Why
Young People Lose their Faith
.
.
by Carlos Mantica
Introduction
We were wrong to believe that the danger was
over, that when the Marxist regime
disappeared, our children’s faith was no
longer in jeopardy. But the old methods emerge
again under new masks and with new names.
I’ want to address the topic of the resurgence
of methods we thought had disappeared, but
which we are now seeing once again, with
amazement, in some Catholic schools. In order
to unmask them, I have deemed timely to revive
a talk I wrote back in the 1980’s, which I
then called “Why Young People Lose their
Faith.”
Difference between faith
and religiosity
I’m not going to waste time in pointing out
the seriousness of the problem. If just one
person loses his faith, this is serious enough
in the eyes of Christ, since each of those
persons has cost all of his blood. Faith,
therefore, is not a cheap or superfluous item.
If we are saved by faith, then it is salvation
itself that is at stake, though this does not
mean that all those people who, in our
opinion, have lost their faith, are
necessarily condemned, because, thanks to God,
our Lord regards things in a very different
way than we do.
But if faith is lost through the fault of
somebody else, I think the words of the Lord
apply:
Whoever
causes one of these little ones who
believe in me to sin, it would be better
for him to have a great millstone fastened
round his neck and to be drowned in the
depth of the sea (Matthew 18:6).
Before getting
into the core topic of the talk, however, I
would like to clarify a couple of concepts:
1) First I would like to make a
differentiation between faith and religiosity,
because some people who have faith often grow
cold in their religiosity, and this does not
mean that they have lost their faith. On the
other end, we can come across people with a
great religiosity whose faith is highly
childish and fragile.
Accepting Christ and what
he has done for
us
Religiosity is
what man does to come closer to God. What our
faith tells us, on the other hand, is what God
has done to come closer to man. And having
faith is to accept what God has done and does
for us, and above all, to accept the God who
has done such things.
Having faith in Christ, therefore, consists of
accepting the person of Christ, the
Christ-person. I trust in him, I believe the
things he has said because it is he who has
said them, without my necessarily
understanding them; I accept what he has done
and wants to do for me, and I am willing to
respond and to correspond by doing the things
he wants me to do.
Sanctimonious people and those who pretend to
be very pious are, in fact, religious people.
Their lives can be full of medals, novenas,
rites and prayers which are not necessarily
backed up by a deep acceptance of the person
of Christ, by trust in him, by an acceptance
of what Christ has done and wants to do for
us, and, to be sure, without an acceptance of
what he wants us to do for him with others.
I state this clarification because we
sometimes think that someone has lost his
faith, when in fact he has just lost his
religiosity. I don’t know if my assertion
sounds stupid, but I think it is conceivable
for our religiosity sometimes to diminish
precisely because our faith has increased.
For instance, for many people, discovering
that God is Father and that Christ Jesus is
our brother involved leaving behind many
novenas and devotions to the saints, because
they discovered that Christ does not need any
go-betweens, and they even neglected attending
the temples, because they discovered that they
are living temples of the Holy Spirit
themselves. Their confidence in the Lord’s
response almost did away with the recitation
of those endless petitions, in order to
replace that with confident prayers of
thanksgiving or of a perfect union with the
Lord in contemplation.
May I make clear, then, that religiosity is
not the same as faith, and that we can have
great faith and relatively little religiosity,
or a lot of religiosity and little faith.
Consequences
of losing one's faith in Christ
2) The
second point I wanted to clarify is that
having lost the faith is something much more
serious than not having ever had it at all. A
pagan does not have faith because he has never
had it. He does not know the Lord, and does
not accept him because he doesn’t know him;
but he can come to know and accept him.
Instead, someone who has lost his faith is a
person who has renounced, denied or abandoned
Christ, and this is something very different
and much more serious.
It is more serious because, in general, faith
is like virginity – once you lose it you can’t
have it back. I don’t want to assert this in
an absolute way. There are exceptions. But,
usually, a person who loses his faith is
someone who had known Christ, or thought he
knew him; someone who accepted Christ, or said
he had accepted him, and then left him,
usually due to disappointment. Christ was not
what he thought, or Christianity was not
useful for what he thought it ought to be
useful. He tasted it and didn’t like it, he
experienced it and was not satisfied.
