The Trouble With Lies

I've been part of an ongoing discussion with a few friends about how many of our contemporaries from the 70s and 80s have walked away from the Christian faith. From my church youth group alone, I can only identify maybe 3 or 4 of us out of a group of about 20 people who "kept the faith." I started to reminisce about the good old days -- 1980 to 1986 -- at the Assembly of God in Warren, PA. I remember the cold, somewhat smelly room in the basement where we would have C.A. Group. (C.A. stood for Christ's Ambassadors.) At best, youth group was a blast; at worst it got you out of "big people church" on Sunday or Wednesday nights. We also had the coolest youth pastor by the name of Steve Scott. We put him through hell, because we were bratty little kids, but we loved him dearly. I wish I knew how to contact him now, just to say hi.

Remember all the rumors that you heard if you grew up an evangelical Christian during the Carter and Reagan years?

1. The Moonies owned Proctor & Gamble. If you bought P & G products, you were supporting a cult!
2. A computer in Belgium had the name of every person in the world on it, so the Anti-Christ could keep track of who had "the mark of the beast" and who didn't!
3. Rock groups hid backwards messages in records to corrupt youth!
4. Jesus was coming back soon! (As in no later than 1983 or 84!)

And how about our heroes? People like Jimmy Swaggart, Mike Warnke, Jim Bakker, and Pat Robertson... They all reassured us that we were we right and our culture was wrong. They all told inspiring stories that made living out our faith sound so easy. But we then we moved from youth group into adulthood and found out that life wasn't so easy after all. As our heroes one-by-one we're exposed as frauds, it hardly seemed a surprise at all.

Inside the church we tsk-tsk our friends who have drifted away from the faith. We surmise they weren't committed enough... the pull of sin was too strong... or that they were deceived by different philosophies. The truth is that they were deceived. They were deceived by all the B.S. that was spewed out of the Krazy Kristian Kulture for the first eighteen years of their life. They bought into the easy faith, where people always colored within the lines and a few Biblical principles could solve every problem.

It doesn't really amaze me anymore when I hear that an old acquaintance has walked away from the faith. I guess I'm more amazed that any of us are left.