The Theological Turn in Youth Ministry by Root Andrew;Dean Kenda Creasy;

Author:Root, Andrew;Dean, Kenda Creasy; [Root, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2011-09-12T00:00:00+00:00

9

Talking About Sin with Young People

Andrew Root

There’s nothing like a theological conversation with an eighth grader to alert you to the gap in your doctrinal understanding. All of us who have worked with adolescents have had the experience of sitting in a cabin or around a campfire as the discussion progresses from casual and light to an in-depth theological dialogue for which we soon realize we are not prepared. The pimpled-face skater who hasn’t sat still for more than two seconds throughout the conversation now seems to take on another personality as he asks intensely, “What really is sin? When do I know I’ve sinned? How do I keep from sinning? And if I am a sinner, and that’s my nature, how is it possible to keep from sinning?”

If you’re like me, you may have balked in the face of such questions, perhaps quoting a Bible verse in the hopes that it will distract (or rather “redirect”) from the significant questions being asked. Surely we all have some foundational comprehension of what sin is, some scripts to fall back on that we learned in Sunday school (e.g., “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” and “All sins are equal”—though note that one of these is a Bible verse while the other is not). But if we are honest we must admit that many of those scripts sound hollow and, for the intense inquisitor and his handful of skeptical on-listeners, no doubt banal.

We may assuage our guilt over our ignorance and justify our confusion by claiming that such deep theological conversations are helplessly complex and abstract, and that good youth workers keep abstraction and adolescence in distinct corners—so we are therefore free to ignore the directness of the inquiry.

Yet as theologian Reinhold Niebuhr is credited as saying, “Sin is the only empirically provable Christian doctrine.” All it takes is an honest look at society or ten minutes in front of the local news to verify that sin is a real thing. And while acknowledging its empirical existence does not help us—or the young people with whom we work—to understand it, if it is true that “all have sinned” (Rom 3:23) and that Christ died for us “while we were still sinners” (Rom 5:8) then there is great significance in grasping what this opaque doctrine is all about.

So how should we think about sin in light of ministry with young people? Hopefully reflecting on this question will equip us with something to say to our fervent young questioners beyond our old scripts and empower them to see the doctrine’s relevance in their lives and the world.

Sin Versus Sinning

Original sin, or what has grossly (but no doubt rightly) been called the “total depravity” of humanity, has been a tenet of the Christian faith since the time of Augustine, with strong antecedents going back to Pauline theology, especially the letter to the Romans. This doctrine, rightly understood, makes it clear that there’s a difference between sin (the state of our being) and sinning (the bad or wrong things we do).

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.