 A question that's often thrown around in Christian circles is why are so many young people leaving the church? If you grew up in church, you probably have experienced friends or acquaintances get to the end of youth group, but then dip out of the church for good. In today's video, I want to hone into one fellow's story because a lot of his experiences and beliefs are really common to those who were once connected with the church in Christianity, but now have decided to leave when the opportunity arose. Let's dive in. I want to tell you the reason I became enostic. For the first 18 years of my life, I was a devout Christian. I went to church every Sunday, read the Bible, all of that. My family still is, but in my family, it is so wrong to question things. You are considered an outcast or looked at to be very different if you started to question things and I started to do that. And I've always had a bad experience with religion. I really didn't have great mentors when it came to being guided in my religious life. And this is not an attack on religion or anything like that because I know a lot of religious people who are amazing, really. But I just don't believe that I need religion to move forward in life or to believe in God that they have this relationship with God. And some people do, like religion is there to help you build a relationship with God. And I have a great relationship with God right now. In this clip, he highlights three really interesting points. The first one is that he didn't feel comfortable asking questions. He felt like disenfranchised right away by being skeptical or asking questions. The second one was that he didn't have mentors or he didn't have good mentors. And the last one was his perspective on what Christianity was meant to offer him or what Christianity was about. So let's talk about the question asking. I think it's really important for churches in general and for us as Christians, if you're watching this to be open to friends that are asking these questions and not to get too defensive about it, like I know how that is. It can be scary when all of a sudden your solid Christian friend starts questioning core fundamentals of the faith, but your goal there is to meet them with compassion and curiosity to listen to them to help lead them to the scripture. Yes, but they're not cast them off. If all of a sudden, OK, they say they believe something else because in my experience too, a lot of these folks, especially those that have grown up in the church, they are exploring, right? They're like, I wonder, like, what's this thing about hell? Or what is this thing about, you know, Jesus dying on the cross? And is this really true? Is this historical? And you might get really defensive and scared. In my experience, it's like they come back the next day and they're like, oh, you know, I was thinking about it. I was doing some research and, you know, I kind of sorted through my stuff. And it's like, OK, well, God is working on them. God is working on them. So your goal there is to be present, to be compassionate, to be curious, to be loving towards them and to lead them towards the truth. When we talk about mentors, I think it's really easy to cast all the blame on the older folks in the church to say, oh, we don't have enough mentors. But also for us young guys, it's like we got to be intentional too. And we got to understand what does mentorship really look like. A lot of the time we think of mentorship is just like sitting down like once every couple of weeks for a cup of coffee, talking about the Bible, going through some sort of program, which that absolutely can be mentorship. And it is and that's wonderful. But it also can look like, hey, inviting a younger guy to, you know, your house with your family and getting them to do, you know, doing yard work with them or making a meal with them or integrating them in your life in some way so then they can see, hey, as a young person, oh, this is how a godly husband operates. And I find at least with guys, it helps to be doing something that helps people open up a little bit more. I don't have that problem. I'm a talker, but for other people that aren't as much, it's nice to be able to do something together. And that begins to open the lines of communication a little bit more. Now, he said something telling at the end of that clip. He said, I don't need Christianity or God to move myself forward in life. This reveals a clear misunderstanding in what Christianity is about. I don't blame them though. When you think about how many trendy churches online, social media churches that post their sermons and what are their sermons about? It's about how you can grow financially or grow in business or, you know, have a better marriage or like it's portrayed as a life improvement plan. