May 1, 2011 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Confirmed and Always Being Confirmed

John W. Vest
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 46
John 20:19–31

A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. . . . That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshiping we are becoming.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Are you familiar with the term “Chreaster”? It’s the Christian slang term for people that only come to church on Christmas and Easter. Now, since this is the week after Easter, all of you are either not one of these people or you are one week into turning over a new leaf. Either way, we are glad you are here.

As the faithful gather after a high holy day, I’m reminded of an old, old sermon illustration that asks the question: if you were put on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?

The political events of this past week suggest a contemporary update to this illustration: if the legitimacy of your Christian faith were in doubt, would it be enough to produce your long-form baptism or membership certificate?

This rather undignified business of questioning the president’s integrity and the legitimacy of his birth is the perfect example of our tendency to only believe what we want to believe. Though these so-called “birther” claims have been discredited for some time, even the release of the president’s long-form birth certificate is not sufficient proof to convince the true believers of this radical conspiracy. Remarkably, there are still people who question whether or not the president was rightly born in the United States. It seems, then, that seeing is not always believing. Sometimes we believe what we want to believe, regardless of what we see.

Such was not the case for so-called “doubting” Thomas. To be sure, he begins with significant doubts about the legitimacy of the reports of Jesus’ resurrection. But when he sees Jesus for himself, he believes. Of course, the point of the story is that it is better to believe without seeing. After all, this is our experience. We are asked to believe in Jesus’ resurrection without seeing any direct proof of it. Sure, we have stories. We have the life and witness of the church. We even have our own experience of Christ’s nonphysical presence in our lives and in the world. But we do not see his resurrected body. We cannot touch his wounds as Thomas had the opportunity to do.

I generally find the story of Thomas problematic because it trivializes doubt as something to be repressed or quickly overcome. But in my experience—as a person of faith and as a pastor to others—doubt is a persistent element of our religious experience. Even more, doubt is a necessary and generative element of our religious experience.

I cannot read the story of Thomas without thinking of a philosopher and theologian from Belfast, Northern Ireland, named Peter Rollins. In a series of provocative books, lectures, and sermons, Rollins has highlighted the value of doubt in our lives of faith. A frequent phrase of his is this: “To believe is human; to doubt is divine.”

We tend to think that believing incredible claims is more difficult than doubting them. The nineteenth-century Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard popularized the notion of the “leap of faith”—believing in the claims of Christianity despite the deep paradoxes that exist within it.

Taking an altogether different approach, Peter Rollins suggests that believing is in fact easy while doubt is the more difficult attitude (see Rollins’ talk at Revolution, New York City: http://peterrollins.net/?p=1269). What he means, I think, is that it is easy to uncritically believe in something that gives you comfort, makes you feel good, helps you make sense of the world, or reinforces some inclination or prejudice you already have. It is easy to uncritically believe in a faith that serves as a crutch. It is easy to uncritically believe in the kind of faith that Karl Marx famously called the “opiate of the masses.” It is easy to uncritically believe in a God who is always good, always loves you, always intends the best for you, always works things out in your favor.

But what do we do when we are faced with situations that seriously challenge this kind of faith? For Rollins, this is seen most vividly in Jesus’ own sense of abandonment on the cross. When he cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” he is himself experiencing the profound existential realization that perhaps God isn’t there. Perhaps we are in fact alone. Perhaps this easy-to-believe-in God isn’t really God.

Many of us may be able to identify with this kind of existential crisis. What happens to our faith when we are faced with a terminal illness? What happens to our faith when our closest relationships fall apart? What happens to our faith when we lose our jobs and our sense of self? What happens to our faith when we become trapped in cycles of addiction and self-destruction? What happens to our faith when everything we’ve held onto slips away? What happens to our faith when everything we’ve believed about God’s goodness and our exceptionalism is challenged by the realities of life?

For Rollins, the answer is a kind of Christian atheism that realizes that the easy-to-believe-in God is dead. This easy-to-believe-in God turns out to be nothing more than an idol of our own creation. This easy-to-believe-in God is the antithesis of authentic Christianity. The true God, it turns out, is right there in the midst of our existential crises. The true God is right there in the midst of our suffering and pain, even there in the midst of our most profound doubts—just as God was there in the midst of suffering, pain, and doubt while Jesus hung on a cross and died.

Doubt, it seems, is not an obstacle to our encounter with God; it is a pathway to an authentic experience of God.

Today we are celebrating the confirmation of forty eighth-grade youth. These young people have spent eight months digging deep into the faith of their baptism. They have asked the hard questions. They have wrestled with paradox, enigma, and mystery. They have confronted doubt head on.

The culmination of the confirmation experience is writing a statement of faith. As is often the case, a good number of these statements are as eloquent in their expression of doubt as they are in their expression of faith. While some churches might find this profoundly distressing, we tend to celebrate it. We consider doubt a necessary element of authentic faith, and we welcome the doubters with the same open arms that welcome the believers.

This year, more than most, I have come to appreciate that these statements of faith—and doubt—are written by young people as deeply involved in existential crises as any adult in this congregation. These youth are experiencing rifts in relationships, serious illnesses and death, economic strains, the clash of faith and reason, and more stress and pressure than most of us felt in eighth grade. In the midst of these crucibles we pose a remarkable challenge: tell us what you believe. And tell us they do, with all of the brutal honesty of teenagers finding their way in a world every bit as complex as the one inhabited by adults.

