There are a lot of frustrated young Christians in America today. I’m one of them. I know more of them. If I try to boil the frustration down it points to a discontentment with how little our experience of Christianity resembles something in which God would need to be involved. As a frustrated Christian I don’t want people simply telling me that they have an answer for my frustration. The problem with an answer is that it is demeaning. I’m not stupid after all. I don’t have this concern for no reason. Encountering another platitude is not going to cure what ails me. The frustration is not an act of defiance. It is my true engagement with the faith. People who push against God are not trying to push Him away. We are trying to touch him. I get frustrated when in all my pushing I find that I’m not wrestling with God but just another construct, a mere idea, a personality, a false idol.

Many of the frustrated faithful are just people who have realized that the god they have been following is not the true God. The little god that gets worshipped in many hearts is very useful as a tchotchke. It can be a god of a faraway perfect place, heaven or paradise or whatever. It is a god that works nicely with the pseudo-Christianity that too often passes for the real thing. This god’s will looks a lot like karma. Good things come to those who wait. Bad things flow towards those who invite them with their lack of faith, obedience, etc. If you lost something valuable it is this little god teaching you not to neglect your morning prayers. It is a vengeful little deity but just in minor annoying ways.

It is a deity that is comfortable with your religion being one more “thing” in your life, i.e. Religion, career, family, social life.

It is a deity that loves experience and emotion. How else can it communicate to you? The center of religious experience is an undeniably welling up within. You can pray at it but it only responds through happenstance and coincidence.

This god prophesies a future in which your actions, should they be good, true, noble, can change the world for the better. The dream of lamb and lion laying down together will be made reality through philanthropy and more people being good.

This god is the father of buddy Jesus. Buddy Jesus is whatever you want him to be. He can be peaceful, loving, kind, wise etc. He can be an indignant judge. He is what you feel you deserve.

There is no spirit, holy or otherwise, this god is too stupid to be inhabited by anything evil. Why would the devil need to tamper with Christians so busy deceiving themselves?

This trinity is not a rarity. It is the god which America believes.

It is a god that will frustrate you if you start asking it to be like the God who revealed himself in the Bible. It is not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It is not the God that fully took on humanity in Jesus. That God is very different, despite the vast industry of devotional literature and feel good books for your soul which argue otherwise. What should be possible in the Christian life seems impossible. We feel just as lonely, confused, hurt, angry, and depressed as our friends who are not Christians

But once we get to this point many of the frustrated are seriously considering that encountering the true God directly is impossible. We pray. We listen. We hear, nothing. What does it mean? We read the Bible. It feels hollow, bored out by frequent repetition and discontinuity with our experience. We hear the “gospel” preached in church and many times walk away thinking, “I can’t imagine anything less applicable to my everyday life.”

There is a feeling of fatalism and separation from the true God. Yes, the frustrated say, he does exist. I believe. He did act. Perhaps he still does, perhaps. But I have not seen it. Many Christians have resigned themselves to a type of “lost generation” of the church. Less than one hundred percent included in God’s plan. Or, rather, that God’s plan doesn’t include them in a unique way.

Is it any wonder that these Christians are in no rush to evangelize in the traditional sense? The quote falsely attributed to Francis of Assisi has become the motto of modern evangelism: preach the gospel and when necessary use words. Presumably this means to love neighbor and God and to therefore display the work of God for others to see. Love however is a tricky word. It is a word we learned from the little god. It has no direct link to our faith. I defy you to find a definition of love in any popular Christian literature which is able to identify the work of God in Jesus Christ and does not merely melt into modern humanism’s golden rule when one attempts to put it into action. For all of the hundreds of sermons and books I have heard and read about God’s love I have only found one that provided an attempt in this direction. If love can be elusive how can we possibly claim that we are preaching the gospel through our actions by showing love. What are we showing? Is it unique from what any good person would do? If not, why do we need Jesus? Other than being a spiritual mascot he serves no purpose. This, we can agree, is not good.

This is not to say that we don’t want to do good. We are tortured by our inability to do enough good. The tragedy of suffering has been enhanced by the information available to us. Never before have we been so aware of starvation, floods, sex trafficking, earthquakes, genocide. Never before have we felt so powerless to provide a response.

The historical basis of our faith is under constant scrutiny. Our pastors call our historians heretics. Is it possible to truly know anything about who Jesus really was? And, if we are able to recover an understanding of Jesus and the early church what do we do with it?

We are frustrated not disillusioned. We are asking for real Christianity that works in real life. We are asking for a powerful God, a beautiful Church, and a deep faith.

That is the problem. It is a problem I have wrestled with for a long time and still wrestle with. I think that the good news is that God is not afraid of these questions. The Bible not only confronts doubt, it accepts it, welcomes it in, and cares for it. I believe that the church with the help of the Holy Spirit is able to be what we know it should be.

I've recently started writing a book that addresses these frustrations, fleshes them out, and talks about the answers I've found. I'd love your feedback in the comments. Do you think I'm off base here? Do you relate to this? Do you know others who do? Are there parts I'm missing? If you don't want to share publicly I'd love to hear from you via e-mail. lane dot severson at gmail dot com.

Lane Severson is a recovering child-prodigy, father, and Anglican. Follow Lane on Twitter @ljseverson