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with those specific, you know, encouragements or those topics. But ultimately, when that becomes the main point, when it's all about just how I can benefit my life, then somebody's looking at this and they're like, I'm not super into this self-help, help space. I think my life is going pretty well. Thanks a lot. And so I don't think Christianity is for me like this guy and they step away. But then you look at the Bible and you realize Jesus primary motive in coming to this earth wasn't just like life improvement here. And now it was ridding us from our ultimate problem, which was personal sin, was sin and death in our life and the fact that we were disconnected from God and rebellion against him because of our sin. When that comes into focus, Jesus becomes less of a expendable, motivational coach and more of the true and only savior that can save us from our sin. I wish somebody would have communicated that to him. It's not just about pushing your life forward. It's about having full and complete forgiveness and redemption through Christ. But I thought about this, God created us, right? So if he created us, he understands how we were the challenges that we face morally and ethically. So he knows how hard it is for us to decide what religion we want to believe in. When religion is debatable, everything about religion is debatable because there's no concrete or conclusive evidence. This is really interesting to me because when I'm talking to people, they will often bring up this idea to like, hey, there's no real way that we can have certainty about this stuff. And like, yeah, we kind of like believe certain things. But ultimately, like, there's just not enough concrete evidence for us to draw any real or meaningful conclusion. I'm just like, wait, wait, wait, hold up, hold up, hold up. Let's just talk about God for a second, the existence of God without God. We're just primordial ooze that has evolved over millions of years out of randomness. You have no intrinsic worth or meaning or purpose or value in your heart of hearts. You know that that's not true. You know that we are as humans, we there's some intrinsic worth and there's meaning and there's purpose to this life. Ultimately look to it's like, how do we get humanity? How do we get creation without a creator? It makes no sense. How can something come from nothing? That's a scientific impossibility. The Romans one says that we know God exists, but we simply suppress that truth in our unrighteousness. So, okay, yeah, God exists. But how do we know? Okay, Jesus, how do we know that Jesus and Christianity is the true and right religion? Cause he says, Oh, God, you know, there's so many religions. It's so hard to identify which one is true. Well, let's just talk about it for a second. What does Jesus say? Jesus said that he is the way, the truth and the life. No one comes at the Father except through him. So he's not just making some sort of like general claim that he's a good teacher or one of many ways. No, he says he's the only way. So how can we verify that that's true? Well, we look to his ultimate claim of and his resurrection. Okay, if Jesus truly did resurrect from the dead, that proved what he was saying and who he is is verified is true. And so we looked at the resurrection. What happened in the resurrection? Well, there were eyewitness accounts written down in the generation of when it happened. And those were passed down from generation, documenting supernatural events when he was also on earth and performing miracles. And those were written down. Okay, okay. But then we look outside of just scriptural sources. We look to somebody like Flavius Josephus, a Jewish scholar who documented Jesus life and death. And so we're beginning to understand here. Okay, wow, Jesus actually did back up what he was saying here. So it's not just this, oh man, there's no concrete evidence. And how are we supposed to believe any of this? No, people have searched the scriptures for years and years and years and they found it to be true. And I do believe in heaven, but if there is heaven or a good place or whatever you want to call it, I just don't see God denying me at the entrance gate because I didn't believe in religion or I didn't pick the right religion. Even if I go through my whole life, genuinely trying to help people, trying to be a good person, trying to do the right thing, not only because it's right, because I actually want to do it. I don't see God being like, well, you know, you are a really great person and you did all the things you're supposed to do, but you know, because you weren't a Christian or a Muslim or whatever religion could be right, I can't let you enter because once again, if God created us, he definitely understands. If I was at the gates of heaven, I just couldn't see God turning me away for believing a different religion. Huh, this gets the core of who we believe we are, of do we believe we are intrinsically good or intrinsically evil? Do we believe that we are good people and God has the obligation to let us in? But ultimately, we look and we say, does God have any standard or any boundaries to who can get into heaven? That would be a surface level question. And we might say, yeah, actually, well, maybe they shouldn't let the mass murderer into heaven. They shouldn't let Hitler into heaven. That would be pretty messed up. God would be unjust for doing that. So it's not that we don't have standards in terms of who God should let into heaven and who God should give eternal life to, but it's rather that our standard is about where we are, right? We compare ourselves to the other people around us. We say, well, if I'm a good person, I'm the standard all of a sudden. So anybody below me, no. And anybody above me, yes, but then we need to look at God's standard of goodness. And what is his standard of goodness? In James, it says, if you stumble at one point, if you break one aspect of the law, you're guilty of all of it. So this fellow, he has a common belief that he's a good guy, that he does most of things right. And it doesn't really matter if you believe in Christianity or not, because God's like, okay, well, you at least did the right thing. And you think that, oh, man, as long as I walk some old ladies across the street, that God will accept me and he'll be all right with me. But ultimately, we need to look and say, oh, man, oh, we're