The difference is similar to the difference
between the pagan era and the post-Christian
era. The pagan era corresponds to a time when
many nations had not known Jesus. The
post-Christian era, instead, is the age of a
world that thinks it has known Christianity
and has rejected it as obsolete, as belonging
to the Dark Ages, or simply as ineffective for
its own purposes. This is no longer lack of
knowledge, but deliberate abandonment or
rejection.
Once this two points are clear, let us get to
the point. I have tried to make as simple an
outline as possible, for all of us to
understand it.
Why young
people
lose
their
faith
In general, we could say that young people
lose their faith for the same reasons why
people lose their homes, which are often four:
1) Because it crumbles down
or falls at the first shaking;
2) Because they exchange
it;
3) Because they sell it;
4) Because it is taken away
from them.
The same happens with faith.
If faith crumbles down or falls at the first
shaking, then it has never been a solid faith.
It was not made of the materials our faith is
supposed to be made of. Or else it was not
built on solid rock but on sand.
Perhaps the simplest example of faith
built on sand is a faith based on the behavior
of men and not on the living rock of the
person of Jesus. I’m talking about the convert
who lost his faith because the leader who had
preached Jesus to him has now fallen into
scandal. Or about the son who rejects Christ
because the lives of his parents are not in
agreement with the Lord’s teaching. Or about
the elderly man who has ceased to practice the
faith because he no longer believes in the
priests, or in the bishops, or who says that
the Pope is a Communist, or even just
complains that the mass is no longer in Latin.
I’m also referring to foundations built with
mortar. A person’s faith fades away because he
has lost joy. Or a person’s faith fades away
because we no longer have the warm friendship
we used to have, or whatever.
Concerning materials, a faith that crumbles
down was usually a faith made with
half-truths, or a childish, superstitious
faith. The person was taught the Commandments,
but there was never anyone to tell him that
God loves him. They talked to him about hell,
but he never experienced that being in heaven
is walking with Christ on earth. It was a
faith built with fear, not with love; or a
faith (or, I would rather say, a religiosity)
made with rites and amulets for protection or
good luck, which reached its end with the
first tribulation, or with the death of a
child, or with the loss of his possessions.
Or else it is the childish faith of someone
who, while attending a retreat, closes his
heart to the Word because he just can’t accept
the story of Adam and the apple, or insists on
arguing about whether the flood actually
happened, or about whether Jonah was actually
swallowed by a whale, or about how can it be
possible for Mary to be Virgin and Mother at
once.
A faith built with that kind of materials is
not able to undergo the weight of faith as a
vital response to God. These people succumb to
every wind of doctrine. But I don’t want to
dwell too long on this point.
A childish faith that is too
small
In the second case, a person exchanges his
faith for the same reason why one would
exchange his house: (a) because he finds it
too small; (b) because he feels uncomfortable.
The first reason has a lot to do with the
childish faith that was mentioned earlier. It
is that faith based on a doctrine that was
tailored to the size of our First Communion
suit. And it is obviously too small. It didn’t
grow with us, and we have continued to
understand the realities of what the Lord has
done for us in a childlike way, as they were
taught to us in our first few Catechism
lessons. The life of an adult, committed
Christian can never be grounded on First
Communion truths.
Christianity has become too small for many
people today, but for a very different reason.
It has become small because it is inadequate
for solving, and for solving immediately, all
the problems people think ought to be solved
immediately; or because Christianity doesn’t
seem to be an effective tool for eradicating
hunger from the world; or because Christianity
doesn’t seem effective for overthrowing
governments and liberating peoples, or for
ensuring health for the great mass of
population, or for educating all the
illiterates. Some people see it only as a
solution to the problem of death; others, as
an apt solution but only at the level of small
groups which they regard with contempt and
charge with elitism.
