This is the second post of a two-part series of articles aimed at answering one of the most common questions my father and I receive—“How do we help kids who are questioning their faith?” This article first appeared in the March/April, 2011 Thriving Magazine, a Focus on the Family publication.

You're now a father and have a thriving apologetics ministry of your own. What advice would you give to parents whose kids express doubts about Christianity?

Sean: First, I'd tell them not to panic. I generally see kids doubting their faith as a good thing. As a teacher, I spend much of my time and energy trying to convince kids that their beliefs about God really matter. When young people say they doubt their faith, I know that they are at least thinking about important issues, and they want to know the truth. This is a good start!

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For the next couple weeks I am going to post a two-part series of articles to answer one of the most common questions my father and I receive—“How do we help kids who are questioning their faith?”

This article first appeared in the March/April, 2011 Thriving Magazine, a Focus on the Family publication.

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Most children raised in Christian homes enter a stage — often during their teen years — where they wonder if their parents' faith is right for them. After a time of questioning, some embrace that faith, making it their own. Others turn away to walk another road.

For Sean McDowell, that wondering phase came during his first year of college, when he began to wrestle with a number of questions about the truth of Christianity and the existence of God. As he struggled with these questions, he knew there was one person he needed to be honest with: his dad. But when your father is renowned Christian apologist Josh McDowell, that discussion can be a difficult one to initiate.

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For the last year, I’ve been swimming in a sea of doubt. Not my own doubt—I’ve been immersed in the doubt of others.

I suppose the experience became unavoidable the moment I set out to write a book about the disturbing numbers of young adults exiting the Christian faith. Of course understanding the trend meant reading up on the relevant scholarship. Yet the literature on deconversion—which is shockingly sparse—only takes you so far. Its surreal, detached tone is an odd fit for such an intimate issue. Scholars describe young people leaving the faith as if observing caribou migrate across the Alaskan tundra.

On the ground the phenomenon of deconversion is heartbreakingly human—a torrent of emotional pain, broken relationships, and identity crises. I knew I had to talk with real “leavers.” But after dozens of interviews, it seemed almost more than I could handle. It wasn’t a test of my faith, but it did tax my resolve. The interviews were heart-numbing.

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The most important questions in life are the big ones. Is there a God? What does it mean to be human? How should we live? What is justice? Big questions tend to have equally big answers – that is, answers that, once understood and accepted, change our lives.

Big questions are not always easy to answer. Why should they be? Just because something is true doesn’t mean it has to be easy to find out or understand – just ask a mathematician or scientist who has sweated blood over figuring out the answer to a tough research problem. Sometimes truth is simple, and sometimes it is complex; like reality itself, at times it is simple on the surface but reveals increasing complexity when examined closely.

So, at times it is a hard slog to find the answers to these big questions – and sometimes the big questions have answers we don’t like, or that we fear we won’t like.

There is one more story I’d like to share as I end the series on life lessons learned while living overseas. It’s another one from Russia but it’s a special one engrained in my heart.

The Russian town I lived in was small by Russian standards, only about 100,000 people. There was one small and very old hospital. The previous year I had an emergency appendectomy there and soon realized there is not much to do during the day. No televisions, no food service, nothing – just some radios that didn’t work that well. Visitors were greatly treasured.

A teammate and I began weekly visits with the patients in the women’s ward. The women on this ward were in the hospital for 4 weeks. Needless to say they were eager to talk with anyone who walked through the door.

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Young people are leaving the church in droves. For those of us who work with students, this is hardly breaking news. All of us have stories we could share about young people who were “on fire” for God that, for whatever reason, abandoned their faith. Personally, I will never forget seeing a former classmate from Biola University walk by hand-in-hand with another man just one year after my graduation. I was shocked! He not only left Christianity (from what I could tell), he went headlong into the gay lifestyle.

Church attendance is a good indicator of this trend. The Barna Group estimates that 80 percent of those raised in the church will disengage by twenty-nine years old. While it may be typical for young people to walk away from the faith during the college years and then return upon child rearing, the signs are that this generation (as a whole) is not coming back. As a Christian high school teacher, it’s disconcerting to think that four out of every five students I teach (statistically speaking) will be completely disengaged from their faith within a decade of graduation. The Facebook profiles of many former students tell it all.

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For your first week of reading, Why Trust Jesus? Here's several questions that I want you to ask yourself but also ask your friends in your community group/ book study group.  After you have read Norman Geisler's foreword and my introduction, consider these questions.  

1. What characteristics do you look for in someone else, before you can trust them?

2. What are the greatest barriers to trusting Christ daily in your own life? Is it intellectual, emotional, or self-sufficiency? Talk it out. 

 3. We have all probably been let down by Christians. Maybe a pastor or priest,  a father or mother, an ex-lover. In the midst of  disappointments or failures, why do you believe the Christian faith is most trustworthy? Or more specifically, why Jesus? 

4. What steps will you take this week to grow in trust?

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My recent debate with James Corbett on the topic, "Is God the Best Explanation for Moral Values?", has generated quite a stir. A number of people from various backgrounds and beliefs have chimed in with their thoughts, including a popular atheist blogger, a Christian science-fiction writer, a Christian postmodernist, the "Apologetics Junkie," and the Saddleback College paper (the debate was held at Saddleback College).

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He twists suddenly and I’m a step behind. Swiftly, he leaps to the right, off the trail and toward the buck. Muscles surge as he does what he was bred to do: Close in, go for the throat, and bring it down. Somehow, my voice breaks through. He pauses in mid-stride, trying to decide.

Sadiq loves to run trails right after I finish my Lucky Charms. He stares intently at me from across the sun-lit room, brown eyes calm, but ears perked forward in expectation, waiting for the last magic marshmallow to disappear. As I reach for my pungent New Balance jacket, the deal is sealed and he knows it. We dive off the porch together, plunging into the Palisades, footsteps from our home.

He’s one hundred and fifteen pounds of muscle and bone. A Rhodesian Ridgeback moving in fluid shades of Chai tea and silver, Sadiq was bred to hunt lions in east Africa. The dog books say he is “aloof,” but not to his family. We interviewed, provided three references, showed photos of our back yard - paid more than I had for my first blue Chevy truck – for the honor of taking him home.

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After all these years it shouldn't surprise me--but it still does.  I'm honestly still a little perplexed by the image Theists sometimes have of Atheists as mentally-anquished individuals. Often I've been asked, "How could you live without believing there was a God? What was your purpose? What got you up each morning...?" 

So, it's been on my mind to try to convey the type of mental peace that Atheism as a belief system can create for socially-concerned question-askers. These musings are excerpted directly from chapter 43 of my book, Finding an Unseen God.

(Dear Publisher, hope that's okay...)

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