From Sampler to Sower

Note: If you’re from MCON and have any interest in taking the survey yourself, please don’t read any farther until after you take the survey to avoid skewing your responses.

Yesterday I shared the Basic Beliefs survey that I asked students in our youth ministry to complete in order to investigate their understanding of some central tenets of Christianity.  The purpose was one part evaluative (has anything I’ve taught stuck?) and three parts prescriptive (going forward, what topics need special attention?).

Today I’d like to start looking at some of the results.

Methodological Concerns

Before diving into particular questions I would like to offer a couple of caveats.  First and foremost, let’s face it, taking tests isn’t most students’ idea of a fun night at youth group. Couple a students distaste for testing with the total lack of consequences for carelessness in taking this survey, and one must wonder “Did my students think through any of these questions carefully enough to answer what they really believe?”

Complicating that issue is the fact that in the interest of brevity, this survey lacks the kind of redundancy necessary to evaluate just how indicative of true beliefs the responses really are. I didn’t have time to ask each question three different ways so that I could compare how consistent any given respondent’s answers were.

And compounding all those concerns is the fact that I am by no means a trained pollster. I tried to be careful to make sure my responses did not reflect a bias one way or another, but the question remains just how effectively I accomplished that goal.

So, keeping in mind those weaknesses to this survey, let’s look at the results…

A Diversity of Opinions

The first thing I noticed is that my students do not simply reflect my view on matters.  In fact, on the whole their idea of the best answer matched my idea of the best answer only 50.2% of the time.

Some questions showed more unanimity (81% of my students responded “Without Jesus we have no hope. Only his death and resurrection makes it possible for us to be saved.”)

Others revealed a wide divergence of opinion.  Opinion on the question on the personal holiness was pretty evenly split between seeing the goal of holiness as impossible, helpful but unobtainable and wholly possible by the grace of Christ (36%, 24%,  24% respectively). With this question in particular I have to wonder how effectively it was worded, but the fact is we are not, as a youth group, of one mind regarding holiness — a frightening reality for this pastor from the Wesleyan tradition.

So, as a starting point, let’s look at some of the questions where my students diverged from my opinion on the questions.

Atonement How?

The question where the students’ responses were least in line with my own opinion was question 10: “Jesus’ death saves us because…” This isn’t surprising because this among the options given, this question in particular did not have any wrong answers.  The five options offered represent five of the primary theories of the atonement put forth by the Bible and theologians. My point in asking this question was not to see if my students could distinguish truth from error, but to see which approach to the atonement was most prominent in their minds.

A full 58% of my students identified with the penal satisfaction theory, that “On the cross, Jesus took the punishment for every sin ever committed. Jesus was convicted in God’s court and served our sentence so that we don’t have to.” 15% identified with the governmental/moral influence theory; (“Jesus death proves once and for all how bad sin is and also how much God loves us, inspiring us to turn from our wicked ways and to live differently from now on.”) 12% chose my summary of the ransom theory, (“In dying on the cross, Jesus came to where we are so that we might be united with him, and having been reunited with him, we might begin to live again”); 11% the divine satisfaction theory (Jesus death settled our debt with God and places a credit of righteousness on our account); and 4% the classic view of atonement in which God covers us with Jesus’ blood so that when he looks at us he sees his Son instead.

While obviously none of these understandings are necessarily wrong (although at least the final one may be oversimplified to the point of error), I am a little concerned with how prevalent the penal satisfaction theory is even among Wesleyans.  I’ve made no secret of the fact that while the Bible certainly speaks of the atonement in such a way in places, I believe having penal satisfaction as one’s primary way of understanding the atonement leads to some logical conclusions which are problematic for those of a Wesleyan perspective. I find the ransom theory far more helpful to a Wesleyan framework, and tend to teach the atonement primarily in those terms.

Of course, in the very next sentence, I must also acknowledge, that had John Wesley himself dropped by to fill out my survey last Wednesday night, he would have been in the 58%.  But that just means I’m more Wesleyan than John himself.

Sabellius Redivivus

I wasn’t surprised so much by the fact that opinion was divided over the various atonement theories.  I saw that one coming.  I was surprised by second question where opinion diverged from my own, the question about the Trinity.

When asked “When we talk about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit…” a full 50% responded “We are describing the three ways that God throughout history has interacted with the world. In the Old Testament he was God the Father. In the New Testament the Father became the Son and we experienced him as a fellow human. And when Jesus ascended into heaven God chose to become a Spirit who could live inside each of his followers.”

19% correctly identified that this refers to “the mystery of the Trinity in which the three distinct persons of the Godhead (Father, Son and Spirit) share the same essence.” 16% sided with tritheism, assuming that we were “talking about the three Gods of Christianity. God the Father created the world. Jesus Christ is the son of God the Father. And the Holy Spirit is the God that the Father and Son send into the world to finish their work.” And an equal number (16%) went the other way toward adoptionism, indicating their believe that “There is only one God, the creator of the universe. Jesus Christ was a human being that God filled with his presence to teach the world about himself. And the Holy Spirit is our way of describing the power of God at work in the world.”

