10 Questions Every Teen Should Ask (and Answer) about Christianity E-Book

Rebecca McLaughlin

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Written by Rebecca McLaughlin, Author of Confronting Christianity  In a world of increasing ideological diversity, kids are being challenged to think through their own beliefs at an early age. Questions like How can you believe the Bible is true?; Why can't we just agree that love is love?; and Isn't Christianity against diversity? can seem like roadblocks for kids who are following Jesus, as well as for those who might otherwise consider faith in Christ. In this helpful book—written both for Christian kids and for those who think Jesus is just a fairy tale character—Rebecca McLaughlin invites readers ages 12–15 to dig deep into hard questions for themselves and perhaps discover that the things that once looked like roadblocks to faith might actually be signposts.

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“This is a really clear, compelling, understanding, and engaging response to the biggest objections people have to Christianity today. Read it, wrestle with it, and see what your friends make of it.”

Sam Allberry, speaker; author, Why Does God Care Who I Sleep With? and 7 Myths about Singleness

“Rebecca McLaughlin doesn’t shy away from difficult conversations about heaven, hell, sexuality, and racism but handles them with gentleness, humility, and a refreshing humor that teens will appreciate. Best of all, she presents the gospel so clearly and beautifully. I’m thankful for this winsome resource that I can recommend to young Christians and non-Christians alike.”

Quina Aragon, spoken-word artist; author, Love Made: A Story of God’s Overflowing, Creative Heart and Love Gave: A Story of God’s Greatest Gift

“Young people might not always articulate their questions about life. But they are wondering. 10 Questions Every Teen Should Ask (and Answer) about Christianity can help them both express and satisfy their emerging questions and longings. We wish we’d had this book when we were raising our children! But now we can give it away—confidently—starting with our own grandchildren.”

Ray and Jani Ortlund, President and Executive Vice President, Renewal Ministries

“10 Questions Every Teen Should Ask (and Answer) about Christianity is the book every parent, teacher, youth worker, and young person has been waiting for. In her down-to-earth, relatable, winsome, and brilliant manner, Rebecca McLaughlin tackles the major questions confronting this generation, showing that Jesus is still the answer to our greatest needs and longings. If we don’t want to lose a generation, we must have the courage to wrestle with hard questions and show that Christianity is relevant in our rapidly changing world.”

Christine Caine, Founder, A21 and Propel Women

“Our world is complex. Growing up today and having to confront that complexity is not easy. In this short book, McLaughlin helps young adolescents confront, understand, and interpret the complexity of our world in continual dialogue with the central claims of the Christian faith. Readers will have their minds challenged and illuminated; by struggling through these issues, they will be brought closer to the truth.”

Tyler J. VanderWeele, John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Epidemiology, Harvard University

“As a father of five, I was so excited to know about this book. My excitement only grew as I read the truths Rebecca McLaughlin engages in such an accessible manner—many references to Harry Potter and Disney films! Most of all, I was excited to have a theologically rich book that deals with challenging questions that I could place in the hands of my children. This is such an important tool to disciple the next generation!”

John Perritt, Director of Resources, Reformed Youth Ministries

10 Questions Every Teen Should Ask (and Answer) about Christianity

10 Questions Every Teen Should Ask (and Answer) about Christianity

REBECCA McLAUGHLIN

10 Questions Every Teen Should Ask (and Answer) about Christianity

Copyright © 2021 by Rebecca McLaughlin

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Cover Image and Design: Tyler Anthony

First printing 2021

Printed in China

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-7166-4 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-7169-5 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-7167-1 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-7168-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: McLaughlin, Rebecca, 1980- author. 

Title: 10 questions every teen should ask (and answer) about Christianity / Rebecca McLaughlin. 

Other titles: Ten questions every teen should ask (and answer) about Christianity

Description: Wheaton, Illinois : Crossway, 2021. 

Identifiers: LCCN 2020020314 (print) | LCCN 2020020315 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433571664 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781433571671 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433571688 (mobi) | ISBN 9781433571695 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Christianity—Juvenile literature. 

