Why Young adult leave church...Part 2 of 5

Part 2...
#2 Reasons
Post-Christian Identity
If you are a young adult believer living out your faith at the beginning of the 21st century, you find yourself in a unique social position. You are living within a culture which has known, and now discarded Christianity as at best an irrelevance or at worst a mistake. This is a relativley new situation when we compared with the people of God in other times and places in history.
Biblical faith has almost always been about being in a minority. The Jews found themselves a small minority, often overrun by their militarily and culturally powerful neighbours. The early church also found themselves in a similar position; as theylived out their faithin the shadows of the Roman Empire.
Beingpart of a marginal community is always difficult, it does not matter if that group is ethnic, cultural or religious. Holding a different worldview to those around you is tough, it raises all kinds of questions of identity and belonging in the mind of the member of the minority culture. All minority groups face the reality of assimilation and syncretism with the larger and more powerful cultures that they live in. As humans we love to fit in, we love to be on the larger, winning team.
However many minorities find themselves strengthened by their minority position. Often this is achieved by having a sense of mission, a cultural sense of purpose, in which the minority group defines itself by the ‘justness’ of itscause in contrast to the surrounding culture. However many young adult Christians are experiencing a kind of creeping doubt over the ‘justness’ of their faith; they hear the culture’s critique of Christianity’s contribution to the world and it start’s to make sense to them.
The early church lived in a pre-Christian culture, otherbelievers in the world today live in cultures that are Islamic, Animist, or Buddhist; however we live in a culture which is primarily Post-Christian.

Western culturehasbought the suit of Christianity,put iton, worn it around town for a bit, and now has returned it to the store, unhappy withits purchase, and is seeking a refund. Dan Brown swims in a sea of money because his book The Da Vinci Code, although historically ridiculous, connected deeply with the sense that many have today that the church in its union with worldly power has more damaged than blessed the world. Many intelligent and earnest people today in the secular West believe that the church is an agent of evil.
Many Christian young adults feel that they are living on the wrong side of Christian history. When they sharetheir faith with their secular friends they are reminded of paedophile priests, fundamentalismand the Spanish inquisition. When they share their faith with their Muslim friends,inevitably the Crusades will enter the conversation.When they share their faithwith their Jewish friends,oldpainful stories that have been past down for generations , memories ofghetto’s, pogroms and’Christian’ Germanyengineering the Holocaust, will be heard again.
Christianity is perceivedin the popular imagination as being intellectually ludicrous, our behaviour and opinions are seen as bigoted. Whilst obviously I disagree with these assessments, they are a daily reality for manyyoung adultstrying to live out their faith in the secular world. I recently spoke with a young adult who works in a secular welfare job, she had only been in the job a few days and had not informed her co-workers that she was a Christian. Her colleagues were masters of politically correct language, who were at great pains to avoid using any language which could be seen as prejudiced. However when news came that a new position was going to be filled by a Christian, her colleagues could not contain their rancour, openly speaking of their disappointment and disgust that a Christian was going to be working
with them.
This sort of culturalintolerance around faith creates a great tension in the believer. I am constantlyapproached by young adults who are trying to reconcile theirfaith with thedisquiet that they feel over Christianity’s disputed historical track record.While Christians and historians will debate this, it is stilla daily issuefor many young adults today who live, study, work and operate within secular culture.
For many young adults who are trying to find a place in the world, to operate and ‘fit in’ within culture, the dislocation felt becomes too much,faith is left behind as identity and belonging islooked for outside of church walls.