If there’s a 50/50 chance that something can go wrong, then 9 times out of 10 it will.

PAUL HARVEY

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

I grew up in the eighties. I watched the Challenger explode and the Berlin Wall come down. I had a pink banana-seat Huffy bike with streamers on the handlebars. I died of dysentery hundreds of times on the Oregon Trail, and I remember when skinny jeans went out of style the first time. I also remember what it was like to learn to drive without a GPS.

Spatial intelligence and an intuitive sense of direction are two things that the Lord did not bless me with—and that’s putting it mildly. When I got my driver’s license, my dad joked that he wished he could buy me a homing pigeon to take with me in the car. (When I was twenty-four, and TomTom made the first all-in-one personal navigation GPS device, Dad sent me one in the mail with a note that said, “Finally: your homing pigeon.”) Whenever I drove anywhere alone, I planned extra time for getting lost. My Massachusetts Street Atlas was my best friend. And I always kept quarters in my car’s ashtray (yes, you read that correctly, younger readers: ashtray) for payphone calls.

For me, getting lost was a normal part of driving. The first step to finding my way again was figuring out where I was. First, I’d need to figure out what town I was in, then locate two cross streets and look them up in the atlas. At that point, I would try to retrace my steps—“How did I get here?”—to find my way back to my ill-fated wrong turn.

As I think about where we are when it comes to helping our kids walk the way of Jesus, that 50 percent statistic indicates that we in the Western church are lost. For those who remember pre-GPS driving, it’s the moment when what you are seeing out your window doesn’t match where you expected to find yourself. We are lost. And to find our way again, it’s helpful to first retrace our steps—to ask, “How did we get here?”—so that we identify the wrong turns we’ve made along the way.

To be honest, there are probably too many wrong turns to count, but I’m going to explore a few, loosely labeled under the subheadings of the world, the church, and us.

THE WORLD

The world around us is changing and has changed significantly in the last twenty years. If you are my age or older, you have lived through this shift as an adult and may be acutely aware of the sea change, though you may not be able to put your finger on exactly what it is or why it’s happening. Maybe you don’t understand why everyone younger than you lists their pronouns everywhere. If you are a decade or more younger than me, you have likely come of age amid this shift and may not even be aware of it. Pronouns are a completely normal part of life.

Prior to the turn of the twenty-first century, with respect to Christianity, there were only two types of cultures in the world: what we might call “non-Christian” cultures (societies with no historic Christian influence) and those we could call “Christendom” (societies where Christianity had exerted strong cultural influence). But for the first time in human history, the twenty-first century has brought about the emergence of a third type of culture in Western societies, what scholars refer to as “post-Christian culture.”2

Now, I am writing this from Providence, Rhode Island—recently ranked by the Barna Group as the third most post-Christian city in the United States.3 If you are reading this from the Bible Belt, you may feel like I’m talking about another planet as your context may still feel more like Christendom. But if you haven’t yet experienced this shift, know that it’s absolutely coming your way.

Post-Christian culture is unique because it is a reaction to Christianity. It is familiar with Christianity but has rejected it. Most vaccines work by exposing the human body to enough of a virus—a weakened version of it—to enable the immune system to defend itself against it. This is called inoculation. In the same way, post-Christian cultures have been exposed to enough of the gospel—a weakened version of it, usually—to become inoculated to it.

Some distinctives of a post-Christian culture include (1) a particular adeptness in deconstructing the Christian worldview; (2) an interest in the values of the kingdom (e.g., justice, the dignity of all human beings, etc.) without the authority of the King; (3) a sense that the moral high ground has shifted from the religious sector to the secular sector (for example, the Christian sexual ethic used to be seen as peculiar, perhaps, but a generally moral way to live); and (4) an almost pharisaical judgmentalism toward the way of Jesus when it cuts against the grain of mainstream culture.

For our discussion, this means that our children are growing up in a world that is discipling them in these post-Christian distinctives. When I was in high school, those who knew my (traditional) views on sex often told me, “Oh you’re such a good person, Sarah.” This head-patting sometimes embarrassed me, but there was a baseline level of respect in the air for my choices. Today, that same ethic is very often viewed as immoral, repressive, and even harmful. I’m quite confident my kids will not receive the same kudos for the choices they (hopefully) make about their bodies.

Though many of us have become decidedly used to it, myself included, it’s important to remember that post-Christian culture is not neutral to the way of Jesus. It is actually quite hostile to it. Now, I’m not saying that Christendom was any better. You will not hear me longing for the “glory days” of the last century, because Christendom came with its own very real threats to the way of Jesus. Christianity and Christendom are not interchangeable terms; one is about...