The curious know it is risky to play it safe

Working with college students can sometimes cause one to be very curious. It is the nature of those at any level of college to ask a lot of questions. They like exploring new ideas and participating in meaningful events, discussions and groups. Yet, I often hear from students that their church doesn’t allow curiosity and questioning. Actually, many tell me their church “has all the answers” or at least thinks they do – and that turns them off. In some ways this puzzles me. Shouldn’t the church be the place where curiosity is sparked and where questions are wrestled with in community?

Let me define some terms through the eyes of the college student. To help explain this I will quote from secular author Seth Grodin’s “Tribes.” He says, “A fundamentalist is a person who considers whether a fact is acceptable to his religion before he explores it.” Many college students believe that most people who attend church are fundamentalists in this sense. In the last 20 years, being a fundamentalist has taken on a negative connotation in our American culture. Fundamentalism is linked with a wide gamut of specific theologies and positions - many that the Lutheran church does not agree with or profess. Yet that is not how many “Lutheran” college students see those positions in their churches. I found this true of some of my own friends from the Lutheran high school and college I attended, who are no longer members in a Lutheran church. The majority of them switched denominations while in college – going to churches that allowed them to be more curious. They were seeking a relationship where questions could be asked and growth could take place. Instead they found what they considered to be unexplored facts and simple religious answers.

On the other hand, Grodin described the “curious” person as one who “explores first and then considers whether or not he or she wants to accept the ramifications.” They also embrace a tension between their faith and new ideas and thought, wrestle with it and through it, and then decide whether to embrace the new idea or reject it.

It is interesting because curiosity really has everything to do with education, and certainly was foundational to the development of Lutheranism. If Martin Luther had not been curious about scripture and its meaning, we may still be paying for indulgences today. True curiosity is a desire to understand, to try, to push whatever envelope may be of interest. College students want to know and be involved in what their churches are believing and doing, and even more what they plan to do next. They like to see changes in the congregation environment - similar to the changes going on in their own day-to-day lives.

At the core, college students want to count. Not because there are a lot of them (Look around your parishes. How many college students are attending on a given Sunday?) but because they are the ones who actually talk to people in coffee houses, at sporting events, in bookstores, at the movies…where people live their lives. Put simply – they are the ones who lead the people in the middle who are stuck. Look around at the younger people leading our world today. It was a 20 year old, Mark Zucherberg, who launched Facebook creating a way for people of all ages to connect worldwide. Some say he did what the church has struggled with for years – connect people. People like being in the middle (especially in the church). They have trained themselves to think that it’s safe to do nothing or just “attend,” which annoys the curious college student and for that matter the participatory churchgoer.

What is really happening in the lives of most college students is that after almost 15 years of education they have begun to find their voice. They realize that the safest thing you can do feels risky and the riskiest thing you can do is play it safe. And it is this that bothers me. Where are their voices in our churches? Are we perceived as “too fundamental?” Do we not allow curiosity? Are questions always answered without the context of relationships? Who knows, you could have the next Mark Zurcherberg sitting next to you in your pew this Sunday– and what a waste not to engage him in a conversation.

First appeared in the March 2009 issue of the Fort Wayne Lutheran Newpaper.

By Robert S. Henry