christian youngsters, raising hands during worship
When I was in junior high and high school, I subscribed to a brand of Christianity which I will here call Adolescent American Passion (AAP) Christianity. It was a fitting brand of Christianity for me at the time, as it is for most teenagers simply because emotions are easy. and teenagers have a lot of them. If I take a survey of all the conferences, camps, movements and christian events I have ever attended, I can guarantee most of them were filled to the brim with AAP kids.
Defining AAP Christianity
So first things first, what are the doctrinal convictions of AAP Christianity? Well, to be short, there aren’t any really, save one. Be passionate! for passion will win the day.
As an AAP youngster, the Christian walk is characterized by emotional drive, and creative biblical discovery. The devotional time or (Quiet Time / QT as it is also called) is a time where the youngster reads a passage and looks for a deeper meaning, a meaning that sounds cool, that other people aren’t seeing, a creative biblical discovery as I am here calling it. This special discovery of meaning becomes the so-called “scriptural” fuel which inspires emotional highs that then go on to motivate them towards missional activities. (missional is the right word, because with the lack of sound missiological resources in AAP circles, settling for a general missionary feel as espoused by the majority of modern churches today is the best they can get).
A portrait of AAP faith and the problem with it
So what does this look like? And what is the problem with this form of Christianity? Take a moment to imagine a high school student, a self-proclaimed passionate “Jesus Freak”. Well-meaning, and relatively serious about his faith. Every morning he reads the Scripture and waits to be inspired by a sentence or a word, which he then later shares at his Christian club on campus, which in turn inspires his fellow Christian friends. Later on in the day, he stumbles into some form of sin, and feels as though he has failed yet again to live up to the Christian calling. Considering his failure, he then renews his vow to resist sin, and listens to cathartic Contemporary Christian Melodies to get him back on his feet. In the months ahead, he participates in various Christian events, where the speakers call for “Revolution!” and/or “Rededication,” which he naturally responds to by feeling a wave of positive resolve. The Christian camp he goes to that following summer results in the same sort of motivational push, and he relaunches into his everyday life with emotions soaring. In his heart, the future is bright. Christianity is indeed alive in him. The night he comes home after camp, he falls asleep after reading a passage on a new heart, misconstruing the meaning of regeneration into one about spiritual renewal. But that doesn’t cross his mind. He feels great, and that means, he’s doing great.
Pause there. That’s the problem. There are thousands upon thousands of AAP Christians feeling great, and equating that feeling with their spiritual health and maturity. Never considering the fact their entire religion is based upon nothing more than that: a feeling. But the problem with emotions, is that they are temporal, meaning that they inherently have a time limit. We are happy, we are sad, we are nervous, we are confident, and those emotions ebb and flow like tides. And just like tides, they rise and fall according to seasons, and according to circumstance. Unfortunately, the reality of things is, a Christianity based on positive emotions is like a boat helplessly tossed about on a tempermental ocean.
The Solution to AAP
Which is where the Scriptures of God come in. The Scriptures most directly affect the mind, which in it’s proccess of thought, gains the confidence of the heart. The heart then produces the emotion to reward the soul and bolster the resolve of the person. What that really means, is that the tempermental ocean is ultimately stilled by the voice of God. And nobody should be surprised.
A Summary
The AAP Christian attempts to gain stability and growth via rootless emotion. The biblical Christian, gains stability and growth via the careful study of the voice of God in the scriptures. In this case, the roots should be greater than the tree. Which is how nature intended it.
AAP youngsters, go to all the events in the world, and they wonder why they feel like they are failing, why they are still burning out. Here is the reason why. All those speakers, all those events, all of them. Use a sorry study of scripture to produce a large amount of emotion to motivate these AAP’s into feeling their way to progress. Feeling their way to progress. Good grief. Theses self styled shepherds think that as long as they get the hearts of these kids pumping (which really isn’t hard since they are largely adolescents), the legitimacy and depth of the study is negligible. But see how the carriage has preceded the horse.
The Study is not negligble. The Maturity of a Christian, is directly based upon the intensity and accuracy of his interpretation of the Word. He must be a man of the Scriptures, and in being a man of the Scriptures, he will necessarily be a man of stability. At last we are talking about the psalm 1 man, “his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither.”
What do we do with them
Considering all this, it is not our job to lay waste to the AAP christian. Despite the fact that AAP’s have shallow scriptural roots supplying their giant trees of emotional drive, destroying that tree, doesn’t help. What will help is if the roots that do exist are slowly and carefully tended to, and watered so that one day that giant tree of emotion is being sufficiently supplied. Because the problem with Conservative, reformed, evangelicals, is the exact opposite of AAP’s, their roots are massive, and their trees are small. So why not leverage what we’ve got, play both strenghts to the center, and try producing a biblical Christian.
Hmmm. Great analysis. O to have a daily study of the Scriptures that is neither information driven nor emotion driven, yet neither emotionless nor mindless! I think there is a temptation to want to read much yet can often occur without really learning much. Likewise, as you point out above, there is another temptation to read too little (for the sake of meditating on it, letting it impact us) and not open yourself up to learning much either. I find this balance is not always easy. Well, I suppose impossible but by grace through faith.
I find myself leaning away from the “x chapters a day” model, and am finding myself purposing to set my heart right with the Lord that day, to provide a time of confession and worship motivated by God’s word. However, your post kindly reminds me that this does not produce an increasingly deep and broad knowledge of the Scriptures.
I suppose somewhere in the middle with a combination of both is the best place to land.
Hmmm, I believe you, Edward, would be a case study of the proposed solution in the last paragraph. I think it produced something rather special, don’t you think?