Rejecting
the root of the problem
These people see
the problem, but reject the root of the
problem. They don’t discern the root in the
heart of man, but in circumstances, structures
and systems. But even those who accept sin as
the root of all problems, reject Christianity
as a solution, because it is a solution at an
extremely long range, while the world demands
answers and solutions that are immediate.
Let’s first solve this whole thing, and then
we will have time to think about Christ and
his doctrine.
Christianity has become far too small to them,
so they exchange it for things that are even
smaller, which have not been able either to
solve at a short or medium range, or at any
range at all, the problems that it seemed so
urgent to solve. Let Communism suffice as an
example
– it never worked anywhere since the days of
the Bolshevik Revolution, but it continued to
win followers while other millions of people
were trying to escape the famous Paradise.
Refusing the cross of Christ
The other reason why we usually exchange our
home or our faith is because it has become
uncomfortable.
Following Christ involves accepting a cross.
Following Christ involves forsaking many
appeals of the world, and involves the fact
that the world will reject us as crazy and
fool people. Christianity is uncomfortable,
and the Christian is a fool in the world’s
eyes, not only because he speaks about turning
the other cheek, or about walking the second
mile, or about giving the cloak when someone
wants to take his coat. It is uncomfortable
and it is foolishness, because it involves
renouncing certain sexual pleasures and all
kinds of excess. It is uncomfortable because
it involves a vocation to poverty, a vocation
to meekness, a renunciation to independence
and an acceptance of interdependence. It is
uncomfortable because it demands
subordination, and sometimes obedience.
It is uncomfortable because God has a law
which accuses us. It is uncomfortable even
because, unfortunately, it is feasible; and
those who live it out have a joy that I don’t
have. And it is uncomfortable because it is
not possible for me, and I don’t have the joy
or the peace these people have. It is
uncomfortable because it opposes contraceptive
means that I can but at any drugstore. It is
uncomfortable because it asks us to accept the
poor and ignorant as our brother, and to love
him and serve him. It is uncomfortable because
it often requires me to act in ridiculous
ways. It is uncomfortable because many people
think it is alienating. It is uncomfortable
because I have to believe things I don’t
understand, things I can’t prove in a
laboratory. It is uncomfortable for many other
reasons, but above all it is uncomfortable
because I can’t just practice it in my leisure
time, or when I am very old, but I am willing
to carry it with me all the days of my life.
Not willing to pay the price
The third large group is the group of those
who sell their faith. I do not know how large
this group can be, but it has existed from the
very beginning of the history of the Church.
It is the story of apostates.
Faith is sometimes sold at a high price. The
price to pay to keep your faith was life
itself. Or the price for life involved
forsaking the faith. Your life would be
forgiven and you need not go to the circus, if
you were willing to renounce your faith in
exchange. Many people chose martyrdom, others
chose their lives. I don’t want to judge, but
they might have been wrong in the price, and
exchanged bodily life for eternal life. They
exchanged what they could not preserve and
were bound to lose soon anyway, for something
they could not lose anymore. A bad deal.
But other times the price is lower. You
renounce your faith or replace it with a
different one in exchange for a position in
Government, or a position in a Board of
Directors, or a good job. In exchange for a
business which is usually dirty, or in
exchange for a woman I have fallen in love
with, and I now need to renounce my faith that
forbids divorce, so I can marry her. I may
need to renounce my faith in order to gain my
children’s acceptance, or the acceptance of
friends that now reject me.
I don’t mean at any point that someone who is
divorced, or a priest who got married, or
those who accommodate new winds of doctrine in
order to stay in government positions are
necessarily people who have lost their faith.
But I do believe that they are in serious
danger of losing it, and the reason is very
simple. It is that kind of situation in which,
when you cannot adjust your life to the
Gospel, you always end up adjusting the Gospel
to your life. It is then that we begin to say
that all of that was mere nonsense, that his
enthusiasm was the result of something
emotional, or that these other people are
crazy when they think that the Lord has a
mission for them.
