Lately I’ve been talking a lot about the epidemic of guilt
in the Christian youth. In doing so, the question has risen, “Well, why don’t
these struggling teens tell their parents or a pastor?” This is an excellent
question. It’s one that I have posed, many times, to dozens of struggling
teenagers who have reached out to me looking for help. Despite their drowning
state, trapped in various stages of guilt, shame, and depression, the majority
of them have never even brought up the topic with their elders. For many of
them, I’m the first person they ever told about their struggles at all.
So the question is – why? Why are these teenagers more
inclined to talk to a disabled twenty-something whom they (in some instances)
barely know, over their own parents, pastors, or teachers? At first, I thought
perhaps it was a similarity in age – I am, in general, only 5-7 years older
than these kids, and while that might play a part in it, on further
questioning, that does not seem to be the majority of the reason. So over the
last year or so, I’ve started paying more attention to the reasonings of those
who reach out to me. The answers they’ve provided when I asked them about why
they’ve reached out to me, in particular, boils down to this:
“You told me I could.” It’s my general practice with younger
Christians to tell them that if they ever need advice or assistance with
anything or if they need to talk to someone, they can contact me anytime. I’ll
always make time for them and to never worry about “bothering” me, because
that’s why I’m here. God doesn’t put us in other Christians’ lives,
particularly younger Christians, so we can just all “hang out” and cruise
along, stuck in our own little bubbles and keeping our heads down to mind our
own paths. The church isn’t meant to be individuals who are all just chilling
in their separate little universes, never affecting the lives of those around
us.
God says in Ecclesiastes
4: 9-12: Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their
labour. 10 For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him
that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up. 11
Again, if two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone?
12 And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold
cord is not quickly broken.
If God puts me in someone’s life, then it’s for a reason.
I’m there to help that person, to mourn with them and celebrate with them, to
help them when they’re struggling and lift them up when they fall. As
Christians, it’s not enough to wander around with our eyes straight ahead,
ignoring the struggles of those around us. We’re called to be servants unto
others, to be the good Samaritan when we spot someone in trouble. If we’ve got
our heads down, watching our own feet and nothing else, and happen to miss
someone who is hurt and in need of help, then we miss valuable opportunities to
fulfill the purpose God has left us on this earth.
So I tell them that. “If you ever need help, advice, or just
to talk to someone about anything, message me. I’ll always make time for you
and I’ll do my best to help you or get you in contact with someone who can.
It’s not a bother and it’s what I’m here for. I’m glad to help.”
That’s it. I make it known that I’m willing to give help –
pray with people when they need it, send Bible verses, or direct them to online
sermons dealing with the things they’re struggling with. If someone contacts me
with an issue, I don’t give it a half-hearted short reply – I research it, read
my Bible to find passages that apply, google key phrases to find verses that
fit with the issue and then read whole passages to locate what they need. If
I’m not wise enough to deal with the issue or it’s something that needs more
help than I’m able to provide, I then can encourage them to contact a pastor,
tell their parents, and locate help in ways I’m not able to assist with.
And then I follow up. And follow up. And follow up. I make
sure they’ve contacted their pastor. I make sure they’ve told their parents. I
make sure they’re reading the passages I sent them. I encourage them to contact
me again if anything else comes up or if they need additional things to read or
listen to or just need to talk through it. If they need someone to talk to, to
pray with, to just cry on – I’m here, and it’s not a bother or a difficulty.
It takes maybe an hour of my time. Follow-ups take maybe
five minutes. It’s not a huge, time-consuming process. And I’m not doing
anything special. I’m encouraging and uplifting fellow Christians – something
the Bible says countless times that we’re meant to do. I’m not a ministry
worker. I’m not a pastor or a counselor, and I don’t try to be. If something is
above what I’m able to help, I’m not afraid to encourage them to seek help that
I’m not able to provide. But just a few words like, “You can contact me if you
need help or advice about anything,” can be the difference between someone
hiding their struggles – until they either a) fall away from the church and
Christ completely or b) resort to horrible things to get them through – OR them
getting the help they need, being lifted back into the Hope of the Cross, and
recovering.
A lot of these kids start out just needing someone to
encourage them and point them to the passages in Scripture that will restore
their troubled and confused hearts. It’s simple, little, easy things to address
and can often be addressed by any
mature Christian. At the beginning, it can be as simple as explaining a concept
or showing them why they don’t have to drown in guilt, according to Scripture.
