"My Power is made Perfect in Weakness": Christian Antifragility

Dear Readers: I hope you all had a joyful Christmas. (I recognize it has not exactly been a peaceful holiday for many of you, with the crazy weather across the United States).

The New Year now approaches, promising to be even more complicated and chaotic than last year as tense and unstable situations around the world are further destabilized. Plus elections. It is well for followers of Jesus that our hope is not in this world, else it would be a bad time for hope.

(And to top it all off, next year will begin the Chinese Year of the Red Fire Monkey. As a believer I place zero faith in astrology of any kind, but I had a laugh at how humorously ominous that sounds...)

Doesn't start until February, actually

As an INTP, ideas are my currency, and the ever-present task in the back of my mind is to keep figuring out how our world works in all its complexity. A few years ago I was exposed to the idea of "antifragility," explained below, and found it to be a very important new property to look for in any human endeavor (including those of the Church). As we seem to be entering a time in which circumstances grow eerily similar to those that preceded the World Wars of the previous century, we can take heart knowing that the Church which has endured every hardship and trial of history will emerge from whatever societal chaos may come, because she is built on a foundation which cannot be shaken by the world.

The Idea: Antifragility

The concept as currently articulated is the brainchild of Nassim Taleb, a Lebanese-American thinker/author/risk analyst, who has written important work on the impact of "flukes" or "random catastrophes" called Black Swans, with the implication that it's foolish to regard them as unavoidable events, but that they should be expected to come eventually, and can even be profited from accordingly.

This initial work was followed by more research and contemplation of the subject, which he developed further conceptually and for which he eventually coined the term antifragility. The idea is usually explained in a threefold manner:

1. Fragility: We know what fragile means: that something which is fragile must be handled with care, that it cannot receive shocks or stress without sustaining damage or even being destroyed. Fine glassware is fragile, as an obvious example.

2. Resilience: Normally one would say that the opposite of fragility is resilience, or toughness: the ability to handle shocks and stress and not take much damage, or at least to recover quickly. A rubber sole is resilient, a piece of oak is resilient, etc.

3. Antifragility: Taleb's innovative idea is that resilience is not really the opposite of fragility. The true opposite of fragility would not be something which is more able to endure shocks or stress, but which would grow stronger due to them. With no good word to describe this property, Taleb made up a word: Antifragility. If you remember basic Greek mythology, there was a beast called a Hydra, which for every head cut off would grow multiple heads in its place. "Stress," in this case physical damage, was actually helpful to it. Another example would be the bones of a child: if they break, a properly healed bone is actually stronger at the previous breaking point than it was before the fracture.

The three-fold analogy of fragility, resilience, and antifragility is explained in a good summary article on the Art of Manliness. If this blog post interests you in the subject, that's a great place to start.

For now, suffice to say that while resiliency becomes very desirable when facing a time of rapid changes and above average stress, antifragility is the secret to those groups which don't merely weather the storms, but somehow seem to profit from them and come out stronger.

We see examples of this in the news today:

Muslim terror groups are often quite antifragile. The more Western military might tries to pulverize them, the more they melt away into the populace, recruiting more people to their cause due to collateral damage. Soon new cells pop up where none were before. It's the hydra all over again.

The stock market, on the other hand, is fragile. 2008 demonstrated what can happen when an entire economic system becomes fragile and is hit by a shock, in that case the housing lending bubble popping. The US economy is also fragile with regards to oil; any significant jump in the oil price and the whole taut system quivers anxiously.

This explains why somehow the mighty Western powers have found themselves unable to defeat a radical Islamic foe that is positively dwarfed in terms of military power and not really liked by anyone: The West is fragile with regards to dependence on oil, and antifragile radical groups are destabilizing the region where the oil is. We can't ignore them, then, for pragmatic if not moral reasons, but our previous strategies only seem to have made matters worse. Part of the reason we haven't defeated them is not because they are tougher than us, but because they are antifragile. While individual terrorists and radical muslim cells can be killed quickly, on the whole this strengthens their movement.

