In my house we subscribe to Netflix and Amazon for our video-based entertainment. We also use an antenna for local channels. These three services alone provide more options than we could ever watch, or even consider watching. Yet, we are still lacking Disney+, Hulu, HBO and other streaming services. Which means that there are innumerable shows out there that we cannot even consider watching.

The sheer amount of options available to us at any given moment is part of our culture. It’s everywhere, from aisles full of different cereals and expansive meat departments at the local grocery store, to the roughly 12 million products available for purchase on Amazon.com. The plethora of options we have available at our fingertips is unique in the history of humanity. It is a distinctly American phenomenon that we connect with the idea of freedom. But is there a dark side to so many options?

Options are nearly as plentiful in the American church where we have the freedom to find a church that is perfectly tailored to our ideals, our theology, and our most pressing felt needs. And we are free to move to a different church whenever we feel uncomfortable in our present one. Church shopping is part of our vocabulary.

If this weren’t bad enough, there are a growing number of options outside the church. Younger generations are growing less and less interested in religion, even while they grow more and more concerned with social and global issues of justice and stewardship. This has led to a proliferation of organizations that are engaged in humanitarian efforts. We’ve gotten to the point where if you want to do good in this world, the most effective and efficient pathway is rarely through a church. It will take a different post to parse out the positives and negatives of this reality, but for now I just want to suggest that this reality helps us answer the question I posed last week, “What are we (white evangelicals) so afraid of?”

The reality of options is just one piece of the puzzle. Another piece has to do with the kind of faith that many Evangelical churches advocate. Quite often in Evangelical settings, faith is a non-intellectual, impersonal matter of the will. Just Believe It! (To adapt a popular slogan from my childhood.) Don’t allow doubts or questions to impede your faith. Don’t allow your own history or experience to challenge what you’ve been taught. Just Believe It! Sadly, Evangelicals for generations have been taught to disconnect their faith from their minds and their emotions. The will to believe is all that matters.

But the world continues to change. Older Christians watch while their children and grandchildren leave the churches they love so much. And they watch while these same children and grandchildren passionately and actively seek out opportunities to do good in this world. What must this feel like?

I can’t help but think that this must lead to a lack of confidence in the church for many Christians (at least a small amount of doubt). Most probably wouldn’t articulate the issue in those terms; they probably have never been given permission to do so. But I suspect that somewhere deep down, a lack of confidence in the church, and maybe even the Christian faith, plagues the majority of today’s Christians.

This loss of confidence breeds anxiety and doubt. But if you have never been given permission to doubt then this lack of confidence simply becomes anger, fear, and a fragile sense of self. This is the state of many white evangelicals today.

While it may seem counter-intuitive, the antidote to this loss of confidence isn't to deny or run away from your anxieties (to give into the "Just Believe It" narrative) but to move towards the doubts and to allow yourself to ask questions, to wonder, and to reengage your mind and your emotions in your faith. It is this state of vulnerability - something that is socially unacceptable in many white evangelical churches - that actually leads us into a deeper relationship with God and others.