It’d take an hour of someone’s time, and maybe fifteen minutes now and then on
a Sunday morning to check in with them and make sure they’re not falling back
into that and reminding them of Grace.
But without any help, they spiral down into the despair and
anguish that I’m so accustomed to seeing in the Christian youth of our day and
age. Depression is a huge and growing epidemic in the church. Christian Camps
across the nation are employing guilt-tripping tactics to convert youth to
Christ, leaving them in a vulnerable place in their new faith, and then give
them no help in growing to understand guilt and shame are not the future that Christ
wants for us. Our youth programs and messages directed at young Christians
employ shame and guilt tactics to gain repentance, and then offer no help in
moving beyond that guilt and shame once repentance has been accomplished.
Our youth are not secure in their faith. They’re not aware
of the solidity of their salvation, and they struggle with self-hate and
depression in the wake of their rebirth. The hope of Christ is lost on them.
Instead, they’re so focused on “what they have to do” to live a godly life, and
inevitably falling short since none of us can live up to those standards, that
they quickly fall into despair at ever pleasing God. In some cases, it goes so
far that they can no longer stand to read their Bibles or even pray because the
shame and guilt has grown so far, unchecked by those around them, and indeed, encouraged by them in many instances.
So again, this raises the question of – why aren’t they telling their parents or pastors?
The first reason I hear most often is, “It would stress my
parents out. I can’t upset them like that. It’s not fair to them.” I hear this
all the time. Christian teenagers are terrified of upsetting their parents by
getting help either from them or their pastors. On many occasions, they’ll
explain that they’ve tried to bring the topic up before and their parents got
so distressed over it that they quickly closed off and said nothing else.
Despite the severity of a lot of these kids’ struggles, they’re more willing to
suffer through it alone and silent than to risk making their parents upset or
sad. It’s as if they view their parents as weaker and more fragile than they
are. A lot of these kids feel a strong burden to protect their parents from the
realities of life. “They’re stressed about their job, they’ve got all these
things going on, they have to help my siblings with XYZ, they’re too busy and I
don’t want to take up more of their time” etc. I’ve heard it all. The distress
that often rises when I bring up the topic of telling their parents – distress
caused by their parents’ already full plate of daily stresses – is quite
worrisome.
The second is the idea that if they’re struggling, something is wrong with them. If they’re
sad, if they’re hurting, if they’re confused or guilty or struggling with
shame, then that must mean that they’re crazy or ungodly or that something is
severely wrong with them. The idea that struggles are normal, that tripping
over our own feet as Christians isn’t unusual at all, that we all fall down and
mess up and struggle with different things – it’s all foreign to them. The number of times I’ve heard “I must be
crazy” from very-normal Christian kids who are just struggling with very-normal
things is outrageous. The idea that struggling with sin, guilt, and spiritual
confusion after salvation is totally normal is lost on them. In their minds,
the mere hint of struggle means that something is severely wrong with them, and
in turn, they call their entire salvation
or their sanity into question.
“What if I’m not saved?” “I still struggle with sin, so that
must mean I’m not doing it right.” “Something is wrong with me, because I’m
still tempted by sin and struggling with guilt – so does that mean I was never actually saved?”
Or, “I’m so sad all the time and I don’t actually have
anything real to be sad over, so does
that make me crazy?” “I can’t seem to handle the things everyone else is
handling just fine, so maybe something is mentally wrong with me. Maybe I’m
insane, because this isn’t normal.”
So, in turn, getting help from a pastor, parent, or elder is
a confirmation of something being wrong
with them. Instead of the act of asking for guidance or counseling from someone
wiser being a normal and good thing
– something every Christian should do in the course of their faith – it’s
instead seen as a sign of their failure. Needing counseling or help is, in their
minds, the equivalent of being inadequate and weak. If they need help, then
they must have failed. Something must be wrong with them. Maybe they’re not
even saved at all, if they’re still struggling like this and need help.
Our youth aren’t encouraged to seek out biblical guidance
outside of sermons and youth groups. There’s no one-on-one guidance available
to them, without it becoming a huge deal for everyone who is involved, making
it seem like it’s an unusual and gigantic problem. A teen who is just starting
to have problems, when it is small and easily taken care of, isn’t going to
tell their parents they need to see the pastor. Why? Because they’d have to
have them arrange a day that it can be handled around both their parent’s and
pastor’s hectic schedules. Then have them drive them to the church or their
pastor’s house (after shuffling around babysitting for their who-knows-how-many
baby siblings). And then have their parents wait an hour (out of their parents’
already super busy day) for them to talk the issue out with their pastor.