None of these has sold his faith, but they
have placed a mortgage on it, and they can
lose it if they can’t pay the price of the
mortgage afterwards. They have made a loan on
it which at this time brings benefit, but if
the price is just too high they will end up
losing their faith, just as many people lose
their homes because their debt is so big. It
is very hard to spend your whole life
struggling with your faith. Sooner or later we
will change our faith, or else we will change
our lives.
A recipe for taking away the
faith
The reason I have gone quickly through the
preceding three causes is that I want to place
all the stress of this talk on the fourth
reason why young people lose their faith,
which is that it is taken away from them.
We have already seen that many of such losses
of faith are simply due to the fact that the
faith was built on sand or with materials that
were far too fragile. But this time, on
referring to those who lose their faith
because it is taken away from them, I’m
talking about techniques which are much more
subtle, perfectly planned and deliberate. I’m
talking about a process that is carried out
patiently, systematically, and with extremely
subtle and clever means that make up a true
art. Not that they are new either. Throughout
history, every age has met similar processes.
I’m going to talk about some things we saw
happen among us.
About fifteen years ago, a friend of mine
wrote a story. I want to make clear that it
was written fifteen years ago, because it’s
been a long time now since Nicaraguan young
people have been undergoing this process of
faith being taken away from them. The title my
friend gave to it was, “The Herbalist, A Tale
Which May Be No Tale.” I would add: “Any
resemblance to any person, living or dead, is
merely deliberate.”
The Herbalist
He was a strange fellow. I knew him
because I often saw him as I walked past his
apothecary shop, one of those old, dusty
drugstores full of porcelain vessels with
golden rims, and with the names of the drugs
in Latin.
He was not exactly a pharmacist, but a
herbalist, who kept his old-fashioned
drugstore open I don’t know for what
purpose, for I never saw any customer come
in.
The neighbors asserted that late in the
night the shop witnessed an intense traffic
of people who came in muffled up, taking
refuge in darkness, to have the herbalist
deliver to them his strange prescriptions.
I would walk daily past the drugstore
as I came back from work, and behind the
counter I could always see the herbalist – a tall, lean man with
an ironic smile that betrayed his sharp
teeth.
One of those days the drugstore was
found open at dawn, but the owner was not
there. Two days went by like that, and the
neighbors were alarmed. Since I was the only
attorney in town, they called me to make an
inventory of the herbalist’s possessions and
go over his papers. The inventory was quite
easy, since, apart from the shelves, the
counter and the old vessels that contained
just a few dried herbs, there was nothing
worthwhile in the whole shop.
As far as papers are concerned, I only
found one, written in black letter by the
hand of the strange character.
I took this paper to my office, and kept it
for several days in the lowest drawer of my
desk, without even thinking about it.
During one of those tidy-ups that you do
when there is no better business to occupy
yourself with, I found it again, and,
thinking it might be something that would
shed light on the fate of the mysterious
herbalist, I read it. The paper read as
follows:
“An Unfailing
Recipe to Make Christian Youth Lose Their
Faith
”The success of this recipe is guaranteed if
directions are carefully followed.
”Take
a Christian adolescent who is enthusiastic,
healthy in body and spirit. It is better if
he is about to be graduated from an
expensive high-school directed by religious,
or in the early years of a Catholic
university.
”All or almost all young people at this age
believe in God, are acceptably sure about
their parents’ honesty and affection,
believe in their country, and are planning
to get training in order to serve their
country well as adults, by following a
professional career.
”You must carefully avoid attacking or
denying God, as the recipe would be spoiled.
Quite the opposite, you must extol in them
the notion of God, but helping them to see
that the only (this must be forcefully
stressed), the only way to find him is
through human beings.
”Afterwards, you have to demonstrate to them
that in their country there exists a
situation of complete injustice. (This is
quite easy, as it is usually true and
clearly demonstrable in any country in the
world and in any age.)
”A skillful handling of economic statistics
will be very helpful in persuading the young
man about this thesis. The more generous the
individual, the easier it will be to get his
assent. (See “Social Mathematics and Their
Handling”, by Numberhoax.)
