“The Faith Problem We Didn’t See Coming”

A few months ago, I was sitting in my office with a parent after church. Nothing dramatic. No crisis. No tears. Just that familiar look I’ve seen hundreds of times over the years, the look that says, I need help putting words to something I don’t understand yet.

After a long pause, they said, “I don’t think my kid is drifting away anymore. I think they’re drifting toward something. I’m just not sure what.”

That stopped me.

Because for most of my ministry, those conversations went exactly the same way. Parents would sit down, sigh deeply, and emotionally prepare for the inevitable. College would happen. Culture would happen. A professor with a ponytail or a TikTok influencer with a ring light would happen. And somewhere between move-in day and Thanksgiving break, their kid would decide faith was “too restrictive” and “not really their thing anymore.”

The only question was timing. Freshman year or sophomore year. First philosophy class or first roommate. We all just nodded and pretended this was normal—tragic, yes, but apparently unavoidable.

But this parent wasn’t describing that kid.

They weren’t talking about apathy, rebellion, or the classic eye-roll that could power a small city. Their teenager wasn’t trying to deconstruct Christianity on Instagram or win arguments at youth group. Instead, they were asking heavier questions—the kind that don’t come from arrogance, but from someone who suspects the world is more serious than they were told.

They weren’t impressed by slogans. They weren’t comforted by vague positivity. And they were deeply unconvinced by moral certainty that floated around untethered to anything solid. Almost against their will, they were being pulled toward ideas that felt older, sturdier, and far less interested in entertaining them.

Which, frankly, is not the crisis most parents were trained for.

I’ve heard versions of that same conversation again and again since then. Different parents. Different kids. Same unsettled tone.

Something is shifting, and it isn’t showing up first in politics or headlines. It’s showing up in living rooms, car rides, and late-night conversations where parents realize the script they were prepared for no longer fits.

The World We Handed Them

In The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, Carl Trueman describes the dominant story of our age as expressive individualism—the belief that meaning comes from looking inward, discovering who you “really are,” and then demanding that everyone else rearrange reality to affirm it. Authority is automatically suspicious. Tradition is dismissed as trauma with better PR. Institutions don’t exist to form you; they exist to applaud you, preferably loudly and on social media.

For a while, that story felt incredibly liberating. And to be fair, it did solve some real problems. When authority is abusive and tradition is unjust, questioning both is necessary. But Trueman’s point is that a culture can’t live forever in demolition mode. Once expressive individualism becomes the only story in town, it eventually collapses under its own weight.

Because when the self becomes the highest authority, there’s nowhere left to go when the self is confused, anxious, lonely, or falling apart. You can’t appeal to wisdom older than you, because you’ve already fired it. You can’t submit to truth outside of you, because that would feel oppressive. All that’s left is you—staring back at yourself in the mirror, desperately hoping you have better answers this week than you did last week.

That’s the world Gen Z inherited. Not a lack of freedom, but an overwhelming amount of it—paired with almost no guidance on what to do with it once the freedom stops feeling fun.

They were told to be authentic, but not given a definition of what a healthy self actually is. They were told to speak their truth, but punished when that truth didn’t align with the “approved narrative.” They were promised freedom, but found themselves navigating social spaces where the rules were constantly shifting and the consequences for missteps were severe.

Over time, that doesn’t produce confident individuals. It produces tired ones.

Why the Old Answers Feel Hollow

Trueman often points out that when institutions hollow themselves out—when they stop believing in their own authority—they don’t disappear. They just become awkward. They keep showing up, clearing their throats, and saying things like, “Well, this is what we believe… sort of… unless you disagree… in which case we fully support your journey.”

Teenagers can smell that from a mile away. They know when adults are hedging, qualifying, and apologizing in real time for the thing they’re actively trying to teach. Nothing destroys credibility faster than a grown adult explaining why they might be wrong before anyone even asked.

That’s why so many cultural messages aimed at teenagers feel so thin. They demand moral passion without offering moral grounding. They insist on empathy but can’t quite explain why human beings actually matter. They wave the flag of justice enthusiastically, then panic the moment someone asks, “Okay, but who decides what justice is?” or “According to what standard?” or “Are we allowed to finish that sentence?”

Students aren’t rejecting compassion or equality. They’re rejecting fragility. They’re not looking for a worldview that needs constant emotional support or collapses the moment it’s cross-examined by a sophomore with Wi-Fi. They want something that can take a hit, answer hard questions, and still be standing when the conversation gets uncomfortable.