Fragility and Antifragility cannot be confused with weakness and strength either. Before the War in Iraq, Saddam's dictatorship was much stronger than the subversive elements in his territory, but it was also more fragile than they; once our both stronger and more resilient military wiped Saddam's forces off the map, the regime went down easily. The antifragile radical movements which took advantage of the chaos are not so easily dealt with, however, and will require different strategies.

Antifragility is often found in conjunction with small size, redundancy, decentralization, a willingness to take small risks if the chance of reward is good, and a focus on increasing one's available options.

With all this in mind, antifragility sounds like a great thing to pursue in one's personal life. But can it be related at all to our faith? Should a Christian even try to use this kind of "success" strategy? Let's take a look.

A Case for Christian Antifragility

1. Is it ungodly to strive for something like antifragility?

When talking about making our ministries or churches more robust, the first instinct is that this is of course a good thing. Then, sometimes, a "spiritual" objection arises: shouldn't we be focusing not on our own strength, but on dependency on God? "When we are weak, He is strong," after all.

My answer to this is that "when we are weak, He is strong" is not a command but an observation. Paul makes it in Second Corinthians after "boasting" of his qualifications and his suffering for God in 2 Cor 11 and 12. He then mentions his "thorn in the flesh," an enigmatic term which commentators have enjoyed guessing about for centuries, as a reminder from God that His grace is sufficient, for His power is made perfect in weakness. Paul says, with much grounds for boasting of his "street cred" as a gospel worker, that "to keep me from becoming conceited" (ESV; NET has "so that I would not become arrogant) he was given this thorn in the flesh to remind him of his own weakness. His boasting of his own weakness is therefore both a willing submission to God's reminder and a joyful proclamation of the strength of Christ, of whom Paul lives to preach.

And that is generally my response to this kind of objection. We don't need to strive to be weak, because like Paul, whatever we think we may have to boast about, we are already weak. God's power is made perfect in us when we recognize that weakness, when the illusion of our own tiny ability is seen for what it is, and we humbly rely on strength from God. A crumb on the lens of a telescope can obscure stars larger than our sun. It doesn't mean the crumb might not be big compared to other crumbs, but our perspective tempts us to compare it to the star, which is more ridiculous than we can comprehend.

2. Honoring God in our Ministries

All that is to say, any kind of argument that trying to make our churches and ministries stronger is inherently an attempt to take glory from God and give it to men, or to exalt ourselves and our strength against God's, is simply wrong. Those things might happen if we go about it the wrong way, or with the wrong motives, but it's not wrong to do the best job we can, in fact it's sinful not to attempt to. We are not to strive for weak ministries, but good and effective ones. Our weakness is something to bring before God as an obvious condition, not a property with which we ought to seek to imbue our efforts.

So if we are loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we will not be ambivalent about setting up our ministries to function as well as we can, from the human standpoint, while praying always for the work of the Holy Spirit to accomplish the work in people's hearts that we cannot.

3. The Church is already Antifragile

And if we believe we have a responsibility to strengthen our churches and ministries, then, we should take note that God has already established the Church as an Antifragile institution.

In the early days of the faith, once Christianity was no longer viewed as an odd flavor of Judaism but a new, non-sanctioned faith that was rapidly spreading among the Roman populace, Roman emperors undertook campaigns to discourage or eliminate the growing Church.

From a human standpoint, the "stress" on the Church was very great; multitudes lost their property and were imprisoned, and many lost their lives as well.

(Note: I have not linked to the Wikipedia article on Roman Persecutions, as it seems mainly concerned that we understand the Christians were making an overly big deal about it and the Romans were just trying to keep order.. In general I suggest being cautious of Wikipedia these days; many of the editors who oversee page content are self-proclaimed activists who push the pages in the direction of their own views)

However, we have a saying, "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church." (Tertullian)
The result of all those persecutions is that the Church grew very rapidly, both as the plight of believers drew attention and sympathy to their faith, and as they were often driven from one area to another, spreading the gospel to new areas it would have reached more slowly otherwise.

A similar thing happened in China during the closed years of the Cultural Revolution; when Christians came in from outside later, fearing the Church had been reduced or eliminated entirely, they found it had instead grown greatly during the difficult years.

