Thread I spent too much time on:
Every day, I get emails and DMs from evangelical kids under 18. I don't answer most of my "fan mail," as it were (most of it isn't from fans :P), but I answer every single one of these. Because every single time, it breaks my heart.

You wouldn't believe how much mail I get from kids who are afraid of losing their faith, their families, and their identities. You wouldn't believe how many people come to me after watching hours of debate online and want me to tell them how to process it.

So many of these kids come to me after spending hundreds of dollars on books and online subscriptions. They come to me with encyclopedic reading lists, and they want me to add to it. They have questions about theological concepts I didn’t even know about when I was their age.

If these kids were writing to me out of genuine enthusiasm and love of theology and biblical studies, I’d be thrilled. But they aren’t. They’re writing to me out of fear and anxiety. Every kid wants me to tell them the book they need to read to save them and save their faith.

They all want me to give them more stuff to do. And I just can't do it. I cannot give them more work.

(This has happened in every class I've ever caught or co-taught too, by the way. A little older than 18, but no less needy).

I can't give them more stuff to read and listen to because they are actual children. When I was their age, I was reading Harry Potter and fan-girling over Andrew Lloyd Webber. I wasn't worried about how the New Testament canon was formed, or when the Book of Daniel was written.

I don't mean that I was totally free from the weird constraints of being a teenaged American evangelical. I was definitely getting messed up in my own unique religious ways. But to be fair, I was also busy having fun and being a teenager.

And this is the thing that breaks my heart about these letters. I don’t get letters from kids who are having fun. I get letters from kids who think they need to know everything about God at 16, or otherwise they will lose their way and go to hell for eternity.

You don't know how many of your children have seen Christian apologists and professors online, and have taken it upon themselves to imitate these *professional adult Christians* before they ever can drive - and think if they can't do that that God doesn't love them.

I don't know what to do about this, but (evangelical) Christians: take it from someone who interacts with Gen Z regularly. There is something about the way we are doing Christianity that is not compatible with childhood and adolescence.

Our kids are getting the message that they need to achieve a dogmatized, fully-formed, work-intensive certainty about God. They cannot get it as teenagers, and they should have never been asked to.

It is great if a kid wants to read Calvin on her own time because she finds it genuinely fun and interesting. It is another thing if this is something she feels desperate to do so because otherwise she can't believe the right things about God and will lose everything.

It is urgent that we make space in our churches for *genuine* teenaged doubt, confusion, exploration, and (honestly) genuine ignorance. We need space for young people to be confused and loved anyways - or even because of it.

I'm not talking here about doubt that can speak its name as long as it runs through the proper channels and is moving positively towards the thing you want it to become. I mean *genuine* confusion and questioning.

I honestly wish I could have a conference for the parents of all the kids who write to me, and I know that Twitter is the very last place to have it. But if you have a teenager-please be kind to them. Let them be confused. Let them push back.

God will still love them in five, ten, fifteen, and fifty years, no matter what they've learned or haven't learned. Doubt and exploration about faith are such normal parts of growing up. Trust God enough to let it happen, and love your kids all the more during those periods.

If you’re a Christian kid, or a doubting kid, who follows me or listens to my podcast: you are doing just fine. You are okay, you are valuable, you are loved, and you have a lifetime to learn and grow in your faith. Get off Twitter and go have some fun.