Why do so many seem to be falling away from the faith?

I’m a product of the 80s – it’s when I graduated from high school, then college; it’s when I met and fell in love with Jesus, and when I met and fell in love with a beautiful follower of Jesus. Her name is Wendy, and we married shortly into the 90s.

The 80s are also when I watched televangelists at the height of their influence and at the depth of their moral failures. For a time, it seemed as if there would be a newly fallen preacher just as the collective church would catch her breath from the last fallen preacher. There was a lot of talk about Jesus returning because surely the end had to be near. This had to be the great falling away that the Bible spoke of.

But here we are, 30+ years later, and not much has changed. The difference is that now it isn’t televangelists failing in the faith, but high profile leaders falling away from the faith. Not long ago, Joshua Harris apparently kissed his faith goodbye, and even more recently, Marty Sampson, of Hillsong Worship fame, went public with the end of his faith and then public again with a clarification that, while his faith isn’t totally gone, it’s on shaky ground.

Shaky ground?

How can faith placed in an unshakeable God be shaky?

Granted, I can feel shaken when things around me (or, in me) get shaken, but if I’m in the firm grasp of an unshakeable God, what’s the expected outcome? Security in Him even when things in me feel insecure.

Which brings me to a crazy thought, one that I’m almost hesitant to put in print (although the small number of readers on this blog probably limits the pushback). At any rate, here goes:

Is it possible that our “everyone gets a trophy” culture has done more damage to believers than “cool” church has?

Granted, we need more sustenance in our faith than a 100% cool church may give, but even in a church that seeks to be all things to all people, all people are eventually going to realize that a mission like that is unrealistic. Nobody can ensure that everybody is getting what they want all the time, so even in the most seeker-sensitive church imaginable, people are forced to deal with the disappointment of unrealized expectations.

But long before they grew old enough to consider whether or not God could or would meet all of their needs, wants, and desires, the expectation that He should do that was created by a culture that did everything possible to ensure we would never be disappointed.

You didn’t win the race? Well, that just means you were the fastest second place runner!

Your team never won a single game? That’s okay. We’ve got a trophy for you just because you tried!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for building people up and encouraging healthy self-esteem. But I’m also for equipping people to handle reality, and the reality is that we will all face disappointment in life. Sometimes, the answer is simply no, and that doesn’t change just because we follow Jesus.

So when the “everybody gets a trophy” crowd that has been sheltered in bubble wrap steps into a relationship with a God who – to paraphrase the words of C. S. Lewis about Aslan – isn’t safe, but is good, what would we expect to happen the first time that God says no because there’s a greater yes He doesn’t want us to miss?

A crisis of faith that they may not be prepared to navigate.

A wise man once said that the 2 things every child needed to know were how to deal with disappointment and how to handle hearing no. Could I take that one step farther and say that those are the two things that every child of God must know, as well.

In fact, weathering the disappointment of a Fatherly “no” is often the doorway that leads us to the Father’s “yes.” When we understand that, we’ll stop saying no to our faith because the Father said no to us, and we’ll finally be free to push past the no in order to find the best yes.

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