I can tell you right now that it’s not going to happen. The
idea of asking for that kind of “special treatment” (a phrase used by many
young people when I suggest it to them) to deal with a so-far small problem is
horrifying to them. “How can I ask my parents to take that kind of time out of
their day or go through all that trouble for me? I can’t ask for special
treatment like that! Everyone else seems to be fine, so I need to just get over
it on my own. I’ll be fine – I’ll just suck it up and deal with it.”
Except that they can’t deal with it. They’re babies in their
salvation – essentially toddlers trying to teach themselves advanced mathematics,
with no one-on-one teaching available. The Bible is a giant textbook and it all
sounds equally condemning to a young person already struggling to understand
the concepts of Grace and Hope. God’s fire, wrath, and high-standards grow ever
more daunting, and their faith in their abilities to achieve the level of
spirituality they believe is “normal for everyone else” plummets the more they
look, oftentimes.
They need guidance,
but blowing a young person’s problems up into something big, when they’re
already likely very self-conscious and afraid of it as it is, is a fast way to
shut them down from asking for help. If getting help is complicated, they
aren’t going to ask for it. Even if their parents are 100% willing and on board
and happy to take them, it’s going to be a struggle for the teen to go without
feeling like it’s special treatment and feeling guilty about the time everyone
is “sacrificing” for them. And if the parents are even 1% disgruntled, because
that kid has this and the other kid has that and they need to make supper and
get groceries and pay bills and blah-blah-blah (thereby making the teen feel
like this is a huge inconvenience for everyone involved and, therefore, selfish of them), then the chances of it
happening (or repeating if it even happens once) plummets into the negative
zeros.
The sad truth of the
matter is that asking for help and actually getting it are often framed in such
a way as to make it seem like it’s selfish
of our youth to ask. Even if no one is actually viewing it that way, it’s
easily portrayed in that manner to someone who is already struggling with
self-doubt and security issues. And the bigger it gets blown up, the more
they’re going to resist getting help.
So even if there is help available, it will seem out of
reach. Most teens can’t drive themselves, and even when they can, they usually
don’t have a car. Finding a good time to take them to talk to the pastor is
tricky at best, and even the most caring parents can get stressed and
disgruntled when trying to find the time. So even if their parents don’t get
upset about them wanting/needing to go speak with the pastor, inconvenience
will often raise its ugly head.
“It’s not convenient for my parents to have to take me. It’s
not fair to them. They’re busy and we don’t have time for this. Why can’t I
just do it myself? Why am I struggling with this when no one else is? What’s wrong with me?”
So the answer to the question “why don’t kids tell their
parents and pastors when they’re struggling?” boils down to these things:
1.
It seems selfish to ask for help when it takes
so much to get help and
inconveniences everyone else (“who are probably already stressed anyway”)
2.
Getting help when it’s something small and can
be taken care of easily seems impossible with help so far out of reach, so they
wait until it’s a gigantic problem that will take years to overcome and correct
3.
Often when they ask to speak to a pastor or
someone who can help them, nothing ever comes of it, because of busy schedules
and difficulties planning a good time (so it just gets swept under the rug and
forgotten, discouraging them further)
4.
They think needing help means something is wrong
with them because getting help is made out to be such a big deal (even if it’s
not meant to be)
5.
There are basically zero easy ways for youth to
reach out and find spiritual guidance one-on-one, and almost no one is offering
it.
And, to top it all off, even if they could get up the courage to ask for help, a lot of times
there is no one they’d trust or could even think of to ask. Especially if
they’re from a home where their parents aren’t very good/have issues and no one
has ever offered to let them contact them, they may not have anyone to contact or ask, even if they’re in a church.
There is no consistency. A single time talking to a pastor
isn’t going to help someone in the long run. One good talk with an older, wiser
person in the church won’t magically correct what they’re struggling with. They
need consistent, daily support and people who are invested in their lives and
striving to lift them up, help them along when they fall, and show them the
grace and hope of the Lord in their lives. And they’re not getting it in an
hour-long message at church on Sunday (where they talk about how bad XYZ is.
