Lack Of Spiritual Interest Among The Youth

[Shekinah]

This has bothered me. Although the majority of the younger generations will side with a faith, very few seem to participate, or have any deep interest. Many people I see in their teens through 30's, 40's, will half assed-side with something, but not fully participate. This is one of my reasons for my reluctance to participate in a church. There's virtually no one my age (26) who is enthusiastic about spiritual practice. The Zen group I'm in is still a majority of middle-aged people, great people, but has more people in their 20's and 30s than any other Zen group I've participated with.

I'm also seeing people with an interest in looking into paths, but don't go all the way, because they have no one to support or relate to them. Am I painting the situation more negatively than it is?

[Mike]

I think your observation is pretty well accurate. I think any genuine interest in spirituality has to be born out of a real sense of spiritual anguish or desperation, though.

Compelled by a pressing need to figure out where I ought to stand in relation to this thing we call life - what the meaning of it all is, combined with the awareness that I am going to die, I feel driven to look further even if part of me doesn't want to or I feel exasperated. This search, this path, is my highest priority, even if many times I prefer to look away.

Perhaps young people in general don't sense that need, and don't sense the reality of death. I understand your predicament. I'm 23 and find myself quite unable to relate to other people my age that I know. To me it seems that many of them have surrendered themselves to abandoning any sense of real meaning or Truth, replacing that void with the three great sins that fundamentalists are so happy to point out: sex, drugs, music.

 

Peace to you,

Mike

[Guest billmc]

I'm going to be the odd-man-out on this one and say that I think today's youth are much more spiritual than my generation was. What they are not is more religious.

 

Please allow me to explain. To me, being spiritual means sharing in an unseen connectedness. Coming from a fundamentalist background, I used to interpret spiritual as meaning immaterial, on another plane, an ethereal reality where God existed, something foreign to the reality that we know in our materialistic universe.

 

But my definition has slowly changed over the years as I came to see that being spiritual was not about escape this existence or trying to connect with some alternate reality that is available only to the few. I began to see the being spiritual was about being connected to what is - in Christian terms, having a relationship with God and others. IMO, it's not about being sequestered away from soceity reading my Bible, praying, having devotions, and coming out only long enough to go to church. Rather, all of life is spiritual. Life is about being connected to what we call God and about being connected to one another.

 

Now, today's youth, due to technology, are connected to one another in ways that my generation could never have been. They can constantly stay in contact with one another and get each other's feedback on anything on their minds. I can't even read most text messages, but these kids have this all figured out. And they go out of their way to stay connected to one another most of the time, to the neglect of their homework, family, church, etc. But they have a very strong sense of what it is and means to be connected. Doubt it? Try taking away your youth's cell phone or limiting their text messaging. See how they respond to "being disconnected".

 

 

Do they have a connection to God? I guess that depends on how one defines God, doesn't it? If God is thought to be an old man who lives above the sky who runs the universe, then probably most youth do not connect with that image. But if God is portrayed in some of the best images available to PC, images like compassion, meaning, potential, purpose, joy, forgiveness, then, yes, our youth still long to connect with that. They just don't want to be told that they have to do it through institutional or traditional means like church, Bible study, preaching, etc. To them, that is like being told that they can only communicate with their friends through writing letters.

 

So I think our youth ARE spiritual. But I think they aren't quite sure how to connect with what we call God. The youth that I know want to make a difference in this world. But they are not convinced that the church is the best or only way to do it. They know better. But they are certainly connected. If my daughter has a hangnail, six of her friends know about it within five minutes. I suspect our youth could teach us something about being connected, about being spiritual. But I also hope that we could find ways to talk about the reality of GOD that don't try to force them into "flat earth" cosmology or "turn or burn" theology. They know that most of us "old Christians" probably don't really even know the people sitting in front of us in church on Sunday morning. And they've watched enough media to know that people standing in our pulpits claiming to speak for God can be fakes. They won't settle for going through the motions. They want more. And if that is not being spiritual, I don't know what is.

 

Thanks for listening.