”When the boy considers himself a master in
evaluating his country’s injustice, that’s
the right time for the second step.
”This step consists of demonstrating to him
that his parents have been or are active or
passive contributors to this situation of
injustice, that they are therefore
completely wrong in their actions and in the
principles they hold, and have always been
so.
”From this point to the point of getting the
young man to the certainty that even in
those principles his parents are insincere
and dishonest there is but one step, which
the young man will usually take by himself,
without the need of any external stimulus.
”Once love for his country and respect for
his parents have been done away with, you
instill in the mind of the individual the
idea that his parents not only don’t love
each other but have never loved him, and
that all his problems as an adolescent have
as their first cause this lack of love and
understanding from his parents. This stage
is important for the final success of the
recipe, and you must insist through multiple
examples and illustrations, as well as good
psychological arguments. (See “Directed
Anti-Parental Psychology”, by Guatussi.)
”During these first few steps with the
recipe, you must never allow the individual
to remain at home for too long, as the
influence of direct contact with his parents
can mess up the result of the whole
operation. If you can persuade him to leave
his home and his usual clothing in order to
live in community or work with other people
who are undergoing the same treatment, so
much the better. (See “Group Therapy”, by
Atheowsky.)
”When the mixing mortar shows evident signs
that the individual now despises his former
notions about country and parents, this is
the moment to work seriously on his
religious mentality.
”For this purpose, you must eliminate
everything that relates his idea of God to
God’s divine fatherhood. God must be
presented as completely human, and as
concerned only to have the individual act on
his socioeconomic milieu in order to destroy
the unjust structures. When referring to God
you must always mention justice, never love.
”You must not propose systems of
replacement, as the individual could come to
think about the need for evolution. It is
necessary to insist exclusively on the need
to destroy the structures through
revolution.
”In fact, psychologically, every adolescent
likes the idea of destroying, as he has just
come out of the age in which one of his
great pleasures was to destroy his toys, and
this idea moves the treatment forward. (See
“Youth Psychology”, by Guatussi.)
”You must undertake an ironic analysis of
things such as prayer and every form of
respect to religious symbols such as images
and the like. Religious practices must be
questioned with a biting, festive style.
”The attack on the deviations and immorality
of the traditional Catholic hierarchy and
clergy must be consistently kept, until the
individual has gained actual disgust for
every assertion made by the Church, except
for those that defend the socially
marginalized and the need to change the
structures. The latter statements must
always be praised, while discretely showing
the individual that there is a gap between
the ideas stated therein and the personal
behavior of many clergymen, as well as
stressing the wealth of the Vatican and its
involvement in or absolute ownership of
business companies that exploit human
beings. (See The Economist.)
”You must carefully avoid references to the
person of Christ. Instead, always talk about
Christianity and about the commitment
involved in being a Christian, making it
clear that this commitment is of a political
and socioeconomic nature.
”Once all of these notions have been safely
instilled in the individual’s mind, by
mixing them in a fit mortar where the whole
can be seasoned with the persuasion that an
unclearly defined socialism contains the big
solution, it will just be a matter of
waiting for the results, which will lead
without failure to the young man losing his
faith.
”Some inputs that will be very helpful for
attaining this result are youth encounters
with round-table discussions for examining
injustice, sexual promiscuity, and social
protest songs that are easy to learn and to
hum. (See “Group Therapy”, by Atheowsky.)
”The method is valid even for use with
Catholic priests. The best candidates are
those who have abandoned prayer and who
devote most of their time to meetings and
discussions.
”The success of this recipe is guaranteed.”
The signature was illegible. The text of the
document ended here. At the end, a funny
note was written which said:
“Make one thousand copies and distribute
among people who are acquainted with young,
liberated priests, especially those who
teach in seminaries or who work with
Christian students.”
I
was never able to find out who the herbalist
was, or whether this whole thing is a tale
or not.
So much for the story.
I have been tempted sometimes to complete this
story by updating it with practices that are
far more sophisticated. If you study the
methodology closely, you will realize that the
procedure is based on a few fundamental
principles.
