“The Bible says, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. But an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind!”
My 13-year-old friend spoke with righteous vehemence. She was angry: angry that a God who is supposed to love justice would give such an outrageously unjust rule. Angry that this is the character of the God she is continually being told she ought to give her life to. “How dare he?” her eyes seemed to say. And even, “How dare you?”
She had been thinking about this for a while, and getting angry about it. And she had been doing so all on her own.
I’ve heard it said (with tongue in cheek) that 16 is the age of maximum infallibility. In other words, when you’re a teenager you know enough about things to feel that your opinions are important and valid, but you don’t know enough to realise how much there is that you don’t know. So you must be right—infallible even. You’re carried on a rising tide of strong emotions that solidify your newly formed ideas. It’s a dangerous way to be, and particularly so when you keep your opinions to yourself, building them in the dark, never letting anyone else in on the process.
Which is why I was glad that this teen actually challenged me with her opinion, and we were able to talk about it.
Gently, we explored the fact that the “eye for an eye” rule was designed to address the crazy spiral of ever-increasing revenge. (You annoy me, I punch you, you steal my sheep, I kill your son.) This law was designed to curb unjust retribution, keep things proportional, and provide a firm and clear end to conflicts. “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind” may be a neat quote but it completely misses the point.
My young friend nodded… and moved on to her next challenge. But at least there was now one ill-founded opinion that she didn’t have.
Young people are hearing objections to Christianity all the time—at school, on TV, on their phones. Sometimes they’re elegantly devised and based on specific Bible quotations; sometimes they’re just a vague but strong sense that Christianity is for stupid people, weak people, white people, or insert-adjective-here people. The majority of these objections probably don’t make it back to us as youth leaders and Christian parents, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t happening.
Some teens think hard about what they’re hearing and ask about it—or erupt in anger like my friend. Others won’t say anything at all. Maybe they don’t even think about it much, at least not consciously. They just slowly absorb the negativity and misconceptions. One day, when they’re older, it will turn out that they’ve been moulded by the culture around them far more than we realised.
That’s why I think it’s important to do what we can to bring these questions, challenges, and tricky ideas out into the open.
Not to say, “You shouldn’t think that." Not to say, “Listen to me, I’m much wiser than you." Those things do need to be said sometimes, but the starting point should be to take young people seriously and make sure they know we’re listening. That way we’re in the right position to help them as they learn to think. We can be there, alongside them, asking questions and being part of their journey to figure out their opinions.
How can we do it? Perhaps simply by sharing with them the things we’re wondering about, and inviting dialogue. Perhaps (in a youthwork context) by having regular slots for young people to ask questions. Perhaps by actively seeking to explore hard topics together, through conversation starters or through books. Perhaps by reminding them that sometimes there aren’t black-and-white answers, and encouraging them that it’s okay to ask questions.
It’s worth saying that these kinds of conversations also provide us as adults with a joyous opportunity to think about these things again for ourselves. There are some aspects of Christian apologetics that I haven’t thought about since I was a student ten years ago, or even before then. But they are worth thinking about—since I myself don’t want an unthinking, unreflective faith. I want to believe what’s true, and I’ll be surer of what is true if I’m forced to think about it. It’s challenging, but it’s good for me to have to grapple with hard things and not just shove them under the carpet. It’ll help me love the Lord more in the end.
So, what opinions could the teenagers in your life be building in the dark—without you knowing anything about it? What misconceptions do they have that they haven’t mentioned? What pressures are they experiencing that they haven’t even noticed?
Maybe they’ve ended up with the assumption that God hates gay people, or that the Bible has been changed over time, or that science has disproved Christianity. They might feel positive about Jesus while believing that the God of the Old Testament is evil, and they haven’t seen why that combination doesn’t make sense. They might think they can cherry-pick the bits of the Bible they like while ignoring the bits that are “out of date." Maybe they’ve fallen for a particularly politicized version of Christianity that is filling up their feeds, or they’ve become convinced by an unhealthy view of gender roles. They might simply be muddled about what makes Christianity different from other religions. And all this is happening in the dark.
It is scarily easy for young people to form ill-considered views that lead them in the wrong direction, without any wise adult ever knowing anything about it. Let’s invite them out of the dark and into real conversations about real hard things.
Katy Morgan is a Senior Editor at The Good Book Company and the award-winning author of The Songs of a Warrior and The Promise and the Light. She loves helping children and young people grow in knowledge and love of Jesus, and volunteers in the youth work at her church, King’s Church Chessington in Surrey, UK. She holds a master's degree in classical Greek literature from Cambridge University.