[Neon Genesis]

I can't speak for others, but I can only speak for myself on my views on this as a young 24 year old myself. I consider myself to be a spiritual atheist/naturalistic pantheist. I don't believe in any supernatural deities but if there's any God out there, I see life itself as God. Although the teachings of Jesus still have the most spiritual meaning to me over other religious teachings, I don't follow any single religious path not because I see myself as having a lack of commitment but to me to restrict myself to one exclusive religious teaching or philosophy is spiritually stifling. I prefer to draw my inspirations from multiple religions and atheist writings. When I was a fundamentalist Christian, I believed I had the one true way and I saw no point in learning about any other different views. Now I no longer see the answer as being the purpose of being spiritual but I see the journey itself as the purpose and I see myself on a spiritual journey that has no single end but continues throughout my life and just about every aspect of my life. Perhaps one way of explaining it is like when I was a fundamentalist, I was always taught that church was supposed to be more than just the building we met in every Sunday and that the church extended to anywhere were "true" Christians gathered to praise God, but rarely was this ever put into actual practice and people still kept falling into the trap of restricting the church to a building and acting like you were condemned if you didn't go to church three times a week. But now I see myself as actually putting this into practice and extending the church to all of humanity and not just a building you go to on Sunday. Also, in my case, I can't go to a liberal church because I'm still a closeted gay atheist to my family and I'm unable to live on my own at the moment without financial support, though I'm trying to work my way through college. But if I was able to be on my own or be out to my family, I would attend a Unitarian Universalist Church. Though there's the problem that since I live in the bible belt, most of the churches down here are fundamentalists and the only UU church in my area is about 30 min away on the other side of town in an area of town I'm not familiar with. Basically, I don't see myself as lacking commitment, but I see myself as keeping the door open to all sorts of possibilities and teachings as being a way of commitment. Some people might call this a shallow multiculturalism (I don't mean anyone here but I mean people in general) but this is what works best for me.

[Mike]

Bill you make a lot of good points regarding the deficiencies of traditional religion, and I do like your ideas about what it means to be spiritual - an awareness of the interconnectedness of the life.

But I'm less optimistic that my generation is actually living up to that notion of spirituality. I would agree that many in my generation 'know better' than to be persuaded by organized religion, but I'm not sure they have any consuming interest in things spiritual either. I think that perhaps their turning away from the one (religion) represents a turning away from any such searching and questioning that have long been perceived the domain of religions. I see either cynicism or apathy or both, lined with the popular cultural cliches of today. To me this is evident, and I bet if you surveyed any number of teens to twenty-somethings about things of a basic religious or spiritual nature, you'd get more shrugs and blank stares than you'd know what to do with.

I'm also far less optimistic about the social virtues of today's electronic communication media. Facebook, Twitter, cell phone texting - let's just say that I do not see them as vehicles for furthering spiritual awareness. I think our technology, with its great advantages, seems to encourage less communication and more noise, or, as I once read, more convenience but less time. When I look around at my peers I see a lot of people living life just on the surface, dreading when life gets in the way lest they have to scratch deeper.

Now perhaps I'm wrong and the people I've come in contact with are not characteristic of our larger society. And perhaps being part of this up-and-coming generation, I'm just bound to be a harsh critic of it...

 

Peace to you,

Mike

[tariki]

Getting to the heart of it - that there seems very few who truly give their all to any "spiritual" path - I have to ask.....when has it ever been any different? My opinion is that if you scratch the surface of even the "great ages of faith" you only touch indoctrination, conditioning, keeping up with the crowd, whatever.......rather than any deep commitment that finally proves life transforming/redeeming.

 

When the King visited the monasteries of the great Zen master Lin Chi, he was astonished to learn that there were more than ten thousand monks living there with him.

Wanting to know the exact number of monks, the King asked, "How many disciples do you have?"

Lin Chi replied, "Four or five at the very most."

 

I agree with Mike that more often than not a human being needs the impulse of some moment in their life that brings anguish/desperation before a deep commitment to true "seeking" comes about. There was a series on TV called "Children's Hospital" that followed the stories of various families as they dealt with illness to the younger members. Obviously the spotlight fell upon the children themselves, but I was often taken by the effect made upon the parents. They would often be in their twenties, and perhaps just a few years before were dancing the night away in a disco, yet confronted by illness to their child they often gave great evidence of seeing into some of the things that truly matter and have significance.

