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oh man do i have some thoughts on this. https://twitter.com/abellejm/status/1300289862403272704
Growing up in the 90s-00s in an evangelical church was what I'd describe as "peak youth group". Emotional outbursts, speaking in tongues, etc were *heavily* emphasised. There was a strong unwritten belief that if you did not experience these things you weren't really a Christian.
Falling away hard at ~12 was due to a number of things which are too much to outline in tweets (but I'm attaching a post I made years ago on the topic). This phenomenon was one of them, because even at 12/13 I was starting to see that there was a lot of manipulation involved.
I spent roughly ages 12-20 as a vehement nonbeliever, a long post which could be elaborated on elsewhere. Part of that experience involved reading lot on the subject of religion, esp. emotion and religion. A lot has stuck with me and I feel like I'm still critical of that aspect.
My adult conversion happened over some years and saw me bounce around for a bit. I was an Anglican for ~3 years. I finally came into communion with the Catholic Church because I believe in the Gospel, in Christ, and in His Church. Clarifying in case anyone misunderstands anything
But I was almost immediately struck, in a negative way, with what I saw as very evangelical approaches to youth and young adult ministry. GRANTED - I had PLENTY of emotional experiences coming into and being part of the Church. However, I felt like I was able to separate these ..
"natural" emotional experiences from what seemed like "artificial" ones. I know if I listen to sad music I'll get into a sad headspace. If someone preaches to me for 45 min about how awful I am I'll get into that headspace. It's just how we operate. It's not a bad thing, per se..
but it is something which can be EASILY manipulated. When you look at the foundations of this type of worship (Pentecostalism, Azusa Street, etc) there's even material about what different tones/scales/keys of music will induce different religious feelings ...
Now, obviously composers choose these things to fit the situation. You wouldn't want a happy-sounding Dies Irae for instance. But, I think the aspect of manipulation comes into play with the intent and presentation.
If you are crafting and tailoring music/talks/etc for a retreat so as to purposefully overwhelm teens and artificially bring them to this point you need to take a hard look at whether you're truly trying to let God do the work, or if you're trying to totally usurp Him.
Because when the emotions go down, and the music ends, and the post-retreat high goes away... are these teens going to take anything away? Or just go right back to whatever they were doing before?
YES, God speaks to us through emotion sometimes. Even ecstatic emotion ...
YES, God speaks to us through emotion sometimes. Even ecstatic emotion ...
But there is a difference between giving God the space to speak light into darkness and artificially bringing kids to an emotion-filled, sleep deprived breaking point. Your goal leading a retreat should be to save souls, not deal out dopamine hits.
In my time as a CCM-involved student, and my time as a YM one of my biggest spiritual struggles was seeing a tendency towards stuff like this in Catholic events. I think it is still my biggest hangup, and I have HAD big emotional experiences as a Catholic. I had one on Sunday!
I guess my point is that we have to be careful about properly discerning whether these experiences are truly coming from God, speaking to us through circumstances we are in, or if these experiences are coming from elsewhere. I think it can be spiritually dangerous.
If we distill God down to emotional highs instead of Spirit and Truth then what happens when the highs stop or the music doesn't affect us the same way? What happens when these experiences become a test for true faith? Look at the replies to OP and see the experiences of others.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