To say, then, that the Church is antifragile, is not to deny that it was God's power that expanded and protected Her; antifragility is not a cause but a property, and the Church by its nature possesses this property, due to exactly what we discussed above: God's power is made perfect in weakness. This means the more desperate of circumstances we are reduced to, as a church, as the Church, or as individuals, the more we may see God do.

Therefore we see that "God's power is made perfect in weakness" is actually a bold revelation of startling truth. We thought the equation was:

"Do your best, and God will do the rest": 

But what Paul reveals is that in reality we have this:

"My power is made perfect in weakness": 

As you may remember from math class, as the denominator goes to zero, the value of the fraction goes to infinity. As our strength fails, there is no limit to what God can do.
This is not merely antifragility, but ultimate, supernatural antifragility.

Satan is very strong, but he is merely resilient. By the gift of "weakness," together with His power, God has made the Church so that the gates of hell truly may never prevail against it, by its very nature. This is why prosperity and ease are the most effective tools in the arsenal against the Church. Suffering and hardship actually make the Church stronger; of social influence, political power, and comfortable circumstances weaken it by hampering and slowing its development.

Antifragility for the Believer, Ministry, or Church

A. Church

So if the Church (the Body of Christ as a whole) is already antifragile, how about a church? How about your own local church?

Sadly, though the Church only grows stronger through persecution, individual churches may split over any number of issues, mostly strong personalities coming into conflict. This kind of "church multiplication" is not antifragile, it merely takes something fragile and breaks it into two fragile pieces.

A strong and healthy church, however, which reproduces itself, could be antifragile. A church of healthy and developing small groups of whatever form is already very resilient, and is probably antifragile. Any harm befalling the church, be it financial, loss of important people, etc., can not only be made up for by everyone coming together, but it is an opportunity for training and discipleship to be put into action. Someone may need to step into the old role.

A church seeking to be antifragile will have redundancy as well; a church with a human bottleneck (one or more indispensable people) is quite common, and may be quite efficient, but it's very fragile. Should that one or those key personnel be removed, the church might be in serious trouble. Rather than praying for God not to ever let that person be unable to perform in that role, then if they are unable to, putting it down to God's mysterious will that the church suffer all these problems (this is what the Muslims do with "Inshallah"... it's not at all a proper application of the doctrine of God's sovereignty), a church seeking to become less fragile will have that person train others to do what they do.
(That feeling of being indispensable is both pleasant and addicting for very many people, but it's not helpful to the survival of the church. It must be laid at the cross along with everything else)

So, two tips for an antifragile church:
1. Healthy, "real" small groups, with the goal of each being capable of functioning as a microchurch if necessary
2. Anyone with an important role in the church has trained at least one person to do what they do (it doesn't have to be perfect, or even well, they just need to be able to do it) Note that this includes the senior pastor. Most churches' weakest point is the senior pastor, because he's irreplaceable. Some churches never recover from the loss of an especially beloved or capable senior pastor.

B. Ministry

Many ministries are fairly fragile just by their nature, and will dissolve naturally if there is too much disruption. This is not necessarily a bad thing; a ministry should arise from the gifts and calling of individual believers joining together, and there will always be other opportunities to pursue for the Kingdom. But there are certain ministries, say a church plant, where it is highly desirable that the ministry should continue long term, or at least survive until the primary objective has been accomplished.

So one hopes that a long-term ministry would at least be resilient. But it would be even better if it could be antifragile. What if a church plant, upon encountering difficulties, did not fail but spawned off a second, successful ministry? What if the end result was that three cell churches were planted instead of one?

Pursuing antifragility gets trickier for a ministry, but it can be done. The easiest path is to first identify what would cause a ministry to fail if it were absent. This is not always obvious, but once identified, either the crucial elements are replaceable, or they are not. Often, in smaller ministries, they simply aren't. If you have one Evangelist, they can show you how they do what they do, and everyone can practice it, but they can't give you that spiritual gift. In that situation, we are simply back to our weakness and God's strength, and trusting that if He wills the ministry to continue, He will not let that crucial element be removed, or He will give others the ability to carry on that important part of the ministry.

