Christian Teens Feeling the ‘Tension’ of Culture’s Contrasting Worldview

Ken Ham

The more teenagers engage with their Christian faith, the more tension they feel. That’s the conclusion of a new study from Barna and Christ in Youth that looked at Gen Alpha (today’s teens) and how they connect their faith with the world around them.

The study looked at “Faith-Activated teens,” defined as those who “score high across six dimensions of lived-out Christian faith, from spiritual practice to service to a sense of calling,” and it found that:

• 44% of these teens “feel tension between their faith and what friends or culture expect of them, compared to 27 percent of all teens”
• 51% “strongly agree their faith feels more private than connected to daily life,” compared to 35% of all teens
• 43% “struggle to connect belief to real-life situations,” compared to 27% of all teens

What does this mean? It would seem that those with the strongest faith are the ones struggling the most with this “tension.”

Barna explains: “A teen whose faith is compartmentalized or who feels caught between two irreconcilable convictions can look like someone who is drifting from their faith. Barna’s researchers argue for a different interpretation. Faith-Activated teens aren’t wrestling with these questions because they’ve disengaged; they’re wrestling because they’re paying closer attention. Faith-Activated teens are taking their spiritual lives seriously enough to test it against what they’re learning in school and what their friends believe, and the research reveals the tension they’re experiencing as they do this.”

In other words, the more these students dig into God’s Word and attempt to apply Scripture to the issues of our day, the more they notice that the two worldviews can’t be reconciled. Well, that’s Biblical! And that’s what I’ve found in my extensive travels when meeting many young people at the various events where I speak.

There is no neutrality—you are either for Christ or against Him; it’s rock or sand, light or darkness, man’s word or God’s Word. The Christian faith isn’t something that we simply add to our thinking, and the Bible isn’t merely a guidebook to life as it’s often presented. The Bible is the very foundation for our thinking, and from that foundation we can build a truly biblical worldview for interpreting the world around us.

When I travel and speak, I find teenagers are hungry for answers. They want to know how their faith applies to the issues of our day, they want answers for how they can know the Bible is trustworthy, and they want to be equipped to refute today’s secular thinking. I hear over and over again, “I’ve never heard this before! This makes so much sense.” They want to be equipped with answers and know how to best argue for the Christian faith (and that means learning to argue foundationally).

If we want to raise up godly generations, we must help young people understand how to think biblically, starting with God’s Word as the foundation. We must help them understand that we deal with any issue—any issue—by starting with Genesis 1–11. Those chapters are the foundation for our Christian worldview and the gospel message.

Once young people understand what the Bible truly is—the revelation from the all-knowing, infallible Creator who has given us the foundational information we need to build the right worldview—they can resolve much of the tension they feel, because they’ll understand that what they’re observing is a battle between the two foundations: God’s Word and man’s word. We need to teach them to think foundationally and arm them using apologetics teaching.

Our young people desperately need discipleship, even the ones that seem the most connected and faithful. What are you doing to disciple the next generation for Christ?