 

 

As far as all the new technology is concerned, facebook etc, I think its impossible to know just what potential there is - or isn't - for "spiritual" enrichment. I suppose time will tell.

 

In the end I have to get back to myself and try to recognise when my own "commitment" is more towards comfort and security of the false self than anything else. The deceptions I've now uncovered and recognised in the past makes me very wary of judging my present as being necessarily "true/genuine".......which makes me remember yet another story....

 

Rabbi Elimelech Lizensker said:"I am sure of my share in the World-to Come. When I stand to plead before the bar of the Heavenly Tribunal, I will be asked:'Did you learn, as in duty bound?' To this I will make answer:'No.' Again, I will be asked:'Did you pray, as in duty bound?' Again my answer will be:'No.' The third question will be:'Did you do good, as in duty bound?' And for the third time, I will answer:'No.' Then judgement will be awarded in my favour, for I will have spoken the truth."

 

In many ways a story such as that - from a tradition very different from my own "way" - can appear alien, yet in my often wayward mind it triggers quite a lot!

[AllInTheNameOfProgress]

I think the Youth today are in many ways more spiritual than I was at their age.  Helping people seems to be part of their lifestyle, where I was more self-centered.  Young people are more aware than I was that there are multiple paths to God.  They have not necessarily grown up with church tradition, and church (as a whole) has not changed to address the needs of this upcoming generation.  Figuring out how to better organize people who want to work together to make the world a better place in response to God's love for us is something that should be a HUGE priority, IMO.

[grampawombat]

You will have to excuse me because I'm still trying to figure out how this whole posting thing works. Sorry, but I don't even know how this post is going to look or why.

[grampawombat]

Now that things seem to be back to normal.

 

I am interested in this topic because I think of myself as religious but not spiritual. What most people describe as spiritual experiences I call psychological or emotional. Please try to understand that in saying that I do not intend to be critical, it's just the way I think of such things. So I do not think I have ever had what I would call a spiritual experience. An as you can tell from my photo, I am definitely not a youth.

 

But I have been an active church member most of my adult life, and I take my participation in my congregation, denomination, and religion in general very seriously. My religious convictions impel me to work for peace and for social and economic justice, and I see that calling in one segment of the tradition of my particular faith. And I suspect it is present in other faiths as well. It is also there for those who think of themselves as non-religious, and even atheist. So go figure.

[Shekinah]

Being a down to earth mystic, I see the true nature of being religious/spiritual as "work-on-oneself-for-greater-awareness-of-self-knowlege-and-sensitivity-of-others." There's an insecure narcissism I see in my generation. A lack of taking a deeper look at one's life.

But I do see an unseen awareness of the rest of the world. And with the plethora of information available these days, traditional dogma, and cultural/social bias do not stand up to scrutiny more and more. I'm not one of those new-agers who speak of a new consciousness coming. But I believe that mankind's evolution,(psychological), is greatly accelerated when a great number of different cultures and ideas come together. See historical ages, such as the Greek, Middle-Eastern, Jewish, Roman... cultures, philosophies and ideas came together in the Roman Empire. There's the mix of Chinese and Indian ideas in east Asia, to bring about that great culture.

So these days, there's an unprecedented growth of awareness of the world and foreign ideas. Who knows what will happen?

 

But back to the Youth, I swear that this is a time of growing pains, where both scientific materialism and conventional religious dogma are becoming old, obsolete, and things are coming apart and coming together. Human society is a complex system. I doubt anything can be predicted.

[Neon Genesis]

I don't know how reliable they are since they're biased to conversative Christianity, but the Barna group did a survey sometime ago that showed that the biggest reason why the youth of today are turned off from going to church is because of Christian hypocripsy even though the same youth they surveyed also said they still saw a lot of positive value in Christianity. The youth that was surveyed reported they thought the church was too homophobic, too political, and too judgmental which turned them off from going back to Christianity. There was also a more recent survey done by Parade where they found that the majority of people that self-identify as non-religious believe in a higher power and they also strongly value religious diversity, but they were likewise turned off by the church as an institution. So, I don't think it's so much that there are no people interested in spirituality, but younger people think the church as an institution is old-fashioned and hypocritical.

