The Tail Wagging the Dogma
How do you do, fellow kids?
I recently learned from an ad on Facebook that “Young people prefer discovery over dogma.” Then we get a bit more: “Just as the disciples had to learn who Jesus really was, young people prefer to discover the answers of faith. Learn how you can foster that discovery in our ebook.” As a not-Young Person, I’ve heard church people talk about what the Young People like for a long time. Yet the Young People don’t seem to be any more interested in going to church.
“Well,” you say to yourself, “this must be an ad for some Christian education program, or perhaps a college or university.” But no, it is an ad for an online giving app. If you download their ebook, they will show you what the Young People like and help you teach the Young People the faith in a way that suits their preferences. Perhaps while you’re busy at work educating the Young People, you will also consider using the online giving app.
Dogma or discovery…. It’s not clear to me why we shouldn’t pursue both. What is dogma? A quick Google search will turn up this concise definition from Oxford Languages: “a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.” For Christians, this definition will refer to our central truth claims about God, humankind, and salvation. But the Young People, we are told, don’t prefer that. Thus rather than passing on to them the saving faith once and for all entrusted to the saints, we send them out on a journey of discovery. “Good luck!” we cry as we wave from the dock, hoping they land safely on some fair shore before they’re shipwrecked or set upon by pirates.
The journey of discovery, of course, could go in any number of directions. What if they “discover” that the Christian story of salvation is an instructive myth, but nothing more? What if they “discover” a God who wants all the same things they want, loves all that they love, and hates all whom they hate? Will we then attempt to correct these kinds of beliefs, and, if we do so, aren’t we being dogmatic? The Young People don’t like that, we are told. They prefer discovery to dogma.
Admittedly in this cultural moment, it’s unfashionable to affirm the value of dogma. It sounds so old, downright medieval, even. It sounds to our ears, so accustomed to words affirming the value and power of the self, like the death of self. And in one sense, this interpretation is entirely correct. When you take seriously the church’s essential teachings about the salvation we have in Jesus Christ, it means that that our old self—the self that is knotted up in sin, shame, and guilt—dies with Christ, and God gives us new life. “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:11). This claim—that Christ saves us from sin and death and makes us into a new creation—is Christian dogma. We believe it to be revealed by God, conveyed in Scripture, and preserved across the centuries by the church.
If we Christians send the Young People on a journey of discovery, and they don’t discover these core truths of the faith, then all our efforts are as filthy rags.
Okay… back to the ad: It doesn’t stop with the discovery/dogma bifurcation. It continues: Just as the disciples had to learn who Jesus really was, young people prefer to discover the answers of faith.”
[Long, slow sigh…. I take my glasses off, stare out the window for a few moments, contemplate my life…]
Jesus did take the disciples on a journey of discovery, but he didn’t simply leave them to draw their own conclusions. He taught them. He helped them to interpret their experiences of him. There were just some things he wanted them to know, some non-negotiables. He said things like, “No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6), and, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Jesus taught his disciples the truth about himself, and about themselves, because the truth leads us into salvation.
I’m sorry we keep commodifying you in this way, Young People, but so many churches seem more desperate to draw you in than to save you. It is easier to cater to your preferences than it is to tell you the truth. It is easier to appeal to the consumerism we drink in with our mother’s milk than to crucify the flesh. But your preferences cannot save you. Only when we surrender to God and ask him to conform our hearts and will to his will can we receive all that he has to offer. Otherwise, all we have is self-help with Christian window dressing.
You can have both: discovery and dogma. Of course there are more and less effective ways to communicate, better and worse ways to teach. And yes, a process by which we discover the riches of our Great Tradition will help us internalize the saving truths of our faith. But to send our youth on the journey without guiding them to the destination of salvation in Jesus Christ is not enlightened, clever, or respectful. It is cruel.
Amen, Dr Watson. In my opinion, this approach to neglect the teaching of basic orthodox Christian doctrines is the underlying reason that our country has been re-paginized. The lack of preaching on what constitutes true discipleship has been going on for more than one generation, so what we see now are young adults who were never exposed to it. The overall lack of small group discipleship/accountability involvement only compounds the problem. It’s definitely time for the Church here in America to wake-up.
I teach high school students, and I don’t at all think that they want a “journey of self-discovery.” They seem to me to desperately long for a sense of belonging to something greater than themselves, and having grown up in a world full of digital fakery, they want something genuine. Look at the massive following the Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson has gained among the youth by insisting that sacrifice is necessary and for defending traditional norms. I appreciate his work, but the church has all of the above plus the life-giving power of the Spirit. Unfortunately, few in the church seem to be as bold as Peterson in bluntly demanding sacrifice and a subjection of emotion to the truth. A young man recently asked me after class, “How do you be a man?” I spoke to him for half an hour about self-sacrifice and giving up our selfishness, and he listened. He is a very new believer who was not raised in the church, but he wants to know how to live right. These kids want someone to give them something worth dying for, and if the church doesn’t provide it , someone else will. But if they feel like they belong to our tribe, they will believe what our tribe believes (almost without questioning, in some cases). Of course, that means sacrificing our comforts too: from what I remember about babies, they take your time, your sleep and your money. The youth can’t just be taught truth: they must be adopted into our families first- then they can be fed “the sincere milk of the word,” and I believe that they will gobble it down.