You Can’t Be Christian By Yourself

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez for Unsplash

The opinions reflected in this OpEd are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of staff, faculty and students of The King's College.

(OPINION) If you hear a teenager on TikTok describe their faith, chances are they’ll say they’re “spiritual, but not religious.” More and more young people are choosing to believe in a higher power, yet relegate that higher power to a secondary role in their lives. Even Christians within our generation have grown less likely to invest in a church and more likely to surround themselves exclusively with secular peers. We’ve increased diversity in aspects like race, which has been tremendously beneficial. Unfortunately, we guard ourselves against more diversity in other areas, such as diversity in age and ideas. I am suggesting not that there is too much diversity, but that the diversity of today is too particularized to the individual.

The biggest problem with this particularized diversity is that humans – specifically young humans with impressionable minds and constantly shifting beliefs – shape their desires through the actions they take and the people they interact with. For young Christians who ostensibly are attempting to increase their love of God, surrounding themselves with non-religious (although possibly spiritual) peers will, unfortunately, distance them from God.

This is true because of the way humans interact with the world. As James K. Smith argues in Desiring the Kingdom, humans are loving, desiring beings, with behavior aimed at ultimate loves and desires. As Christians, we need to ensure that we aim at Christ. Indeed, the intentional practice of proper aims is what Augustine referred to in Confessions as the ironing of the soul. Right actions produce the right desires. The more we practice these right actions, the more likely we are to continue doing so. Similarly, wrong actions will produce sinful desires.

Knowing this, how should young Christians respond? We’ve established that we’re likely to surround ourselves with people who are almost exclusively our age, think the way that we do and are less religious than ever before, while we simultaneously know that our love for God hinges on practicing Godly actions.

With the problem established, I can present my thesis: become an active member of your local church. Doing will surround you with the right people and help you take the right actions.

To demonstrate why this is the case, I want to show you why the particularized diversity that young adults choose for themselves is unhelpful. In 1 Corinthians 12, the Apostle Paul argues that each Christian has their own function in the church just as different organs of the body have different functions. In the same way, the family of God provided in the context of the church provides young Christians with the opportunity to grow in Christ that they simply will not get by surrounding themselves only with their peers.

I’ve witnessed this argument of Paul firsthand. Elderly members of my church have the wisdom that I could never hope to gain from a fellow college student. There’s a reason that Proverbs – a book of the Bible addressed to young men – features a narrator old enough to be a father, with the wisdom that accompanies that.

I teach my church’s Kindergarten Sunday School class and the experience has been invaluable. I love children and, apart from my church, rarely interact with them. At church, I not only get to enjoy the kids, but I also get to help shape their desires with the explicit approval of their parents.

Church also allows me to surround myself with the right peers. Instead of exclusively forming friendships with people from my school, I can spend time with people who will push me to pursue God. These are the kinds of friendships that will form me into a better Christian. They aren’t found exclusively in church, but there is an outsized likelihood of it.

Just as my church surrounds me with people who help me love God, it also increases my love for God in the action it promotes.

According to Dr. Dru Johnson in his book Human Rites, humans are deeply ritualistic beings. The rhythms of life we create shape our “habitualized” actions and even what feels normal to us. After I attend the same church every Sunday morning, something feels wrong if I skip a week.

During my freshman year, before I had found a church home, I bounced around between a few churches for a couple of months. It was during this time when I didn’t have a church home that I felt a temptation to simply… not go and not worship God.

Church membership also provides opportunities for the right action within the context of volunteering. One of the most beautiful aspects of church membership is the expectation it places upon members to contribute to the church’s health. This means that church members invest their time in their church. When we do so, it shapes who we are as people.

Along with teaching Sunday School, I serve food at a homeless shelter that my church partners closely with. But when I first started attending my church I was opposed to the idea of volunteering. I felt overwhelmed with busyness – I felt I needed relaxation time watching basketball more than the time at the shelter. Today, I look forward to going to the shelter and getting to see the long-term residents there, many of whom I have begun to form relationships with. This is not a result of my strength of will – I’m as much chief of sinners as Paul – but instead a testament to how right actions lead to right desires.

Becoming a church member can shape who you are in the most enriching way possible. For a more vivid picture: imagine a young college student. He’s a freshman. He does some things right, but he’s mostly a jerk. He cares more about others’ opinions and feeling good about himself than anything else. He’s willing to lie and gossip if it means that someone will listen to him and he cares about nothing more than feeling important. He calls himself a Christian, but he doesn’t do a great job of acting like one.

Eventually, he joins a church. He begins to grow up a little bit and, while he’s still deeply flawed, he’s no longer quite the jerk that he started off to be. He can be a gossip at times, but he recognizes that it's a flaw. He has people at his church who hold him accountable.

That person is me. I’m still deeply broken, worse than many of you who read this, but the differentiation between who I am now and who I was freshman year is night and day. I know this to be true because I’ve had professors tell me so - both that I was an arse freshman year and that I’ve grown a lot.

Modern youth are in danger. We spend our time with the wrong people, doing the wrong things, which leads to the wrong desires. The best practical way for young Christians to increase their love for God and become more like Christ is to join a local church, surround ourselves with the right people, practice right actions, and eventually enjoy the right desires.

Josiah DeBoer is a junior at King’s majoring in RTS. He once left the airport during a layover to go to the beach.