 

I think a lot of this has to do with how reiligious extremists for centuries have been in control of religion and politics and abusing the bible to promote hatred, bigotry, sexism, homophobia, racism, and violence among other horrors. The bible itself has many troubling passages when taken literally although I think the inspiring and beautiful passages outweighs it. We've also been mislead by these extremists to believe you must either take the bible as a whole or none at all to be a true follower and any other way of seeing it is mischaracterisized as being dishonest or lacking seriousness, so young people are mislead into thinking you can either be an extremist or nothing at all. When so much of religion has been abused for evil, it's no wonder that some people are turned off of it. Of course not everyone who leaves behind religion had bad experiences with it and I'm not trying to stereotype people's experiences, but I think the fact that the reilgious extremists have been in control of the playing field and there's a serious lack of a powerful progressive voice that can appeal to people may be what turns off young people from religion. I'm not saying there are no powerful inspiring PCs, but like there's no PC version of Billy Graham that's a huge megastar with mainstream popular appeal. I think Obama is probably the closest we have to a popular moderate Christian that's a household name, but when it comes to like popular authors or preachers, we don't seem to have many household PC names that can be inspiring and show people there are more options than just the variations of extremism available.

[JosephM]

It seems to me that one must pass through suffering before one truly sees the need for the spiritual quest. Without such, it is doubtful in my mind that real transformation will appear. Youth that are ready may not follow the same path as those in the past but it seems to me that youth will suffer and youth will continue to have interest in the spiritual when their present dead end physical path dictates such.

 

Joseph

[Adi Gibb]

Hi everyone,

 

I'm 36 and may be able to act as a bit of a bridge here. From my experiences organised religion is being abandoned by the younger generation, at least, organised religious ritual is. At my parish church the traditional services on Sunday morning have an audience which is obviously of the older generation. However, the 6pm contemporary service with a live band etc is full of enthusiastic young people. For me, it is where you look! If one goes out into the emerging churches, the charismatic churches, those churches who are 'doing' religion in a more contemporary and relevant way for the youth audience, they tend to be packed! Unfortunately this does not always mean the theology being taught is necessarily a healthy one, but certainly if church is willing to move with the times, I think there is an interest, from what I have experienced.

 

Secondly, I agree with some of the posters above, the younger generation is extremely open to the spiritual while rejecting the religious. I met a Pagan author recently who is only in his early 20s himself and he says he has seen a HUGE jump in numbers over the last five years of pagan and psuedo-pagan faiths. He says younger people are keen to look back past Christianity and get in touch with the faith of their ancestors, one they feel a genealogical connection with, if that makes sense.

 

Finally, I do think it is interesting that in places like El Salvador and Central Africa, where suffering is greatest, religion is embraced more, which kind of goes along with what Joseph and others have said about suffering and comfort etc. For me an analogy I always use is the long forgotten ghost tale! When I was a kid there seemed to be a series of ghost tales that almost everyone knew. These would be told around a camp fire or bonfire, when we were surrounded by the night, darkness, the unknown. I have heard that these tales aren't as well known anymore and, if they are told around camp fires these days, there is certainly no fear of the kids being scared. Why? Well I think it is because with technnology we have finally conquered the night! We have no fear of darkness anymore, we can switch on our mobile phone if we have to. We have no fear of silence, as the TV, radio, Ipod, Computer will always be there to sooth us with their words. We have no fear of the unkown, as everything we need to know we do, and if we don't, well we have the internet to look it up. In short, we are so comfortable, at least in the western world, that we have no 'mystery' left in life, nothing to be afraid of, nothing to explain! We have conquered the night, the darkness, and so all the myths and legends developed to cope with it have become redundant. The same can be said of religion I think to a degree. The younger generation feel we as a society has conquered God, as least the traditional God, so why still listen to the stories about him? Put in a way that makes sense to them, in a way that embraces the continual artifical light which is modern society, and they will listen. I don't agree with this, but that is the feeling I get.

 

Anyway, I'll be quiet now!

 

Adi

 

ps, of course, that light IS artificial, and when the black out comes, when they are faced with the REAL darkness, then the REAL light is finally sought. For me, Jesus and the limitless divine is that eternal sun.

