I have added another parable in the Youth work tacks.

My mind is still all over the place around the issue of belief. (see the snowed in by God post) As I grapple with the concept and context, the more I think calling young people to “believe in God” is unhelpful. As said before the believe notion means that God may or may not exist. Thinking about the context of when belief is used biblically often the root can be traced back to couple of Greek words (verbs) around agree, make friends or yield. This further connects with the Jewish tradition of making space for God which could well have been the context of the time.

Some may say I am arguing about semantics but if we are asking young people to believe in a modern context are we doing them and us a disservice and setting ourselves up for problems in the long term. If belief implies only the possible existence of God then aren’t we leaving too much space or opening the way for the individualistic gospel and the non wholehearted believer. By changing the language would we change the nature of what we are calling young people towards.

It reminds me of a time we had two young people interested in God. When we explained the elements of the gospel they understood each part, but when we put it altogether and called it becoming a Christian we lost them. They got the concrete parts, God made the world, man screwed up, Jesus was Gods son, and He died in our place. But together that abstract concept of becoming a Christian lost them. In the ended we pointed them to a maze and said once they got to the centre tell God they wanted to follow him a 100%. Through their journey with us they had already realized God was real, but asking them to believe and become a Christian made no sense to them.

Any thoughts about ways to replace notions of believing in God or comments gratefully received as my brain hurts, but I think it is an important issue for us.
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