On the other hand, sometimes redundancy is possible. If the ministry depends on one guy who knows how to set up sound equipment, he should teach someone else how to do it. That's an easy step.

Another important part of antifragility is to keep things from expanding out of control. If your ministry is trying to do three fairly different things, perhaps one should be spun off, with your blessing, into its own ministry. If there are people in common, they may be able to invite others to participate in the ministry and it will be a training opportunity.
The attitude is not consolidation, but multiplication.

Three tips for an antifragile ministry:
1. Be aware of what is absolutely crucial for the ministry to continue and make sure that stays in focus
2. Redundancy wherever possible
3. Keep things focused. Preference is on multiplication versus consolidation

C. Personal

This is the one most people talk about, so I'll talk about it the least. However I rarely see it coming from the perspective of one's walk with God, so there are some worthwhile issues to raise.

Once one is aware of the concept, the Bible is actually full of references to antifragility. Grape vines bear more fruit when they are pruned heavily. Jesus says that a seed cannot grow unless it dies (to being a seed), but once grown it can produce many seeds. Romans 5 speaks of the importance of suffering, which produces endurance, endurance character, and character hope. Thus suffering, something we typically try to avoid, produces the hope we are looking for. Avoiding the suffering may, surprisingly, be the reason you feel hopeless.

Therefore an attitude of embracing productive suffering, submitting willingly to the stress that causes an antifragile thing to become stronger, can produce a vital change in one's walk with God. If upon encountering difficulties, rather than asking the very natural questions that spring to mind: "Why is this happening to me? What sin is this punishment for? Does God really love me?" we can try changing the question to: "What is God teaching me through this?" In what way is this making me a better person and more effective servant for the Kingdom?" No one signs up for gym classes and then asks the instructor why he's making you suffer. The difference for Christians is that sometimes we don't realize we signed up to be made into the image of Christ.

If we recognize that letting God walk us through a series of ever-increasing challenges is precisely the process of spiritual growth He intends for us, we might even be willing to voluntarily leave our comfort zones, to ask God to lead us to tasks too big for us to handle as we are now. If comfort is our goal, we cannot grow to be more like Christ; we must embrace a certain level of discomfort in order to develop. I think that's what Paul was getting at with some of his athlete analogies: If we approach the spiritual life like an athlete approaches a marathon, the Christian life suddenly starts to make a lot of sense.

"God doesn't call us to be comfortable. He calls us to trust Him so completely that we are unafraid to put ourselves in situations where we will be in trouble if He doesn't come through." - Francis Chan

One could explore antifragility in the Christian life from innumerable other ways. (redundancy in one's personal walk, so that small things don't disrupt it; how we think of risk as believers; keeping our lives simple and flexible to serve God...) We'll save those for a future post. For now, check out the link near the top for the explanation of antifragility (actually here it is again), or find Taleb's book on Amazon if you want the full blown, way-too-much-information version.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego at Hogwarts

In a previous post I mentioned I would next deal with the topic of metanarratives. That's coming down the pipe, but first I want to deal with a subject that came up in that entry as well, that of the recognized tendency for young people to abandon or at least set aside their faith in college. There are lots of ideas about why this happens; today's entry is based on my observations working with various church youth groups, focusing more on those whose situation lets them go to good colleges and face the World's temptations of prosperity and success, as three young men did in the book of Daniel.

1. Why the Names?

Three young Hebrew men, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, were prisoners of war after a powerful empire invaded their small country, which was weakened after years of poor leadership and had all but totally forsaken the God who had delivered them so many times in the past. This time, He spoke through His prophets to announce the day of Jerusalem's fall was coming certainly, so much so that his people should go along with it, and make lives for themselves in the lands to which they were deported, for it was God Himself who granted success to their enemies and they would not quickly be returning to Israel, though someday they would.

This Babylonian empire was ruled not by a moustache-twisting villain or fearsome lord of darkness but a powerful, vain, and capable leader, who considered himself the hero of this story. (he learned better years later, eating grass in the field) Pragmatically, he sought to both remove the ruling class from the Hebrew people and also bring the best of them into his own service.

Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah (along with Daniel) were found to be far superior to those already in the King's service, and were quickly drafted to join his team. It's hard to imagine what was going through their minds as they agreed to serve the king who had attacked their country and deported their people, but it seems clear they sought ways to honor God in the midst of this radically different environment and situation. They are our success stories; they succeeded at being in The World but not of it.


But before they got their high profile government jobs, they had to complete their Babylonian education. This began in an interesting way. The first chapter of Daniel tells us that the young men were given new names.

Among those who were chosen were some from Judah: Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. The chief official gave them new names: to Daniel, the name Belteshazzar; to Hananiah, Shadrach; to Mishael, Meshach; and to Azariah, Abednego.

You may have studied Daniel at some point and know the meaning of these names, honoring Babylonian deities to demonstrate where their new loyalties were supposed to lie. But I think there's another way to look at it. Giving them new names as they enter the Babylonian royal school of magic is basically saying this:
"You're a wizard, Harry!" *cue the theme music*

"You're sure you won't eat the rich food from the king's table? Ah well, more for me."

2. Life in Hogwarts and what comes after...

"Your old life is behind you." "Maybe you had it easy back in Israel, not anymore." "The rest of your lives are ahead of you." "Welcome to Babylon, kiddies, the new capitol of the world." "This education is the key to your future success." "You're lucky to have this opportunity." "You're a long way from home, kids, you're going to make your own choices now." "Study hard if you want to make it here." "Ace this stuff, and Babylon's your oyster." "Here's a little taste of what might be in store:" (And a dramatic feast from the king's own table is unveiled. Intimidating music plays, and representatives from the royal magicians and astrologers are putting on an impressive little show)

I don't know if that's exactly what it was like for the young men, described in the book of Daniel as Israel's best and brightest, as they were placed under the court overseer who gave them the new names. But if so, I'm guessing most kids didn't stand a chance. And don't today. This is what heading to college is like for smart and talented kids. The world unfolds for them, with all the temptations and distractions it has perfected over the centuries. You put on the Sorting Hat, and it says "Anesthesiologist," "Bioengineer," "Fortune 500 CEO," "Future 'it' fashion designer" (or maybe:) "Slacker who somehow always does ok," "Stressed out math teacher," "Peace corp trust fund baby," "It's ok, the army will straighten you out," or the inevitable "Ah, now this kid is Going Places."

Of course, by the end of college and as the job search starts many of them will know just how tiny a slice of that world is actually available to them, but by then many of them will have made mistakes and spent years doing things that make them embarrassed to return to God or the church.

3. The Beautiful Lie

For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. (1 John 2:16)

And beautiful it certainly can be...

The world has a thousand false narratives, and for middle-to-upper class American kids headed off to college, it might be recognizable: "What happens here stays here. Have as much fun as you can because after this it's nose-to-the-grindstone time, to see if you can cut it in the working world." A kaleidoscope of semester projects and crazy parties and staying up all night to drive to the beach to get drunk and high and then watching the sunrise and feeling 100% alive, having all the sex you safely can while you're young and at the peak of attractiveness, drinking in life deeply before packing away all the happy memories, saying goodbye to the birthplace of your nascent adulthood, and putting on the suit and doing what grownups do, according to the world's definition, working your butt off and getting the corner office, the killer ride in the company parking spot, finding a wife/husband and having a couple of kids, smiling sadly at a few more wrinkles in the mirror and reflecting nostalgically when you bump into old friends on what a crazy trip life is. There are dozens of variations on this, of course, but you get the idea.

It feels like a life lived well, beautiful in its own way, full of fun and drama and pathos and hard work and quiet satisfaction, and seems entirely complete without the gospel in there anywhere. (and for those who do try to wedge the gospel in there somewhere too, it will seem mysteriously extraneous and hard to relate to, less meaningful than those rich life experiences) The World can fulfill you physically, emotionally, mentally, psychologically, pretty much any way except spiritually, and it can do a decent job of pretending to do that too. "Religion" is not dangerous at all in this scenario. A bit of a spiritual experience on an Easter Sunday in the unfamiliar setting of a church or some sober reflection on life at a funeral is good for the soul, no doubt. A good way to round out life, not missing the deeper things, so long as one doesn't go overboard, of course. Can't become a fanatic and start giving up fun stuff and make the rest of us feel awkward.