Classification: LCC BR125.5 .M45 2021 (print) | LCC BR125.5 (ebook) | DDC 239—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020020314

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020020315

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2020-12-07 02:35:49 PM

For Miranda, Eliza, and Luke,

who ask the hardest questions,

and for everyone who wonders

what this strange world

is all about.

Contents

Preface

Note to Parents, Grandparents, Guardians, and Friends

Introduction

1How Can I Live My Best Life Now?

Mental and Physical Health Benefits of the Christian Life

2Isn’t Christianity against Diversity?

Racism / Slavery / Christianity as the Most Diverse Movement in History

3Can Jesus Be True for You but Not for Me?

Universal Truth / Relativism / Evangelism

4Can’t We Just Be Good without God?

God as the Basis for Morality / 9/11 / Hitler / Stalin / Human Identity / Abortion

5How Can You Believe the Bible Is True?

Evidence for the Gospels / Evidence for the Resurrection / True versus Literal

6Hasn’t Science Disproved Christianity?

Origins of Science / Science and Faith Controversies / Christian Scientists Today

7Why Can’t We Just Agree That Love Is Love?

Marriage / Sex / Singleness / Friendship / Same-Sex Attraction / Pornography / Abuse

8Who Cares If You’re a Boy or a Girl?

Gender / Feminism / Transgender and Non-Binary Identities

9Does God Care When We Hurt?

God’s Sovereignty in Suffering / God’s Care for Us / Prayer / Purpose

10How Can You Believe in Heaven and Hell?

Meaning of Heaven and Hell / Sin and Judgment / Salvation / Invitation

A “Thank You” Note

Notes

General Index

Scripture Index

Preface

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a poet. But my first book wasn’t a gathering of poems. It was a gathering of ideas from some of the world’s brainiest people. After nine years of talking with professors at top universities, I felt like I had a roadmap of objections to Christianity, showing where the dead ends lay and pointing to the highways. Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World’s Largest Religion (Crossway, 2019) is that map. It looks at twelve reasons not to believe in Jesus and argues that—if we look at them more closely—they stop being roadblocks and instead become signposts. 

I was thrilled when Confronting Christianity was featured as one of the only books about faith on the TED Talks Summer Reading List and named Christian Book of the Year 2020 by Christianity Today magazine. But I was most thankful for the readers who let me know how much the book meant to them as they’d examined their own beliefs or answered questions from exploring friends. As I read these messages, it struck me that kids and teens have complex questions too. In fact, in my experience, kids ask the hardest questions of all. 

You could say this book is a simplified version of Confronting Christianity. In one sense, it is. I’ve written it for folks who aren’t yet ready to drive, so they don’t need quite so extensive a map. But navigating on a bike has its own challenges, and I believe in taking the training wheels off as soon as possible and letting people explore for themselves.

If you’re ready to drive, you may be ready for Confronting Christianity. That book gives all the footnotes for the claims I make in this book and explores some issues not included here. If you’re not yet driving age, but you have real questions about the world in which we live, this book is for you.

Rebecca McLaughlin

October 2020

Note to Parents, Grandparents, Guardians, and Friends

I finally gave up Christianity when I was 15,” wrote famous atheist Richard Dawkins in his latest book, Outgrowing God: A Beginner’s Guide (2019).1 Dawkins hoped to reach the rising generation of kids with the good news that they don’t need religion. In the decades since the New Atheist movement launched, you might think this was the only message sounding from the academic world. But that is simply not the case.