And once they notice that gap—once they realize the official story can’t carry the weight it promises to—questions start piling up fast.

If expressive individualism was supposed to set them free, why do so many feel more anxious, more isolated, and more unsure of themselves than any generation before them? If progress was inevitable, why does the future feel like it’s held together with duct tape and press releases? And if meaning really comes from within, why does everything still feel so strangely… hollow?

Toxic Masculinity and the KKK?

You can see where it’s migrating if you’re paying attention.

Andrew Tate didn’t become popular because young men suddenly forgot right from wrong. He became popular because he speaks with certainty in a world that refuses to. He offers a warped version of masculinity—strength without sacrifice, confidence without character, dominance without responsibility—and for boys who’ve been told their entire lives that masculinity itself is the problem, that message lands hard.

Then there are figures like Nick Fuentes, a self-described white nationalist who openly praises Adolf Hitler and traffics in antisemitism and racial grievance. A few years ago, most of us would have assumed someone like that belonged on the fringe, safely ignored. Today, his audience is overwhelmingly young, male, and online—drawn not first by hate, but by clarity, belonging, and a sense that someone is finally telling them the truth about what’s gone wrong.

That should alarm us—but it should also teach us something.

These voices aren’t winning because they’re good. They’re winning because they’re clear. They name enemies. They promise order. They offer purpose in a world that told young people to “be yourself” and then left them alone to figure out what that meant.

Once a teenager finds meaning there, even a destructive kind—it’s incredibly hard to pull them back. Not because they’re evil, but because they finally found something that felt solid.

And that’s the moment the Church has to ask itself an uncomfortable question: if we won’t offer our kids a thick, demanding, unembarrassed faith, why are we surprised when someone else offers them something darker instead?But others begin to ask a different question:“What if the problem isn’t that authority exists, but that we lost the right one?”

That question is quietly pulling young adults back toward faith, not a soft, therapeutic version of it, but a faith that makes real claims about reality. A faith that says truth exists outside of us. That the self is something to be formed, not merely expressed. That meaning is received before it is chosen.

This helps explain why churches that haven’t chased cultural approval are often the ones seeing renewed interest from young people. Not because they’re nostalgic, but because they’re coherent. They offer a story big enough to locate suffering, sacrifice, obedience, and hope in the same frame.

In a world where everything feels negotiable, non-negotiables feel strangely comforting.

What This Means for Parents

If you’re a parent watching your teenager lean into deeper questions, firmer convictions, or a more traditional faith instinct, it’s understandable to feel cautious. We’ve been trained to associate authority with abuse and certainty with arrogance. Trueman doesn’t deny those dangers—but he reminds us that the absence of authority has consequences too.

Kids don’t need a faith that anxiously mirrors the culture. They need one that can withstand it. They don’t need parents who panic when they ask hard questions. They need adults who believe Christianity is sturdy enough to answer them without fear.

What looks like a turn “backward” to some may actually be a move toward coherence, meaning, and rootedness.

A Quietly Hopeful Moment

Cultural revolutions never end neatly. There are real risks in this moment, and pretending otherwise would be naïve. But there is also an opportunity—one the Church rarely gets when everything is comfortable. When the myths of expressive individualism begin to crack, people don’t stop searching for meaning. They start looking for something truer to take its place.

Our kids aren’t searching because they hate freedom. They’re searching because freedom without purpose is exhausting. Being told to “look within” only works until the questions get heavy—until suffering, injustice, failure, and fear show up and the self proves far too small to carry them.

Here’s the hope: Christianity doesn’t ask our kids to invent meaning. It offers meaning received. A faith where truth exists outside of us, where authority is good because it is rooted in love, and where masculinity and femininity are not weapons or liabilities but callings shaped by sacrifice and service. In Jesus, strength is restrained, power is surrendered, and greatness looks like a cross before it ever looks like a crown.

That means the answer to this moment isn’t panic, silence, or retreat. It’s formation. Parents who aren’t afraid of conviction. Churches that teach the whole counsel of God without embarrassment. Adults who show young people that faith isn’t fragile and truth doesn’t need constant revision to survive.

If we offer our kids a thin, therapeutic version of Christianity, someone else will offer them something thicker and far more dangerous. But if we give them a faith that is honest, demanding, and deeply rooted in Christ, many of them are ready—more ready than we realize—to receive it.

This door won’t stay open forever. But right now, it is open wider than it has been in a generation.

The question isn’t whether our kids are searching.

It’s whether we’re ready to give them something worth finding.