To Not Feel Lost in the World

A friend recently directed my attention to an episode of CBC’s The Current where the subject matter was Gen Z’s return to Christianity. Many are noticing that the kids are coming back to church. At least some of them. We’re not exactly talking a tidal wave here, but certainly a steady trickle. What on earth is going on, the venerable CBC wanted to know?

The basic thesis seems to be that many young people are longing for… more. More meaning than secularism has delivered, more community than life online can create, more joy in an age of depression and anxiety, more grounding in a world that seems unstable and unpredictable. Gen Z is coming of age in a confused and chaotic cultural moment, and some are desperately looking for some guardrails. So it would seem, at any rate.

As a pastor, I’m obviously intrigued and encouraged by this trend. It corresponds, at least in part, to some of my deepest convictions about what it means to be a human being, what we were made to hunger for. I (perhaps unsurprisingly) have a few reservations about grand pronouncements about an entire generation coming back to church, not least based on the theme of my last post. At times, certain guests seemed to give the impression that the church had done a very poor job of living up to their particular values and issues and that they were hoping to find a church that was a better fit. I have no doubt of the church’s failings, but I also know that our particular values and issues sometimes need to be challenged. If Gen Z comes back to church hoping for a frictionless experience, they will be sorely disappointed (at least they should be). The church exists not only to “ground” you and give you a bit of a top-up of joy and meaning (as one young woman described it), but to tell you the truth about who you are and what you need. Whatever else is going on in the confession of sin, for example, a bit of friction is certainly involved.

But I don’t want to just be a grouch here. Overall, this is obviously a trend worth celebrating. It was very encouraging to hear of a young man converting to Catholicism because he wanted something ancient and sturdy, because he distrusted the narrative of secularism that says that impulses mostly exist to be gratified, and that freedom was mostly for the pursuits of the self. It was fascinating to hear sociologists of religion talk about the hollowing out of the “mushy middle,” where people are just kind of vaguely Christian in a cultural sort of way. Increasingly, it seems, people are either all in or all out. It was heartening to hear twenty-somethings speak honestly about how secularism has not offered and cannot offer enough, about how to be human is to long for more.

And I was almost moved to tears to hear young woman who was recently baptized talk about what she might say to someone who might say she was caught up in a trend or a popular wave:

No, this is like revolutionary, you know? Like, I have never felt more fulfilled and loved in my life. I’ve never had this great of a community in my life. Nothing has ever given me that same relief, that same love, that same kindness, that same calm that Christianity did, that Jesus Christ did.

Because now I’m able to forgive, I’m able to let go, I’m able to not be angry, be patient, and believe that God has a path for me and to not feel lost in this world.

One could hardly ask for a better advertisement for what the gospel can do in and for a human life. A deep experience of meaning, love, community, relief. The ability to forgive, to let go of anger. To connect with God and God’s purposes.

And what a thing to be able say, whether we are 22 or 92 or anywhere in between. That we don’t feel lost in the world. That there is a good path, that Jesus meets us on it, and that Jesus will lead us home.