Religious belief was supposed to decline as modernization swept the world.2 But it hasn’t. Being a world-class academic and a serious, orthodox Christian was supposed to be increasingly untenable. But it isn’t. Giving up on religion was supposed to make people happier, healthier, and more moral. But it doesn’t.3 In fact, even Richard Dawkins has had to acknowledge (grudgingly) the evidence that people who believe in God seem to behave better than those who don’t. He thinks it rather patronizing to say, “Of course you and I are too intelligent to believe in God, but we think it would be a good idea if other people did!”4 And yet that does seem to be where the evidence points. Broadly speaking, religious belief and practice seem to be good for society—and good for kids. Writing in the Wall Street Journal in 2019, therapist Erica Komisar gave this provocative advice: “Don’t believe in God? Lie to your children.”5

Komisar was not shooting in the dark. Mirroring the mental and physical health benefits for adults, there is a growing body of evidence that regular religious practice is measurably good for the health, happiness, and pro-social behavior of our kids. In the same year that Dawkins released his book, the Harvard School of Public Health published the results of a longitudinal study on the impact of a religious upbringing on adolescents and found that it contributes to a wide range of health and well-being outcomes later in life.6In an op-ed for USA Today, Harvard professor of epidemiology Tyler VanderWeele summarized some of the key findings:

Children who were raised in a religious or spiritual environment were better protected from the “big three” dangers of adolescence: depression, drugs, and risky sexual behaviors.Those who attended religious services regularly were subsequently 12 percent less likely to have high depressive symptoms and 33 percent less likely to use illicit drugs.Those who prayed or meditated frequently were 30 percent less likely to start having sex at a young age and 40 percent less likely to have a sexually transmitted disease.Moreover, children with a religious upbringing were also more likely to subsequently have higher levels of happiness, of a sense of purpose, of volunteering, and of forgiveness of others.7

Of course, these studies do not mean that belief in God is right, or that Christianity is true. It should, however, give us pause before dismissing religious perspectives out of hand and assuming that our kids are just better off without. As Erika Komisar put it,

As a therapist, I’m often asked to explain why depression and anxiety are so common among children and adolescents. One of the most important explanations—and perhaps the most neglected—is declining interest in religion.8

If this data is challenging for non-religious parents, the “declining interest in religion” (at least in the West) is worrying for believers. Just as evidence for the benefits of religious upbringing is mounting, cultural tides are pulling kids and teens away from religious moorings. So what are parents, grandparents, and carers on all sides of these great debates to do?

Whatever our beliefs about God, there are some things on which I’m sure we agree: we all want our kids to be happy, healthy, purpose-filled, and good. Few of us would want to lie to our kids, especially about our deepest beliefs. We want them to know the truth. But we also want to protect them from plausible-sounding lies. Deep down we know there’s a tension: to keep our kids truly safe in the long run, we must let them risk-take now. We know this when it comes to practical skills. A baby won’t learn to walk unless we let him fall. A child won’t learn to ride a bike unless we let her risk a tumble or two. The teenager who wasn’t trusted with a bike won’t be ready for a car. So how does this translate to the realm of ideas?

For some parents, protecting their kids from dangerous ideas feels like a must. I’ve heard this both from Christians who don’t want their kids exposed to atheism, and from atheists who don’t want their kids exposed to Christianity. I’ve even heard it from parents who think they are very open-mindedly encouraging their kids to explore different religious traditions, while insisting they respect each tradition equally. For these folks, the dangerous idea is that one religion might actually be true. Many of us who are now in the thick of parenting were raised with the idea that questioning someone’s religious beliefs was arrogant, offensive, and wrong. Beliefs were personal and should not be challenged.

In this book, I want to offer a different approach. Rather than protecting my kids from divergent ideas, or urging them to affirm all beliefs equally, I want to equip them to have real conversations with real people who really think differently from them—and from me. I want them to learn how to listen well and how to question what they hear. If what I believe is true, it will stand up to scrutiny.

The Christian faith sprang up in a world that was violently hostile to its claims. But rather than extinguishing the small spark of the early church, the winds of opposition gave it oxygen to spread. Two thousand years later (as I explain in chapter 1) it’s still spreading. But I don’t want my kids to believe in Jesus just because I say so, or just because it’s the largest and most diverse religion in the world, or just because going to church makes you happier, healthier, and more generous to others. I want them to see Jesus for themselves and to believe that what he says about himself is true.