I’m not surprised that Sabellianism is alive and well in modern Christianity. I’ve discussed Trinitarian theology with enough laymen and theology students alike to realize how widely held this oversimplification really is.  It is tough to distinguish between three persona and three persons. And far too many resort to the easy analogy of the Trinity being like a human male who is at the same time a father, a son and a husband.

I was surprised such a view was so prevalent among my own students, given the fact that we have specifically sought to correct such errors and teach the truth of the Trinity.  Obviously, not well enough.

Are We a Holiness Church or Not?

If my students misunderstanding of the Trinity was disappointing to me, their view on personal holiness was devastating.  When asked “Living a life without sin from now on, but  in which we never again intentionally choose to do what we know is wrong (i.e., not to never have sinned, but to stop sinning with God’s help),” 60% responded they believed that kind of holiness was impossible, split between 34% who said to suggest such a thing was to overestimate our own ability and underestimate our need for God’s grace, and 24% who acknowledge it was a helpful, but ultimately unattainable goal to shoot for.  12% said it was a possibility which many fail to realize, but something available for those who “try really hard.” 24% recognized the Wesleyan belief that holiness is the birthright of the believer, made possible by the death of Christ and 4% responded that anything less than a holiness that does not sin is something less than Christian.

I will admit that in part the divergence between the Wesleyan message of holiness that we preach passionately and repeatedly and my students’ responses may in part be due to a lack of clarity in the question.  Despite my best effort to clarify that we are not talking about to live a life in which we have never sinned, but by God’s grace growing to the place in life where we no longer sin, I know from talking with students that they were less than clear about that distinction.  Add to that the distinction between a voluntary transgression of a known law and involuntary transgressions and/or areas of ignorance and you have a very nuanced question.

However, it is obvious that the notion that “no one is perfect” and “failure is inevitable” has been so ingrained into my students that despite my best efforts, their hearts have not yet been captured by the radical optimism of grace.  Quite honestly, if this doesn’t change, my ministry will have been a failure.

Let Us Not Give Up Meeting Together…Unless You Don’t Need To Any More

Fourth in our list of questions where students’ answers diverged from my own dealt with ecclesiology.  Opinion was fairly evenly divided between those who saw the Church as a “helpful option” good for supporting believers for those who need that kind of encouragement (38%) and those who felt that “between our need for the church to encourage and support us, and the way the church needs us to accomplish Christ’s work in the world, there is no excuse for not being a part of a church” (35%).

23% answered that the church “Is a risky business. Yes, you must be a part of a church, but you also need to make sure you are a part of the right one. There are a lot of people out there who think they are going to heaven because they are a part of a church, but they’re due for an unpleasant surprise when they discover their church wasn’t teaching the truth and they are left out.” 4% said the church was a human institution that because of it’s desire for power and influence is as apt to hinder as it is to help the work of God. And no one identified with a sacramentalism that understands without the approval of the church, one has no hope of finding approval in heaven.

This is not surprising, given the fact that teens for as long as I can remember (and probably longer) have been debating whether or not one can be a Christian without being a part of the visible body of Christ. Given Scriptures command to continue meeting together, however, I see church attendance as a vitally important part of our obedience.  While our obedience does not save us, it also is not optional.

What must we do to be saved?

Fifth is the question that asked students the same thing the crowd asked Peter that first Pentecost in the era of the church: “To Be Saved, I must…” Given the options it should not be surprising that opinion was divided.  It too was a fairly nuanced question with multiple possible options.

40% answered the question “Repent. I must be truly and deeply sorry for my sins, ask for God’s forgiveness and seek to live a different way.”  28% chose “Say the sinner’s prayer, asking Jesus to forgive me of my sins and come live in my heart.” 16% chose “Be baptized. By being baptized, I accept what Jesus did for me and his death satisfies my debt to God.”  And 8% each chose a path to salvation that either depended on proving our love for God by doing good works, or doing nothing, instead simply trusting Jesus to do everything we need.

Here, for the first time, the most common student response aligns with what I myself would have chosen.  I can understand choosing saying the sinner’s prayer, but that answer does not suggest any sort of ongoing responsibility to faithfully follow Jesus.  There is a reason the early church was called the Way. It is purely decisionistic, but I understand that recognizing that difference is probably difficult for a teenager.

However, given the fact that even when preaching explicitly evangelistic messages which call for students to make a decision to repent and believe, to my knowledge I have never used the term “sinners prayer” and every time specifically address the fact that the prayer of repentance is only the beginning of new life in Christ, a new life that must be nurtured and nourished by obedience, I was a little surprised by how many chose that answer.

Perhaps more disturbing is the fact that anyone familiar with the story from Acts 2 should recognize that “Repent” is only half an answer. While I myself would not have chosen it as the best answer, the fact that, judging by the marks on their papers, students were more inclined to debate between the sinner’s prayer and repentance than to question whether or not baptism should be included as well reveals a very poor understanding of the sacrament of baptism.

Tomorrow we’ll look at more of the survey results.