After all that, the idea of actually devoting one's life to God, whatever it sounded like in youth group, comes across either as a nice fairy tale story, a beautiful dream of innocent childhood you left behind when you entered the real world, or perhaps as a noble and deep calling, for those saintly people who can hear a heavenly voice the rest of us can't, the monks and mystics who enrich life in their odd way and might have a bit of unearthly wisdom for those who are down on their luck or failing at life.

As Christians we're not allowed to refrain from showing God's love to someone just because their mistakes are observably their own fault. It's tempting, when they're not sorry but rather proud of them, but still wrong. The spell of confusion the world casts is the lie that when truth is in your mind you should listen to your heart's excuses ("It can't be wrong when it feels so right"), and when truth is in your heart you should listen to your mind's excuses ("Life's tough; I had no choice"), and after you've made the mistakes, to accept the world's consolation that your troubles are someone else's fault, and "making it" through life's struggles is not the default state of all human beings, but is somehow a noble calling, "far more so than those hypocrites in church could understand." So many will say- "Church is for good people, I'm just trying to get by, I figure God will understand." -and actually mean that they want the comfort they feel is within their grasp and not God. (George Muller kept an orphanage open solely through prayer and faith, so God is quite able to help you "get by" and far beyond that. But there are wrong excuses we are culturally conditioned to accept, especially when offered with humility.)

So the idea that living a life ignoring God and dealing with the consequences of your sin on your own is a struggle more "real" or authentic somehow than seeking your Creator doesn't actually make sense if you parse it out, but ingest enough of the world's propaganda and it can seem and feel very true. It's what the world is good at.

4. Is There a Solution?

I write to you, dear children,
    because you know the Father.
I write to you, fathers,
    because you know him who is from the beginning.
I write to you, young men,
    because you are strong,
    and the word of God lives in you,
    and you have overcome the evil one.
(1 John 2:14)

Yes. Lots of kids are going to college and coming out young adults strong in their faith and ready to serve God and live their lives according to His word, in whatever career they choose. How does this happen?

Students' faith is between them and God, and nothing can be done for them in that regard. But we can help, and indeed that is our responsibility, to prepare them. Let's look to our 3 heroes as an example. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego endured by being prepared in several ways:

A. Able to apply their faith and knowledge of the truth to an unfamiliar situation.
Though suddenly in Babylon, faced with situations they'd never encountered before, they knew the truths they learned were universal, and how to apply them to meet new temptations and challenges.

B. Banding together for support
We can't know for sure, but I suspect if there was only Shadrach, only Abednego, it would have been a much more difficult struggle. Would the overseer have permitted a lone boy to resist the command, where he permitted four (including Daniel) together? And in the story of the fiery furnace, the three could stand together and give a response to the king as one.

C. They were prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice for their faith
Although they were surprisingly willing and able to adjust on cultural issues, when it came to honoring God, they were willing to die (again, together) rather than dishonor Him.

Now let's quickly look at how these apply to today's students:



A. Applying faith and God's truth to unfamiliar situations

 One word: discernment. If your Christian life as a student was a list of do's and don'ts, it won't survive the college transition, and you'll be left to muddle through on your own. My life was a bit along these lines, and although I didn't do the wrong things that are quite normal in college, it was a less fun and memorable experience than it could legitimately have been because I was very worried about doing something wrong. I don't believe this will be the problem for most students, rather the opposite. They'll find themselves doing things they definitely know are wrong after a chain of decisions they'd never had to face before. ("Whoa, how did I end up here? Well, no going back now...")

I'm not a parent, but I've been a kid and grown up. If kids, as they mature, are allowed the opportunity to make less damaging wrong decisions, they will have much better discernment by the time they're ready to head off to college. Try to remove all opportunities for wrong-doing is both fighting a losing battle (the sin nature is defeated in Christ but the sanctification process is a long one), and not preparing them to succeed when suddenly plunged into a multitude of opportunities for fun wrong-doing.