Wanting this for my kids doesn’t mean hiding other options. If anything, I believe Jesus shines more brightly when all the veils are stripped away. My guess is that if you’re not a follower of Jesus, you also have enough confidence in your beliefs to think they’ll stand up to scrutiny, and that you too would like the young people you love—as a parent, grandparent, uncle, aunt, or friend—to think for themselves. My hope is that this book will challenge every reader to do just that. And, in order to do so, we’re going to have some adult conversations.

This book engages with some big ideas. It talks about racism and slavery, marriage and sexuality, gender and transgender questions, abortion and pornography, 9/11, Hitler, Stalin, heaven, and hell. In it, I share my early and ongoing experience of same-sex attraction, and the story of one of my best friends, who had multiple sexual relationships with other girls before becoming a Christian as an undergrad at Yale. Whatever your child’s current beliefs or emerging attractions, I hope this book will be a help to them. I’ve tried to write with empathy and care.

My eldest child has just turned ten, and I’ve written the book in a way I’d be comfortable for her to read. But kids develop at very different rates, and you’ll be the best judge of your own child’s readiness. You may want to read the book first yourself before passing it on to your kids. You may want to read it with the children you love. Or you may think they’ll prefer to read for themselves. In any case, my hope is that it will prompt fruitful conversations.

If you are not a Christian, I hope this book will at least give your child a handle on some of the best Christian thinking from some of the most credible sources, when too often we only hear in public from the worst. If you do consider yourself a follower of Jesus, I hope it will encourage your child to take the claims of Christ very seriously, and not to be afraid to ask hard questions.

I’m currently reading the Harry Potter series to my kids, and I must warn you that this book is full of Harry Potter spoilers! If you’re a J. K. Rowling fan and the young person you love hasn’t yet read her books, you might want to hold off sharing this book for now. If your children aren’t ready for the entire Harry Potter series, they may not be ready for this book either.

Harry Potter was eleven when he found out there was magic in the world. Richard Dawkins would say that believing in the Christian story is about as childish as believing that Harry Potter’s world is true. But the thousands of Christian professors at the top of their fields—ranging from physics to philosophy to psychology to epidemiology—would disagree. My hope is that this book will help young people to start thinking for themselves. That’s one point on which Dawkins and I agree.

Introduction

In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry has just run away from his awful aunt and uncle’s house when he sees an ominous black dog. He’s rescued by the Knight Bus, which picks up stranded magical folk. But throughout the book, this dog keeps cropping up. Harry sees it in the tea leaves in Professor Trelawney’s divination class. He sees it in the grounds of Hogwarts School. He even sees it in the bleachers of the Quidditch field. He’s not sure if he’s going mad, imagining this creature everywhere. But then one night it grabs his best friend Ron by the leg and drags him down a tunnel. Harry dashes after, terrified. At the end of the tunnel, he finds Ron in a haunted house. But the dog has gone. It’s turned into the evil murderer Sirius Black, who betrayed Harry’s parents to their deaths. Now he’s going to murder Harry too.

Or so Harry thinks.

If you’ve read the Harry Potter books, you’ll know that that’s not right at all. Rather than trying to murder Harry, Sirius wants to protect him. Rather than betraying Harry’s parents, Sirius was himself betrayed. Rather than being Harry’s enemy, Sirius turns out to be his faithful friend. In fact, he’s the closest thing to family Harry’s got. When Harry first saw Sirius, all the evidence was against him. But when he found out the truth of who Sirius was, Harry’s mind was changed. So was his heart.

