What sort of questions do teenagers have when they
come to church? How should adults prepare themselves to
answer them? Should the language of subcultures be used to
answer them? Priest Alexei Zabelin talks about this.
Faith, as the knowledge of God, Whom my eyes have seen and
my hands have touched, Whom I have come to know with all
my senses, as He was with me in sorrow and joy—we
can only talk about such faith with young people out of
personal experience of a meeting with God. This experience
of meeting God first transforms the person himself, and
then he has something to share with others—the joy
of personal transformation. I recall an incident from the
life of one clergyman, when as a young man he was
returning after a wild night at the discotheque and late
Sunday morning made his way to the bathroom, grasping the
walls. At that moment, his grandmother entered the
apartment. She was all radiant and joyful. Her grandson
asked her where she’d been and she answered that she
had been at church, at the service. The grandson suddenly
felt the desire to be just like her, to have that light
and joy, and so he resolved to learn more about the faith
and be baptized. The Paschal joy of prayer and a meeting
with Christ in church through his grandmother gave that
young man the thirst for a new life, there in an ordinary
Moscow apartment.
It is very hard to believe without having an example of
faith before your eyes; it is very hard to pray if the one
talking about prayer doesn’t have any experience in
prayer of a meeting with the living and known God. The
success of apostolic preaching came not only through the
help of the Holy Spirit, but also because the apostles had
witnessed the real God, Whom they had seen, and with whom
they continued to have contact after His Resurrection from
the dead. Christ answered His disciples’ requests.
And this was what made Christianity so
extraordinary—God answers, God exists, He is known
and close, and calls us His children. If there is no such
faith, no such experience of a meeting, then what can we
talk about with others? Outside of personal experience,
conversations about the faith turn into a banal retelling
of stories about the Creator that are not real for me. It
is only after a real meeting with Christ that the mystery
of a person’s change happens—it is impossible
after meeting God to remain the former old man, because
you’ve tasted a new life of grace, and you know the
taste. Teenagers are still children, who continue to
experience adults’ words on the level of feelings,
the level of emotional trust—or repulsion; they feel
an adult’s falseness—or the honest experience
without embellishments of a sinful person’s meeting
with the Creator.
I often see during the sacrament of confession how
teenagers are pushed to the analogion by their parents,
and I hear what they are silently asking God while they
name aloud the sins the sins they have learned to name.
The wordless question the youth is asking the priest is,
“Did you really see God? Have you really been in
Heaven? Can you really correct my bad deeds, and I will
also see God?
One day, some children from the children’s home came
to confession. In the church they were hyperactive and a
little too independent. But when they came up to the
Gospels and cross, they asked forgiveness from God without
a shade of self-justification or hypocrisy for their bad
deeds; and they furthermore asked that they could have
loving parents—parents they never had. Their
confession was an open conversation with the Lord. At that
moment it seemed to me that if I myself can be an example
to them of love, faith, and purity, then these and other
teenagers will believe what I say about God.
The family’s authority in the teenage years is
shaken, and children begin to search for support on the
outside, in teenage “crowds”. The interests of
these teenage crowds seem completely incompatible with the
Christian teachings they learned mainly from their
parent’s words, or sporadically in in the church
their parents took them to. For example, at age twelve to
thirteen a critical moment comes when they reassess their
childhood ideas; they want independence, creativity, and
fun. But their parents say that in church that this or
that is “forbidden”. While continuing to
believe in the existence of God, the teenagers do not see
any alternatives to their desires; they may not even hear
the arguments behind church bans, and slide away into
another, parallel reality. For example, a teenager comes
to have a talk with the priest and tell him about his
attraction to the world of fantasy, the world of elves and
goblins. But the priest has not read such books and tells
the teenager about the sinfulness of this kind of
literature. Not having heard a reasonable argument from
the priest and not seeing a living, interesting
alternative to the world of fantasy, the teenager leaves
and goes to the place where, so it seems, they understand
him and accept his interests. But back in the fifth
century Blessed Jerome described the meeting of St.
Anthony the Great with the centaur, which showed him the
way to St. Paul of Thebes. How could that have been
possible? Was that real, or was it just a pretty allegory
in a saint’s Life? Once the famous writer J. R. R.
Tolkien was asked by one of his readers whether this
fantasy world really exists. The writer answered,
“If it pleases God, then it all exists.”
Although J. R. R. Tolkien himself saw the meaning of his
life only in uniting with God in frequent Communion:
“The only medicine for those with weakening and
dying faith is the communion of the sacraments,” he
wrote to his son Michael. The words of this famous fantasy
writer about faith, about the Eucharist, could be a
serious authority for a young man drawn to this sort of
creativity.
It seems to me that it is very important for the teenager
that his inner world, thoughts, feelings, and hopes would
be interesting both at home and in church, to that he
would be understood and accepted as he is, so that people
would speak to him honestly, openly, and without any
reproachful tones. Perhaps the youth with his ideas does
not fit against the background of Andrei Rublev icons in
the church, but it’s absolutely permissible to
accept the children’s interests, feelings, and hopes
in the churchyard, within the church gates.
Essentially, the Church can become a second family for the
teenager, where he can discover the non-intrusive love and
care of the faithful, and find the vibrant, attentive eyes
of the priest; where he can hear words about God from
Orthodox teachers in a language that is accessible to his
subculture.
Of course, if the teenager is educated in a Christian
family and his sphere of interests is connected with
church life, we might be able to get around using the
subculture language. Just the same, we have to make sure
that there is always food for the mind and heart, so that
in the child’s life would always be an interest in
knowing the faith, the world of religion, and the world of
the Church Mysteries as God’s space.
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