Is doubt a sign Christian teens are drifting?

A teenager says, “I believe in God,” but then they walk into school and open their phones or talk with friends and think about the future. 

They navigate questions about everything from relationships to identity, success and belonging. Suddenly the question is no longer simply, “what do I believe?” It is, “because I believe it, how do I live?” 

That may be one way to understand a new study from Barna. Researchers surveyed 1,500 American teenagers and identified a group they call “Faith-Activated” teens — young people whose Christian faith is especially engaged across areas such as spiritual practices, service, evangelism, belonging and calling.  

You might expect these students to experience less uncertainty about their faith, but Barna found something more complicated. Forty-four percent say they feel tension between their faith and what their friends or culture expect of them, compared with 27% of teenagers overall. Even more striking, 51% say their faith feels more private than connected to everyday life, and 43% struggle to connect what they believe about God to real-life situations.  

In other words, the teenagers taking Christianity most seriously seem to be among those most aware of how difficult it can be to live it. 

Just like forgiveness sounds beautiful until someone wounds you, trusting God sounds reassuring until something happens that makes you wonder whether He can be trusted. Loving your neighbor sounds admirable until you discover they see the world very differently. 

Belief encounters resistance and at precisely that point, faith begins becoming discipleship. 

This is why I appreciate Barna’s caution that “doubt isn’t the same as drift.” Their researchers suggest that Faith-Activated teens may be wrestling not because they are disengaging from Christianity, but because they are taking it seriously enough to test their faith against what they encounter at school, among friends and in the larger culture.  

Perhaps some of the tension isn’t evidence that faith is failing; maybe it’s evidence that faith is becoming real. 

When it comes to belief and the pursuit of the truth in our culture, there are two popular worldviews. One says truth is something we discover and receive. The other says truth is something we determine for ourselves. 

And our teenagers are caught between both. 

Christianity begins with a God outside ourselves: a God who creates us, calls us, loves us and tells us who we are. The dominant story of the modern self moves in the opposite direction: look withing and find what is true for you.  

The first understands identity fundamentally as something received. The second understands identity fundamentally as something created. 

Both are beliefs and produce a way of living. 

Our teenagers, then, aren’t simply navigating the tension between faith and no faith. Both tell them who they are, where happiness can be found, what freedom means and how they should live. 

This is where the Christian tradition’s language of creed is actually helpful. The Apostles’ Creed begins with the words “I believe,” but Christians have never understood those words as merely an inventory of ideas stored in our heads. What we believe about God inevitably shapes what we believe about ourselves and the lives we learn to live. 

The question is not simply, do I believe this? Eventually, every belief asks, what kind of life follows if this is really true? 

That helps explain what may be the most troubling number in Barna’s study: among the teenagers most engaged in Christian faith, over half say they struggle to connect their faith to everyday life. 

Christianity was never intended to be a private faith carried by isolated believers. The story of Scripture is the story of God creating a people. God calls Abraham and promises a family. He forms Israel, Jesus gathers disciples and at Pentecost the Spirit creates a Church. The New Testament’s favorite images for Christians are stubbornly communal: a family, a body, a temple, a people. 

This matters because teenagers are already being formed by communities: Friends, schools, teams and social media are constantly teaching them what is admirable, desirable, normal and true. We sometimes respond as though our task is to give teenagers enough Christian information to withstand all of that alone. 

But Christianity offers something much richer than better arguments for an isolated believer. It gives us a people with whom to live. 

This is one of the gifts of covenant community. We need older Christians whose lives show us what faithfulness looks like over decades, families who practice forgiveness and people who keep believing alongside us when our own believing becomes difficult. 

Interestingly, Barna’s research gives us reason for encouragement here. Among Faith-Activated teens who attend youth group, 72% strongly agree that their youth group challenges them to think deeply about theology and Scripture, and the same percentage say they can be honest there about their questions and doubts.  

That is good news. The answer to competing creeds is not simply telling teenagers to try harder to believe the right one. We help them inhabit a community in which the Christian story becomes increasingly believable because they can see it being lived. 

A contradiction can be a wonderful starting point. It just can’t be a permanent home. 

The Church’s task, then, is not merely to give teenagers Christian answers to the culture’s questions. We have to help them ask deeper questions: 

What is a human being?  

What was I created for?  

What is freedom?  

What makes a life good?  

Who gets to tell me who I am? 

And finally: If this is what I believe, how then shall I live? 

Maybe our goal shouldn’t be to raise Christian teenagers who experience less tension. Perhaps we should hope for young Christians whose faith is substantial enough to understand the tension, gracious enough not to fear it, and deeply rooted enough to live faithfully within it. 

Because if the Church doesn’t teach our teenagers how Christian belief becomes a Christian life, another creed will. 

And no one learns to live a creed alone.