Phenomenology, Faith and Young People

Guest post by Katie Gough. Freelance writer, published poet and independent philosopher. Katie has been involved in Youth Work – across three countries – for nearly a decade. Read more at www.kategough.com

Concrete and Abstract – What’s The Difference?

When you were five years old, your mother was your mother because of her smell, the feel of her hand in yours, the familiarity of her shape, her voice, and her constant attention. The bond between you was tangible in many ways. She was the immediate physical experience of love.

Perhaps now, you’ve grown up. In your mind, your mother is your mother because she gave birth to you and took care of you and suffered long nights caring for you when you were ill. She is your mother because you carry her DNA inside you, and maybe you show some of her physical traits. She is where you came from.

The difference between these two recognitions is profound. One is very concrete and experiential and the other is abstract, assessing and stacking up ideas and reasons. As we grow, our minds move from being bound by concrete things to being able to grasp and work with more flexible abstract concepts.

We use both of these methods throughout our lives in order to perceive our surroundings and their meaning to us. We grow, not out of the concrete, experiential side of our selves, but beyond it such that we can now grasp a wider, deeper world than we did in the first years of our lives. If our whole selves were made to commune with God, then the more elemental ways we perceived as children are not less valid, only incomplete.

Are We Holding Back the Development of Our Young People?

Christian teachings often indicate that we are to leave behind the more physical parts of ourselves in our quest to become holy. Our direct, concrete childhood experiences are devalued, replaced by abstract teaching (peppered with real-life stories to keep everyone’s attention), and finally ‘relegated to youth work’. We essentially throw a large portion of our spiritual growth away and never expect to look at it again.

In youth work however, we are expected to use concrete examples and methods in our attempts to reach young people with the gospel. While the experiences and learning of childhood may not be seen as respectable or advanced, we accept that they are a necessary tool in teaching young people. Thus, we simplify things down rather than opening them up, shying away from questions or content that might be difficult enough to ‘put young people off’. There are even (dare we admit it) a variety of things we avoid because we still don’t know how to answer them ourselves.

The underlying message of this approach has a knock-on effect in our youth work worldview and the attitudes we pass on to our young people. In the end, we deign to teach youth in a childish way because we think they are too distracted, rebellious and/or lazy to tackle the big stuff. But young people feel this — that we make concessions, that we don’t respect how we are teaching them, that we are holding back and trying not to scare them off. They know when older people are filling space, even while they enjoy that space for what it is.

This age group is right at the cusp of abstract thought, spending much of their time and mental energy becoming facile with its application in their every day life. As the rest of the world begins to open out into a wide vista of abstract opportunity and difficulty, why do we continue to portray faith safely, with foolproof, concrete simplicity? Can we blame them if faith suddenly begins to seem a bit childish and limited? A small, immobile, inflexible, uncomplicated faith. A pandering and… easy belief. Not relevant.

Approaching the Abstract.

When I was about 12, there was a question burning away my insides. Something in a sermon or my Bible had sparked it and I couldn’t shake it. How could one possibly know the difference between God’s voice and Satan’s? I felt that I could tell, but I had no reasons for it. What if I was wrong? How could I speak with God and know the answer was really His? My uncertainty threw the truth of my entire relationship with God into question. I needed to know.

One Sunday, I asked every Christian adult I knew even a little, which wasn’t many. They all looked at me with trapped, blank eyes. So I was left alone, mired in fear, my spiritual mast swinging with indecision.

The entrance of abstract thought into my world had defeated my ability to engage with my faith — and no one knew. I was left entirely alone by those who were supposed to be my spiritual elders and mentors.

Embracing the Challenge of the Abstract.

If our whole selves were made to commune with God, then the more elemental ways we perceived as children are not less valid, only incomplete. Young people need to grow, not out of the concrete, experiential side of themselves, but beyond it so that they can grasp a wider, deeper world than they did in the first years of their lives.

As young people learn to assimilate and apply the abstract everywhere else in life, are we communicating to them that the answers to a very messy world are as simple as they looked when they were children?

Our youth need to be able to meet an abstractly complex world with a more abstractly complex faith. We could be leading them by the hand, showing them how this new, abstract language enriches and broadens the old and familiar one, encouraging it to grow solidly — and in relationship with — their faith.

We need to show them how big the world of faith gets as they grow older.
Are You Ready to Roll Up Your Sleeves?

As youth workers, we have a responsibility to meet young people relevantly and with the kind of care that asks and sees where they are at. As they learn to embrace and use abstract thought, we need to give them opportunities and tools that allow them to try their hand at marrying their whole experience of life to this unfamiliar piece.

Let’s face it: these are fast-maturing young adults, and they care for a challenge more than we dare to think. We need to get down into the nitty gritty ourselves, find the crux of the issues we teach, and lead our young people’s feet onto the crossroads — there to experience for themselves that the abstract is as real and as spiritual as the concrete, and worth getting messy with.

As followers of Christ, we have to allow God to be bigger than what we can teach about him — even in front of young people. Their entire conceptual framework is re-working itself in front of us, and we need to acknowledge that our concepts about God grow with us beyond the concrete experience we all began with. Then we have to be ready to roll up our sleeves and partner with our youth to make that growth happen. We are, by example, a bridge to maturity in the faith

Katie is a Californian writer and artist living in North Wales. She writes poetry, articles and creative fiction of all kinds, for all sorts of uses.

She has a degree in Philosophy from Calvin College and adores puzzling out the universe. She is always up on her toes, reaching for the next question and internalising everything she sees, reads, hears, or experiences – and is ready to apply where appropriate!

Katie is married to a full time Youth Worker, and has been involved in a wide range of Youth Work projects for a number of years across Britain and America.

You can always find Katie with a big cup of tea and a ball of wool, knitting happily in a corner while pondering the depths of the universe and mentally mapping out her next short story.