Painful experiences make it difficult to engage with what we once loved and held dear to our hearts. Broken relational trust and trauma can even lead us to abandon our faith. This is perhaps especially the case for young people.
A recent exposé, season 2 of Shiny Happy People, highlights Teen Mania and its Honor Academy for their effect on the broader evangelical movement. As the series documents, some people involved in those ministries have chosen to step away from the orthodox faith and find answers elsewhere. Other former students insist Teen Mania allowed them to experience God.
But there’s a third group of people (like me) who see that any Christian youth-focused initiative can create both positive and negative experiences. Through the years, I’ve learned to look to Christ through the muddy waters of what I experienced at Teen Mania.
My Teen Mania Story
My time in Teen Mania’s ministry trained my teenage mind to accept authority without question. At the Honor Academy, we were expected to do whatever our leaders told us (because “our word is our bond”). Whether our leaders instructed us to dig a shallow grave and lie in it to experience death, or to stand in a muddy pond on a chilly night to show we love Jesus by reciting Bible passages and chants, we had to obey. Saying no indicated distrust in leadership.
Through the years, I’ve learned to look to Christ through the muddy waters of what I experienced at Teen Mania.
I left the Academy after completing my one-year program, believing everything we experienced was OK and that the God of the Bible was glorified by what happened there.
But over time, my view of Christianity shattered. I was trying to rationalize experiences where Jesus’s name was used but healthy theology was thrown out. I excused the leaders as well meaning but misguided. We’re human, and we all make mistakes, I thought. And I didn’t think it was OK for me to point out the flaws.
Eventually, I understood that I didn’t have to act like everything at Teen Mania was fine. In situations where harmful and unbiblical values are taught, it’s crucial to acknowledge, “This is wrong.”
Leaving a Bad Youth Ministry, Staying with a Good God
You may have had a similar experience with a church or organization. The pain and hurt may linger from any unhealthy (or abusive) religious environment where you were harmed by those who claim Christ’s name.
While I can’t provide you with five ways to get over your pain and suffering, I can offer three truths that kept me looking to Jesus.
1. God works it all for good (even when we wish it were different).
A few of my fellow members in Teen Mania attended a local Acts29 church plant. That church’s ministry was the first place I heard the gospel doctrines of grace and faith applied to my heart. The Lord brought good out of a hard situation, and yet the wounds weren’t healed immediately.
It can be easy to wonder why God allows certain people to experience such traumas. The pains we’ve experienced are real and are unfortunate realities of a broken world. As I tried to understand the “Why God?” of my situation, I learned to rest in the “God will” of his Word: It will work together for my good (Rom. 8:28).
2. Healing takes time.
While leaning on God’s promises is crucial for our sanity, that’s not the only means God provides. I’d be lying if I said I woke up every day believing that God is working these experiences for good. I didn’t only need to tell myself Jesus is at work; I needed others to testify to it in their words and actions.
We need to hear that God isn’t done with us and that he isn’t going to leave us in our pain. I’m starting to believe this, though I’m far from having arrived.
After years of continued therapy, the common grace of medication, and a deep, painfully restorative dive into gospel community, I’m beginning to believe that God isn’t someone who’s against me and only wants to purge me of sin. I’m learning he loves me and gives me his smile that says, “Well done” (Matt. 25:21).
3. Joy will come.
When I read stories in the Gospels, I see how immediately Jesus healed many people of their physical ailments and brought their feet up on solid ground (some literally). And I want that now. But the story of redemption has always been filled with longing and waiting.
I want healing now. But the story of redemption has always been filled with longing and waiting.
Why has God allowed some people to go through harder situations, while others seem completely fine? I don’t know. But I do know that Jesus took a road no one wants to take for a people that no God should love. And if we (as wounded humans) become recipients of grace, we can fully collapse into God’s arms. Not because we see all wrongs completely undone. But because we already know that if God can make all things work together for good, he’ll surely be good to bring about some healing in this life and complete healing in the life to come.
Until then, we rest in the good pleasure of the God who sees even the sparrows (Matt. 10:31).
Many young people are walking away from Christianity—for reasons ranging from the church’s stance on sexual morality, to its approach to science and the Bible, to its perceived silence on racial justice.
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