The first principle is not to skip stages. You
must always point to the next step, without
ever showing where it is that you want to lead
him. If the young person knew the final point
where you will take him, he would never take
the first step, because a step will inevitably
lead to the next, and the steps are taken
imperceptibly.
The second principle is: Begin by challenging
the ideas, values, affections and principles
that currently sustain his life and his faith.
In a child or young person, these might have
been his parents’ values and affection. In the
case of priests and religious sisters, the
process is much more subtle – question the authority of
the Magisterium of the Church, the
infallibility of the Pope, the authority of
Scripture; tell them that the bishops are
partisans to the reactionary movements and
that the Bishops’ Conferences are manipulated
by the Rockefeller group; mock at the great
theologians who oppose liberation theology,
and so on.
Third: Learn to use half-truths. Never say
plain lies. A half-truth attracts because of
the truth it contains, and poisons because of
the lie it carries. Never attack a truth
upfront. Present it, but present it mutilated
and mingled with some lie, so that on
accepting the truth they will also swallow the
lie.
Fourth: Involve their emotions. We know that
most people’s lives are governed by their
emotions and not by their brains. Talk to them
about the riches of the Vatican, the Borgia
Pope, the Inquisition; take them to the slums
for them to experience poverty, disease and
oppression, but never allow them to do
anything to alleviate that immediately, for
that would only strengthen them in the
effectiveness of their faith and in the power
of love. What they need to fight is the
structures and systems that cause this, even
if the present generation must continue to
suffer from hunger, disease and death.
Fifth: Place him in an environment that is
contrary to his faith, where he feels forced
everyday to release a bit of his faith in
order to gain a little more acceptance from
his peers.
Sixth: Involve him emotionally with his peers
of the opposite sex. A girl friend or boy
friend is far more effective than any book or
teaching.
Seventh: Require him to show outward
manifestations of his process of change,
whether through public testimony, or by
entering commitments in the presence of
witnesses, or by getting involved in concrete
actions. If somebody does these things, he
will hardly step back. It is difficult to deny
something that has been asserted in a solemn
way, or to step back when he has become
involved in an action that will by itself
identify him with the group or band you want
to have him join. Stepping back is regarded as
betrayal or cowardice, and very few people
have the courage to right their wrongs or
mistakes.
Eighth: If the person still resists, make sure
he will feel rejected. If necessary, humiliate
him, or use any of the adjectives available:
backward, reactionary, bourgeois, medieval,
alienated, fundamentalist, verticalist,
angelist, quietist, elitist, etc.
The number of techniques is infinite, because
new, more sophisticated techniques are
invented everyday.
Conclusions
On the topic of modern education as an enemy
of the faith, I want to say two things:
1) That we cannot accept by any means the
premise, now general in the schools, that a an
adolescent, much less a child, can and must
discover by himself what is good and helpful,
with the pretext that pointing out to him what
he is supposed to believe or do constitutes a
paternalistic, authoritarian imposition that
restrict his freedom and his ability to
decide.
According to this premise, we ought to leave
highway signs blank in order to give drivers
the chance to discover by themselves what
awaits them ahead.
The function of highway signs is for the
driver to know that there is a road that leads
to Miami and a different one that leads to New
York. Signs do not in any way limit the
freedom of anyone who wants to get off at
Orlando or take a detour towards Buenos Aires.
But it is good and necessary for a traveler to
know where different roads will take him.
Let me give three reasons that explain our
position.
a) Proverbs 29:15. A
child left to himself brings shame to his
mother.
b) Proverbs 22.6. Train
up a child in the way he should go, and when
he is old he will not depart from it.
c) Deuteronomy 6:20-25. When you son asks
you in time to come, “What is the meaning of
the testimonies and the statutes and the
ordinances which the Lord our God has
commanded you?” then you shall say to your
son: “We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt; and
the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a
mighty hand... And the Lord commanded us to
do all these statutes, to fear the Lord our
God, for our good always, that he might
preserve us alive, as at this day. And it
will be righteousness for us, if we are
careful to do all these commandments before
the Lord our God, as he has commanded us.”
We are not allowed, then, to let our children
discover and choose by themselves the way they
will follow.
And these words which I command you this day
shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach
them diligently to your children and shall
talk of them when you sit in your house, and
when you walk by the way, and when you lie
down, and when you rise. And you shall bind
them as a sign upon your hand... and you shall
write them on the doorposts of your house and
on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:6-9)
2) The second thing I would like to say about
modern education:
Modern methods of education, the best and most
modern we know, even those that are not
manipulated, often take place in a context of
relativism, which many of them foster and
instill in young people by the mere fact of
presenting various choices with nothing to
qualify them or set a hierarchy of them, or
without resorting to a higher authority.
Nothing is intrinsically good or bad—what you
have is choices.
This is the road that has been followed to
attain the generalized conception that
homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia,
promiscuity and so on are mere choices or
lifestyles, which each person can and must
take according to his or her own liking, and
that they are in fact an inalienable right no
one can transgress.
The topic of modern education has become of
interest to us in the context of the use that
can be given to it in order to turn our
children away from the Christian faith.
I would like to end with something which is
very sad but which intends to encourage us to
struggle for defending the faith of our
children.
There are many things a young person can come
back from. Almost by himself or herself, a
young person will at some time in his life go
through that stage of carelessness and
dispersion that many undergo in their
adolescence. At some point, the love for a
woman, the need to form a family, the duties
and needs of life, lead him to get
established, and many of them become useful,
honest citizens. With great difficult some
manage to leave behind alcohol and drugs,
promiscuity, and many other things that we
worry about in their lives.
My experience with dozens of young people I
have had the opportunity to work with and with
whom I have dealt closely tells me, however,
that those who lose their faith will very
rarely get it back. And this is true about any
kind of faith.
We sometimes think that disappointment at
being betrayed by their idols, or their
outrage at those who enticed them with
promises of a better world and who led to
their death others that were not as lucky as
them, or their contempt for the plunderers and
abusers who looted the country, will perhaps
lead them to come to their senses and return
to their former faith.
Unfortunately, it is not so. What I have seen
happen is as if something had died inside
them, which no longer allows them to believe
in anything or anyone. They do not go on with
their search, because they sought and thought
they had found. But when they uncovered what
they found, what happened to them was similar
to what we Nicaraguans have summed up in the
legend of the Bird of the Sweet Enchantment.
This is a bird with the sweetest song, that
attracts you but always escapes whenever you
try to catch it. A peasant managed to catch
one under his hat, but as he lifted the hat to
grab it, the bird became dung. Yet we
Nicaraguans insist on going after the Bird of
the Sweet Enchantment.
It’s different with Christ. We have said many
times that the early members of our community
were people who were in their return trip from
the world of dreams and ambition, and even
from the world of vice. We had tasted
everything, and, like these young people, we
were disappointed by the world and its mermaid
songs.
We were looking for truth and happiness, and
we found both in Christ. He is the only one
who cannot disappoint us, who will never
forsake us, and who will remain faithful even
if we are unfaithful. And he is the only true
dead who will never die, because he already
died for us but has risen again in order to be
with us everyday till the end of time, and to
reign at the right hand of the Father for all
eternity.
We want our children, who are still on their
way to the world of dreams, to find him too.
Only God knows the time for that encounter. If
our children don’t know him yet, they can find
him one day. But let us not allow those who
have known him to lose him, to sell him, to
exchange him or to be robbed of him. Because
choosing Christ is is a lot better than
choosing the Bird of the Sweet Enchantment.
> See
related articles
by Carlos
Mantica
This
article is adapted from the book, From
Egghead to Birdhood (hatch or rot as a
Christian), (c) copyright 2001 Carlos
Mantica. Used with permission.
Carlos Mantica is a
founder of The
City of God community (La
Cuidad de Dios) in Managua,
Nicaragua, and a founding leader
of the Sword
of the Spirit. He served as
president of the Sword of the
Spirit between 1991 and 1995.
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