B. Standing Together, Growing Together

It takes more than once a year... though Passion was pretty great.

I mentioned in that previous post I mentioned at the beginning, the greatest factor I've seen in kids staying and growing in the faith while in college is getting plugged into active and solid christian fellowship groups on campus. The Christian life was meant to be lived in fellowship with other believers, and most students crave and need fellowship like oxygen. (I was both introverted and still figuring things out socially, but I enjoyed pretty much all the Christian groups I was involved with during college.) Also, practically speaking, they provide fun things to do that are often actually fun, and a real alternative to "let's play drinking games and strip poker because no parents are around to stop us anymore."

College is the time when a lot of kids find out what kind of adults they're going to be. It sets the stage for the whole rest of their life in some ways, and certainly the next phase of their life. That time needs to be spent in fellowship with other Christian students going through the same process. So for a Christian parent who wants to do the best to help their child grow and not lapse in their faith during college, I strongly advise you to steer (or send, depending on how traditional your parenting style is) your children to colleges that have strong Christian fellowships. Of course, they still have to choose to attend them. Which leads me to the last point:

C. Deep Conviction

(Note: Above I used the wording "prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice" and not "prepared to die" both a) in the exaggerated sense, as there are things students think they would rather die than do (death may seem like the easy way out when one has to forsake one's social group and be ridiculed by them in order to make a stand for God), and b) sadly in the literal sense, since for the many students silently suffering from extreme depression (I was one), the ultimate sacrifice for God may sometimes be the decision to keep living.)

It saddens me to say it, but it's very obvious to those of us who are or have been youth counselors: A lot of youth group kids aren't believers, even some of the ones whom the rest of the church (and their parents) assumes to be. Yes, they said the right things, yes they were baptized, but they don't have a vital and saving relationship with God through faith in Christ. Maybe they felt pressured, maybe they were impressionable as young kids but didn't really understand what they were doing, there are lots of different situations. I know it's soul-wrenching. Sometimes the more loving parents are desperate to know their child has accepted Christ, the more they push the child to make a declaration of having done so when it's not true. (It happens a lot in Taiwanese churches too, where parents often have more say in their children's lives even into adulthood) 

But some kids are bored to tears in youth group, aren't buying most of it, and are out the minute they get a car or have any other options. (One kid I knew was quite straightforward. "I don't really care about all this stuff. I want to make tons of money and live the good life." The sentiment is not uncommon, only the honesty) Other kids are the type to meet whatever expectations are placed on them, and so they'll play the youth group game as long as necessary, and seem genuine, but when college comes with a new and very different set of expectations, and friends, they'll morph into someone who matches those instead.

You can't give a child, or anyone else, deep conviction, any more than you can give them a patient heart or give them experience in resisting their own temptations. It's something that happens between them and God. But you can model it for them. Let them see that your life is a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, and that your relationship to God is loving and not legalistic. (Quoting angry scripture at them whenever they do anything wrong, for example, is not the kind of admonishment that leads them to love God's word. But neither is letting them do whatever they want and calling that love.) 

If children, or students, or maybe adults too, see that you are patient in suffering, joyful in affliction, hopeful in chaos, that you have something the World can't offer, then that example is something they can take out into the World as an alternative to what they typically see there. When the World presents them with bad choice A and worse choice B, they'll know a third choice exists.

5. Conclusion

 

So, when the new Christian student arrives at Hogwarts, and the World seems to be laid at their feet, and they are encouraged to abandon muggle religion and join the rarified air of the famous wizards-who-know-better or at least take the respectable road of a life spent in the rat race without looking up until retirement, the decision is up to the student. No parent, older sibling, role model, caretaker, youth counselor, pastor, etc. can make it for them. But they can go in with the preparation of discernment, the support of fellow believers, and the conviction that has been modeled for them by those who had the chance.

If we have prepared them well, we can stand back, pray, and trust God. Some will still make foolish choices, some cannot learn from warnings, only through the consequences of their mistakes, but God knows how to deal with His own. The greater danger is letting them go off to Hogwarts never having seen genuine faith modeled by those closest to them.

"The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever."