinately because we don’t love God as we should. Interestingly, young people want “authenticity” (we can argue about what that actually means), and they want to be called to something greater than themselves. Our version of Christianity-lite provides neither, so they leave.

As C.S. Lewis famously said: “We are far too easily pleased.” Re-capturing our young people does not begin with our young people but in being re-captured by God.

• Read Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church by Kenda Creasy Dean

Much to my wife’s chagrin, my cultural wheels never stop turning. I couldn’t help but marvel at how relevant they have kept most of the attractions. Yes, some of them feel a bit dated, but overall, Disney has done a great marketing job recycling their movies and keeping certain fables alive so that kids of all ages are able to share in an overall experience. I couldn’t help but think that it is often the most long-lasting things that are the most “relevant.” The Matterhorn, Mickey Mouse, etc.

Yet, Disney has not always done the best at relevance. I couldn’t help but think that some things made it into the park quite prematurely. Roger Rabbit, anyone? Not only have my kids never seen Roger Rabbit, I have no inclination to show it to them. It seems to me that Disney took a gamble at something that would become a meme and they lost. Yet, after however many millions of dollars it cost to put in that ride, they are now that much more reluctant to simply remove it. The result is an oddly out-of-place ride with a goofy Bugs Bunny rip-off and an inappropriate Jessica Rabbit character that I don’t want to expose my four young boys to just yet, much less at Disneyland.

There are certainly lessons here for the American Church. We race after this trend or that fad, forgetting that to chase relevance today is to ensure irrelevance tomorrow. We end up as the Roger Rabbit rides of the world; cool in 1988 and a laughing-stock now. It is the enduring that is always relevant. Relevance is not a question of immediate popularity but of lasting impact. Everyone knows Mickey Mouse and very few people care about Roger Rabbit. Everyone knows the Cross and very few people care about your contemporvance.

It is the churches that preach the Cross deeply and live joyful, sacrificial lives that will always be the most relevant. This is not the same thing as being immediately popular, nor should it be. We as jars of clay (2 Corinthians 4:7) hold, proclaim and live the power of God for salvation (Romans 1:16). What could be more relevant than that? Is that enough for us, or would we rather be the Roger Rabbits of culture?

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