When people look at Christianity, they sometimes make the same mistake that Harry made with Sirius. Many of my friends think Christianity is against the things they care about the most. My friends care about racial justice. They see the ways in which Christians have engaged in slavery and racism and they assume that Christianity is against racial justice. My friends hear Christians saying that Jesus is the only way to God, and they think this is arrogant and offensive to those who were raised with other religious beliefs. My friends think people should be able to date and marry whomever they want, but Christianity says that it’s not okay to marry someone of the same sex. My friends are excited by the discoveries of science, and they think that believing in a Creator God is the opposite of believing in science. My friends believe that women are equal to men, and they think Christianity puts women down. My friends see all the pain and suffering in the world, and they think there couldn’t possibly be a loving God in charge. But just as Harry’s view of Sirius totally changed when he discovered more, when we look more closely at each of these concerns, our view of Christianity might just change as well.

Perhaps someone gave you this book and you think believing in Jesus is dumb. When one of my best friends was a teenager, that’s what she thought too. Rachel was really smart. The Christians she knew were not. Rachel liked her freedom: freedom to party, freedom to get drunk, freedom to try out different kinds of romantic relationships. She thought it was stupid to be a Christian, partly because you’d have to be dumb to believe the things Christians believe, and partly because you’d have to be dumb to follow a religion that stopped you from having fun. God totally changed Rachel’s mind when she was in college. (I’ll tell you more of her story in chapter 7.) If you’re reading this book and you think like Rachel did, I’m really glad you’re here. I hope you find these questions interesting and that they help you think more for yourself.

Maybe you’re more like I was at your age. I remember feeling sure about following Jesus when I was nine years old. Most of my friends growing up thought being a Christian was weird, but I mostly didn’t mind being different. At my school, being different was okay. (One girl wore wings to school every day for a year and no one cared!) But sometimes it was hard to disagree with all my friends. They thought the Bible was just made-up stories. They thought all religions were equally true. They thought Christians hated gay people and that Christians didn’t think women were equal to men. Believing that some guy died on a cross and came back to life two thousand years ago so that we could be forgiven by God sounded crazy to them. Most of the teachers agreed. So were they right?

Since I was your age, I’ve spent a really long time studying, and I’ve met a lot of ridiculously smart people, including professors at some of the best universities in the world. Some of them think it’s stupid to believe in Jesus. Others think that following Jesus is the cleverest thing we could possibly do, and that without Jesus, there is no meaning for our lives and no hope for our world. These people have lots of different stories of how they came to believe in Jesus. Some grew up in Christian families. Some became Christians as teenagers. Others started following Jesus when they were adults, because they realized Jesus was the answer to their biggest questions. And they’re not alone. It’s easy to imagine Christianity as old-fashioned and dying out, but there are actually more Christians in the world today than ever before.

When I was growing up, experts predicted that as the world became more modern, more educated, and more scientific, religious belief would naturally decline. But they were wrong. In Western countries, like England (where I’m from) and America (where I now live), the number of people who believe in God has decreased. But in the rest of the world, belief in God is actually increasing, and Christianity is still the most popular religion. In fact, there are twice as many people in the world who say they are Christians as there are who say they aren’t religious.1

By the time you’re my age, the percentage of people in the world who say they don’t believe in God is likely to go down, while the percentage of people who say they are Christians is likely to go up. China is the largest country in the world. It is officially “atheist” (which means being sure that God doesn’t exist). People in China can even be sent to prison for following Jesus. But the church in China is growing so fast that by 2025, there will likely be more Christians in China than in America, and some experts think that by 2060, more than half the people in China will be Christians!2

Just because lots of people believe something doesn’t make it right. Each of us must think carefully for ourselves about what we believe. But if you think that Christianity is dying out or that all the really educated people have stopped following Jesus, you might want to look more closely. Harvard professor Tyler VanderWeele (whom you’ll meet in chapter 1) says that—in light of all the evidence for Christianity—any educated person should look carefully at the claims of Jesus and be able to explain why he or she does or doesn’t believe them.