Where the pastor gives a giant list of traits Christians need to constantly
portray and prey on their already unsure minds, leaving them to doubt their
salvation more and more and build up guilt and fear until it’s all-consuming).
They’re not getting it in the half hour youth service on Wednesdays and the
hour of games afterwards (where they talk about topics that they need to hear,
yet are too shallowly gone into to do them any good). And they’re not getting
it at home, where often the only spiritual guidance they’re given is a list of
“do”s and “don’t”s that make them feel continually more ashamed and less
confident in their own salvation.
The church was never mean to run with a single pastor
carrying all of the weight and struggles of their congregation. As Christians,
we’re meant to lift one another up, help each other, offer help and encouragement
and spiritual guidance when it is needed. But more often than not, we’re too
busy in our own lives, caught up in our own problems, and living in our own
little universes. We say, “There’s pastors for that.” “There’s counselors for
that.” “There’s people more qualified for that.” “It’s not my job.”
Well, I hate to break it to you, but it is your job. God
didn’t call us to his church body for us to ignore all the other struggling Christians
around us and do nothing. Oftentimes, we’re so busy focusing on how we’re
interacting with the unbelievers, how we’re witnessing to them, how we’re
helping the hungry etc etc (which are all good things, and I’m not saying
otherwise), that we forget to pay attention to how we’re interacting with our church,
our families and our friends, how we’re witnessing and uplifting each other,
and how the younger and more vulnerable Christians around us are doing.
We need to stop converting people and then saying that’s
good enough. We need to stop sitting in our own little bubbles, tending only to
our own little lives, and ignoring our younger brothers and sisters while they
drown around us. I don’t know how many times people have told me, “I’m not cut
out for ministry because I don’t feel like I can walk up to strangers and
witness to them.” But they’re ignoring that ministry doesn’t end there. You don’t have to be talking to strangers on the
street to be doing the work of God – you can be uplifting the people you already know, checking in with them and finding out
what they’re struggling with and offering to pray for them, with them, or just
talk about it so they know they’re not alone.
We don’t stop needing help when we get saved. God told us to
form the church for a reason. And it’s not so we can sit in a bench for an hour
on Sunday and then never interact with any other Christians outside of that.
Let’s stop saying, “It’s not my job – that’s something the pastor should do.”
And let’s start finding ways to get people guidance and help in ways that won’t
blow it so far out of proportions that they feel like something is the matter
with them.
Let’s normalize spiritual guidance. Let’s normalize
counseling. Let’s normalize talking to
one another about what we’re struggling with, so our young people – or our
people in general – stop feeling so alone and cut off. Because we need to stop
making people feel like getting help, encouragement, assistance, or guidance
for very normal, very common struggles means that something is
more wrong with them than the rest of us. Because it’s not true, and it’s
making people fall away from the church, fall away from God, and collapse into
self-hate/self-doubt, and become lost.
People want to know why more and more young people who are
growing up in Christian churches leave the church after they become adults.
Well, I’d dare to say that the lack of real one-on-one guidance and help is one
of the main reasons. It doesn’t take a pastor to ask someone, “Have you been
doing alright lately? I know I’ve been struggling with XYZ and talking to other
Christians really helps. If ever you need someone to talk to, please feel free
to contact me. Maybe we can figure things out together.” It doesn’t take a
counselor to look around a room and see someone who you feel like you’d get
along well with (or someone you already DO get along well with) and seek that
person out to let them know you’re there for them if they ever need to talk.
I’m not saying we all need to be in everyone’s lives and doing so much that we wear ourselves out
trying to help five million people. But if we all had a few people that knew
they could rely on us if they needed something, that we checked in with and
made sure they knew we were there for them if they need to talk, then I don’t
think the epidemic of guilt, shame, and confusion we’re facing in our young
people – and, really, in Christians in general – would be so bad.
We need to stop being apathetic pew warmers and start being
workers of Christ, and it starts with the people who He has already put into your
life. You don’t need to go out on the streets and hunt down people – just look
around church the next time you’re there, or around your family, or your bible
study, or your office building, or your “meets in the park to play games” group.
Look at your friend group, look at your family, look at the people who already are in your lives, and take time
to make sure they know they can talk to you about things, that you’ll make time
and that you want to help them if
ever they need it, about anything, big or small. Let them know you’re here to
chat if they need it, or pray with them, or search Scripture together with
them.
God put these people in our lives for a reason. I just think maybe it’s
time we start acting like it.