guilty against, we're guilty for what we do. And we are rebelling against God because of our sin. The Bible says that we are dead in our trespasses and sins, that we have all fallen short of the glory of God. We've lied. We've looked with lust. We've been greedy. We've been prideful. We've been self-serving. Now, when you come to that reality, the sacrifice and message of Jesus becomes that much more tangible and understandable because you begin to realize, oh, man, I have sin and that needs to be covered. That needs to be taken care of because I can't just go to the judge and say, just, I'm sorry, I'll try harder. I'll do better because I still need to pay for my crime. All the other religions are simply telling you, try to be a good person, try to do these practices, try to become one with the universe. But ultimately, Jesus says, trust in me. Repent and put your faith in me because I have taken all your sin on myself. I have bore the weight of your transgressions that you could be forgiven and have eternal life. And yes, I try religion. OK, like I said, I was a devout Christian. I followed the Bible word for word, but I will be honest, I believe that it was my mentors that I looked up to in my religious life. They were the ones that kind of made me not want to be religious anymore. The Bible said, come as you are. I came as I was. I was made fun of the pastors, the deacons, the older ladies in the church, the respected people in the church. They made fun of me. I was judged, you know, I was called different because I had different opinions or, you know, in their words, I was a white boy in a black body. I couldn't develop a relationship with God that way. So I felt my own way. And that's by being a Gnostic. But once again, this is not an attack on religion. What I've noticed is what is often at the heart of deconstruction and folks leaving the church isn't necessarily just a misunderstanding of what Christianity is, even though that's relevant here. It's also some emotional hurt that has happened within the church that is causing people to disconnect themselves. But let's move this from the theoretical to the real. Like you think about it, you're in a church, you're connected and maybe you've grown up there and all of a sudden you begin to like this guy, he's getting bullied. Like that's awful. That's awful. Or, you know, maybe there's rumors about you or maybe you feel like you're being judged a church or it's not a safe place, you can't be vulnerable or that the people there aren't safe people. That's awful. That's awful. And it totally swarps our perspective of who God is and what what he has done and his character. Because we look at the church and naturally we just say, OK, well, these are a bunch of Christians. So they should kind of imitate and reflect Christ. But the truth is we're broken and we are sinful and we're messed up. And so even when we try as the church to reflect Christ, well, we do fail. And I think the key is for Christians and when you're engaging in church and you're around like Christians in general, is to realize like, hey, I'm not perfect either. I can't represent or imitate Christ perfectly. I've screwed up. But ultimately it's about a mentality of humility and seeking forgiveness on both ends. It's to say, OK, this person hurt me. But I can forgive them and that takes time and that takes healing. But to say, like, I don't need to hold this over them because Christ has forgiven me for what I've done. But what that does mean is that sometimes you do need to set boundaries, right? You do need to disconnect yourself from unsafe places. And I know church in general hasn't been super big proponent of that. They say, oh, well, you know, just because you got to forgive means you got to give them the same access to your life that you did previously. No, that's not what it means. No, not at all. If you if somebody hurts you and you forgive them, absolutely, that's good. That's what Christ calls us to. But that doesn't mean you give them the same vulnerability that you did before the same access to your life. That might be part of it. And that might be, you know, then start suddenly getting back your trust or the church in general, getting back your trust. But there might be times where you need to just separate yourself from it. But you need to know that that doesn't mean you need to disconnect yourself from God or Christianity or your faith in Jesus. Like all of that, it doesn't need to be contingent on the way you you perceive a particular person or what they did to you. This fellows that, oh, man, you know, I didn't have this good experience. So I just decided to become agnostic. That makes no sense. Like I understand emotionally why you would want to go down that road to say, I don't want to be connected to anything that those people that made fun of me, that bullied me are connected to. But at the same time, you need to ask yourself, what is the truth? Our hope is not founded in people's ability to be Christ like, but rather God's ability to save and transform. Thank you so much for watching this video. If you guys enjoyed it, subscribe because I'm putting out new videos all the time. A huge shout out to everyone on Patreon. I love you guys. You guys are awesome. I love to chat with you on the old discord and on our video chats. There's exclusive videos on there that's a little bit more lighthearted videos. I really enjoy making them for you guys. So if you're interested in checking those out, check the link in my description and sign up for Patreon today. 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