[rivanna]

This is something I often wonder about - how media technology influences culture. I think spiritual life requires some stillness. I also agree that faith is most often sought when we are faced with pain and suffering, or our existential aloneness. “Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it” --Simone Weil

 

On the other hand, it seems possible that a network could be a substitute for face to face community, if you can find God’s presence in the “virtual world” rather than using it as instant gratification or distraction from responsibility. This has been a valuable, if volatile, part of my experience as a nonchurchgoer.

 

I don’t know about the younger generation’s spirituality. My son the CS student who calls himself an atheist, spent his summer in South Africa tutoring kids in computer science. It’s the third year he’s done that, besides donating time to a local high school. He enjoys helping people, and has no interest in church or the bible. My other son feels the same way but occasionally goes to a church sponsored volunteer event for social reasons.

 

Maybe all this is related to Mike’s question about technology leading to new human speciation - somehow I doubt this will ever happen. But it got me thinking about Star Trek with its many episodes on positive and negative effects of technology, and genetically engineered superhumans. In the Trek future it’s not cybernetic hybrids but the peaceful Vulcans, whose arrival transforms the world. Apparently when we humans see how these aliens learned self discipline and cooperation, we follow their example, and do away with war, poverty, crime, disease, etc. As conditions on earth improve, secular humanism becomes the norm, and religion persists mostly as privately held beliefs. (But we’ve passed the 1990’s with no Eugenics Wars, so Roddenberry was wrong about a few things

[Neon Genesis]

 

 

On the other hand, it seems possible that a network could be a substitute for face to face community, if you can find God’s presence in the “virtual world” rather than using it as instant gratification or distraction from responsibility. This has been a valuable, if volatile, part of my experience as a nonchurchgoer.

 

I think the Internet definetly has played an important major role in the evolving beliefs of religion. The Internet makes it easier to access information that people might not have had easy access to before. Instead of having to hunt through the library for a book that they might not even have, you can find tons of information about diverse religious beliefs and their history just from a click away on Wikipedia. Granted not all the info might be accurate on the Internet, but even just this morning, I was reading about the teachings of the universalist church father, Origen, on Wikipedia. Some fundamentalist churches believe that you should only read writings that reinforce their doctrines and just reading a heretical book is a sin.

 

Before the Internet became more popular and more easily accessed, it may have been easier for the church to surpress information and keep the younger people from discovering diverse beliefs. But even if the children live in a oppressive home that forbids them from bringing heresies in their home, it's still more difficult to stop them from discovering "heresies" if they find access to the Internet through other means. I know speaking from my own experience that the Internet played a major role in my deconversion from fundamentalism. I live in the south where virtually almost everyone is a fundamentalist of some sort, so when I was deconverting, I had few people in person that I could turn to for support, but my friends on the Internet have been very open minded and supportive in my spiritual journey. Even without the Internet, I think I would have deconverted eventually anyway, but the Internet made the process a little easier to go through and I wouldn't have discovered different ways of looking at the bible without it.

[Mike]

Perhaps I was too negative about the virtues of our communications technology, what I had in mind was simply its popular usage among teens and twenty-somethings. That there are places like this forum for people to 'gather,' discuss, and share, is a great blessing for many people, including myself.

I also think that my generation (in my society) tends toward dreadful superficiality about spiritual things, but I also beleive that there is at the same time a deep spiritual hunger latent in many, and that this need only be awakened. When it does it may take many expressions depending on the context and the disposition of the individual: 'youthful' Christian gatherings, New Age/Thought, Eastern Thought (perhaps chiefly Buddhism, as it was for me), and less commonly organized religion.

 

In a way, I think with the decline of 'religion proper' in America my generation has been conditioned to distance itself from the 'religious impulse'. As long as this impulse is denied I think it will express itself abnormally: people will look into everything to satisfy themselves and alleviate their anguish, except what is at the heart of the matter: the self. It is almost as if we are all conspiring to keep ourselves convinced that this impulse is not relevant or important to us.

 

Peace to you,

Mike

 

 

PS Rivanna, as far as my topic on speciation, you are right that many people tie it in with the changing conditions of technology, but I never explicitly stated what the cause might be. My topic is simply an utterly random thought experiment dealing with how such a happening might affect theology and Christian theology in particular.