Indeed, I truly believe that we as a congregation of adults have much to learn from these brave young people. It is fascinating to realize that the only people we regularly ask to write statements of faith are confirmands and those preparing to become pastors. What an odd thing that is. Maybe it is time for us to expand our notion of what confirmation is and who confirmation is for.

In my opinion, last year’s most important book on Christianity was Almost Christian by Kenda Creasy Dean. Dean is a professor of youth ministry at Princeton Theological Seminary and has quickly become the country’s leading scholar of mainline youth ministry. The subtitle of her book speaks to its importance: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church.

Dean’s book is based on a groundbreaking sociological study of the religious lives of American teenagers, the National Study of Youth and Religion (NYSR, www.youthandreligion.org). Dean lifts up the following as the most important findings of this study:

1. Most US teenagers follow in their parents’ footsteps when it comes to religion.

2. The single most important influence on the religious and spiritual lives of adolescents is their parents.

3. While most US teenagers feel generally positive toward religion, religion is not a big deal to them. Teenagers tend to approach religious participation, like music and sports, as an extracurricular activity: a good, well-rounded thing to do, but unnecessary for an integrated life.

4. Spiritual and religious understanding are very weak among American teenagers. Teenagers lack a theological language with which to express their faith or interpret their experience of the world.

5. Teenagers tend to espouse and enact a watered-down religious outlook they call “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.” This is the kind of feel good and be nice faith that is easy to believe and doesn’t ask much of us. Dean questions whether this is in fact authentic Christianity.

What is most significant about Dean’s analysis is her conclusion that our youth are a barometer for the health and vitality of the rest of the church. Because the faith of our youth is primarily a reflection of our own faith, what we see in youth is a reflection of ourselves. This can be a sobering thought.

Now, I should note that I honestly do believe that our youth buck some of these trends. The NSYR researchers reported that many of the youth they interviewed had never been asked serious theological questions by adults. That is not the case for our youth. In addition to the eight months of discussions and the youth writing their own statement of faith, I personally ask each of our confirmands a series of theological questions, many of which they were asked again by our Session. We take seriously our charge to shape and nurture the faith of our youth.

But what we do in our youth ministry is not enough. The raising of our children and youth in faith is the responsibility of the entire church. Every time we baptize an infant, we all make promises to nurture the faith of that child—every single one of us.

This is why we must continually be thinking about the kind of faith environment that exists in our congregation and in our homes. Consider this chilling thought from Dean: “What if the blasé religiosity of most American teenagers is not the result of poor communication but the result of excellent communication of a watered-down gospel so devoid of God’s self-giving love in Jesus Christ, so immune to the sending love of the Holy Spirit, that it might not be Christianity at all?” (Kenda Creasy Dean, Almost Christian, p. 12).

Like all of us, I think we are doing a pretty good job here. I don’t necessarily think that we promote the kind of empty spirituality and easy faith that Dean and Rollins each caution against in their own particular ways. But I also don’t want to let us off the hook too easily. We are a church in transition, which means that the time is ripe for us to think seriously about who we are and the gospel we proclaim and live out. What does it mean for us to be a light in the city, and what is the light we share with others?

Closer to home, think about this on a more personal level: How comfortable would you be if you were asked to write a statement of faith and share it with the elders of the church? How articulate are you when it comes to telling the story of our faith and what it means to you? Could you do what we ask our eighth graders to do?

According to Dean, “Youth ministry is the de facto research and development branch of American Christianity, which is why attending to the faith of adolescents may help reclaim Christian identity for the rest of us as well” (Kenda Creasy Dean, Almost Christian, p. 6).

For a while now I’ve flirted with the idea of something like Confirmation 2.0 for young adults. Having gone through this experience at the beginning of adolescence, Confirmation 2.0 would be a chance to revisit the questions of confirmation near the end of the process of becoming adults.

But why stop there? Why not do something like confirmation over and over throughout our adult lives? Indeed, as Kathy Dawson, a professor of Christian education at Columbia Theological Seminary, notes, confirmation is not confined to a particular age, and this process of reaffirming the faith of our baptism can be done more than once (Kathy L. Dawson, Confessing Faith: A Guide to Confirmation for Presbyterians). Can you imagine what it would be like for all of us to periodically go through this intense experience of learning and discipleship?

When I had my personal interview with her, one of our eighth-grade youth shared a remarkable story with me. Her grandfather died of cancer over a decade before she was born. About a year before his death, after reflecting on his battle with cancer, he wrote a statement of faith and renewed his baptism at church. This young person’s family kept this statement, written in her grandfather’s own hand, and shared it with her as she prepared to write her own statement of faith.

What an incredible gift. There is no doubt in my mind that this statement of faith means more to this girl and her family than any ancient creed or confession of faith. This is the kind of living faith that we are called to experience for ourselves and to share with others.

Ecclesia Reformata, Semper Reformanda is a Latin phrase from the Reformation that has become something of a slogan for Presbyterians: the church reformed, always being reformed. If this is a corporate expression of what it means to be faithful, perhaps the individual version might be “confirmed and always being confirmed.”

So let me ask you, friends: What do you believe?