The most important book to read if you want to know more about Jesus is the Bible. The Bible is the best-selling book of all time. Like the Harry Potter series, it tells one overarching story, but it’s broken up into many shorter books (sixty-six in total!) But unlike the Harry Potter series, it claims to offer us the key to everlasting life. The Bible was written by many different human authors, but Christians believe that each of these human authors was inspired by God and that we can meet God and get to know him through this book. I’ll reference the Bible at many points in this book, but if you’re not familiar with the Bible, don’t worry. I’ll always explain what I’m talking about.

The Bible is divided into two parts. The first part is known as the Old Testament. This part of the Bible is shared by Jews and Christians. It tells us the story of God and his people before Jesus was born. The second part is called the New Testament. The New Testament tells us the story of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection in the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It then tells the story of the early Christian movement in the book of Acts, and we get to read letters written by some of the first Christian leaders to some of the first Christian churches.

The Bible has done more to change the world than any book in history. In chapter 5, we’ll look more closely at why we might think that the Bible is actually true. My hope is that—whether you already believe in Jesus or not—this book will make you want to read the Bible for yourself. You see, the Bible is a bit like an ancient treasure chest. Open it up, and you will find amazing riches with the power to change your life forever. But sometimes treasure chests get buried and we need to dig through the dirt to find them. My hope is that this book will give you a shovel to dig through the ideas that sometimes stop people from wanting to read the Bible at all. But in order to read this book, I need you to take a risk.

To find out who Sirius really was, Harry had to dive down a tunnel. To read this book, and to understand Christianity, you need to dive in with an open mind. If you do that, you might find—like Harry—that your world turns upside down. That’s a big risk to take.

Are you ready?

1

How Can I Live My Best Life Now?

At the beginning of the film Moana, everyone is happy on the island—except Moana. Even though she’s the daughter of the chief, Moana doesn’t quite belong. She longs for adventure. So she looks out to sea, and sings about how she’s been “staring at the edge of the water” all her life.1 Moana tries to forget adventure and fit in. But it doesn’t work: the voice inside her sings a different song. “What is wrong with me?” she asks.

Perhaps you feel a bit the same: like you don’t quite belong here. Perhaps when you read stories like the Harry Potter series—or see films like Moana—you find yourself staring at the edge of the water, wishing those magical worlds were real. That’s how I felt when I first read The Lord of the Rings, and I didn’t grow out of the feeling. In fact, I grew into it. The older I get, the more sure I am that the real world is even more magical than those imaginary ones. It’s one of the reasons I believe in Jesus. The voice inside me sings a different song.

But following Jesus doesn’t mean ignoring what I see around me. Just as Moana’s dream of sailing out to sea doesn’t mean abandoning her island but saving it, so, in this chapter, I want to suggest that following Jesus doesn’t only give us a way to live our best life forever after we die. It also—in some unexpected ways—means living our best life together now.

Don’t get me wrong. Jesus said that following him would be hard. Really hard. He said it would be like dying to yourself (Luke 9:23). But he also promised that following him was the way to really live: “I came that they may have life,” he said, “and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).

Here are seven pieces of evidence to suggest Jesus was right.

Evidence #1: People Who Go to Church Are Happier and Healthier!

In 2007, a British guy called Christopher Hitchens wrote a best-selling book called, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Lots of people believe that’s true. They think we’d all be better off without religion. But since Hitchens wrote his book, a lot of evidence has come out to show that he was wrong! People who go to church at least once a week are happier, healthier and longer lived than people who don’t. Harvard professor Tyler VanderWeele is a world expert on this subject. He says that rather than religion being poisonous, going to church every week is like drinking a magical medicine.2

We all know that eating more fruits and vegetables is good for us. But it turns out that going to church once a week or more is equally good for you.3 So if you really hate brussels sprouts but your parents make you eat them anyway, try asking if you can go to church instead! We all know smoking is bad for you. But going to church once a week or more is almost as good for you as stopping smoking!4 Professor VanderWeele’s research has also found that children who are brought up going to church tend to end up being happier and having a greater sense of purpose in their lives than those raised non-religious.5

Going to church also helps us avoid things that are bad for us, like drinking too much alcohol or taking illegal