[ada]

This has bothered me. Although the majority of the younger generations will side with a faith, very few seem to participate, or have any deep interest. Many people I see in their teens through 30's, 40's, will half assed-side with something, but not fully participate. This is one of my reasons for my reluctance to participate in a church. There's virtually no one my age (26) who is enthusiastic about spiritual practice. The Zen group I'm in is still a majority of middle-aged people, great people, but has more people in their 20's and 30s than any other Zen group I've participated with.

I'm also seeing people with an interest in looking into paths, but don't go all the way, because they have no one to support or relate to them. Am I painting the situation more negatively than it is?

 

I attend a very small progressive Anglican church in British Columbia. The only one associated with TCPC actually that I could find... I think some days I am literally the youngest adult there at almost 28 years old. It makes for a difficult time "associating" and "connecting with" the congregation. I find I connect well with my Priest because he is in a position of authority, he has much to teach me and he acts as though I have much to teach others which is a very kind feeling to receive.

 

But connecting with the rest of the congregation, the majority of whom could be my grandparents, is much trickier. I feel isolated some days, but I love that church so much I really don't want to go to a larger church with values I don't agree with rather than stay in a smaller place with values I do agree with wholeheartedly.

 

I'm passionate about my faith though. I'm excited about spirituality, and it drives me nuts that it's so hard to find other people my age who are the same way and not .. how should I put this .. fundamentalist I guess is a good word. I just can't be "excited spiritually" with fundamentalists of my faith, and it seems there are no progressive individuals my age, it's only people who have grown up with more traditional values who are refusing to look outside the box. It's difficult to fellowship in excited fashion with that mentality.

 

I've crumbled almost to ashes more than once in my own faith walk because I find it hard to find support of my own generation, I don't think you paint it too negatively at all. I've almost gone back to what I consider "popular" faith (Christianity, in this case) multiple times (even though I don't agree with a lot of the dogmas/teachings) simply because it's hard to walk solo, and I think if people had more support in exploring other spiritual opportunities (Christian or not) that they would be able to find a faith and spiritual path that is more suited to them than they could have ever imagined.

 

I spend my time on a lot of internet media maintaining connections to like-minded individuals, but I have to admit... and this is coming from someone with Agoraphobia who would avoid inter-person contact at all costs ... I actually find the internet to be no match for in-person support and fellowship.

 

But I persevere, and I become stronger as I do. Things which aren't necessarily easy tend to make us stronger.

 

Open-minded youth are the future of spirituality in general though, and as time goes on, less and less younger people are interested in any religion at all. It's disheartening... I think God eventually could be lost forever given enough time if that trend persists.

 

I think there is hope yet, though. Some days I wish I were a stronger individual (and not suffering from debilitating anxiety) so that I could head up projects to connect local youth of similar mindsets. I hate sitting around thinking "Why won't someone do this?" when I could do it myself... except I literally can't

 

 

Perhaps you have that ability though?

 

Perhaps you could begin something and actively seek out younger individuals more excited in faith.

 

Someone's gotta start somewhere.

[AllInTheNameOfProgress]

Good suggestions! Our church has finally started an active college ministry in our town and it is very well received and attended! I agree! Give them something interesting regarding spirituality and they will come.

 

Janet

[Lamia]

I'm with those who think that young people are spirital and not religious. If I've got my history right, and if I don't sound too glib - transcendence - it's primacy in terms of yen and teleology kept being resurrected by philosophers and mathematicians without religion - Deists at least - (although Pascal felt the Church was necessary). But immanence, or the institutional framework in which or for which transcendence was to have a home to ponder and praise was left to the Church or churches. The churches - congregations - are rapidly becoming cultural artifacts and too busy grooming themselves in the mirror of their cultures, so once again, the kids, the scientists and the artists crack the egg and hatch another dream of deity in which religions need not apply. I have heard numerous times that what the Printing Press did to the Church, the Internet is doing to churches. There are lots of ways to enact and discuss one's faith - this blog is one of them. It may be that a congregation is only one form but not the only form of appreciating deity and the meaning of it all. I'm not wedded the church, even though I'm a pastor of a small congregation

 

Pace everybody

Lamia