Julia Duin has written a really insightful piece in The Washington Times about the religious questions being asked by this generation. 30 years ago the question was “Is there a God?” And while this question is still fueling book sales, Duin reports that the issue has shifted from God’s existence to his goodness.A pastor she interviewed near the University of Virginia says the young are very turned off by organized religion. He reports that the young are saying, “‘What I know about God I don’t like.’ Their biggest complaint is that God acts in morally inferior ways compared to us.”Duin’s article continues:

The current 20-something…may believe God exists but is not worthy of his or her worship or devotion, much less obedience.

The God who gets communicated to the young sounds vengeful and angry and over-anxious to consign people to hell, plus he gets all wrought up about divorce, homosexuality and whether people sleep together before marriage — which are non-issues to them.

Plus, the typical Gospel presentation of God becoming a human and dying for the sins of the world does not reach these students. No court of law would punish an innocent person for the sins of the guilty, they reason. Why kill off an innocent man for the trespasses of a world that didn’t ask to be saved in the first place?

What Duin captures in her article is similar to what Scot McKnight has written about in the current issue of Leadership. (You can read a synopsis of his take on the current generation here.) In previous generations the Gospel was presented by first making people feel a sense of guilt and shame for their bad behavior. Once they were reminded of their indebtedness, a solution via Christ could be presented and received. Here’s how McKnight describes the traditional model:

The intent of evangelism that focuses on preaching the law and God’s holiness, wrapping those two elements into a vision of God’s wrath and hell, is to stimulate a cry for salvation out of a sense of guilt over who we are and what we have done. This model works for some. But it may not be the wisest model for iGens.

In the past there was an accepted assumption behind this way of presenting the Gospel that God was good. And while some people may have placed confidence in their own righteousness, there was agreement that God’s goodness always outweighed our own. (The issued tended to hinge more on whether or not this good God actually existed, thus fueling the desire for training in modernist apologetics.)

But this old assumption of God’s goodness seems to be gone. The new generation, as reported by Duin and dissected by McKnight, has a nearly impenetrable self-image and very secure sense of self-esteem. To use my wife’s phraseology-we are a generation that “thinks we’re all that and a bag of chips.” So when we read the Scriptures or hear a traditional presentation of the Gospel, rather than feeling morally inferior to the Jesus who healed, cared, sacrificed, and died for others…we feel morally superior to the God who hates divorce, restricts sexual expression, and condemns his Son on a Roman cross.

This poses quite a conundrum for churches unwilling or unable to adapt their ways of engaging the culture. What do you think? And what are the implications for the church going forward?

Read more of Duin’s article here.