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Contents © 2003
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

CONFESSIONS
September 2003

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NOTES TO A 15-YEAR-OLD

A friend of my wife's is having some trouble with her 15-year-old son. At 12, the son wanted to be a priest. Then his grandfather got sick. He prayed and prayed for his grandfather's recovery, but the man died. Now the son is wrestling with the notion of free will, reasoning that if God has a plan for everyone, then God made Grandpa smoke and get cancer as a result. He's pushing further, arguing that Judas had to betray Christ, since it was God's plan for him. He complains about going to Mass, wondering why he can't just pray on his own.

He goes, but he doesn't receive the Eucharist. He's stopped going to confession. Now he's studying the crusades; when he comes over to baby-sit my kids, he peppers my wife with questions about obeying papal decrees regarding wars, plenary indulgences, etc.

Eventually, my wife said, "Maybe you should think about going to Thomas Aquinas College, so you can approach these questions philosophically." "Oh, I'm not really interested in the answers," he replied. "I just like asking questions." This tried my wife's patience. "You're either not honest, or you just like having conversations," she said.

A week ago, his mother came over for a visit, and I ended up chatting with her as I struggled to replace a doorknob on our bathroom door. The following are two things she said, and things I didn't say in return, but wish I had. One: "I think a lot of it is just that he's 15." Well and good. But 15 becomes 18 and college and the break from parents that is the first real test to see if one's faith is one's own. It may be a phase, but if he's not sticking close to the sacraments, who's to say the phase won't harden into habit? Without the Eucharist, Mass is just a communal gathering, not communion with the divine. If you're not impressed with the community, why go once Mom and Dad can't make you?

Two: "It's enough for me that he still says, 'I believe in God.'" I think "I believe in Jesus" would be more comforting. God is easier to hate. It's God, after all, who is so problematic for the boy, God who ignored his prayers, God who had a plan for Judas to betray Christ. Jesus, on the other hand, died for his sake, feeds him with his own flesh and wishes to be his beloved friend. Not to create a false distinction, but for a certain mindset, Jesus is easier to cling to than God -- less far-off, less the Grand Architect.

But I could have done worse. Granted, I was witnessing to the mom and not the son, but I did manage to make a couple of worthwhile points: first, theology is not for everyone. Mistakes made there are more costly than in any other intellectual pursuit. Even to begin inquiring necessitates a certain formation -- Augustine said we ought to be familiar with the whole of scripture before we start to interpret, and that's just for starters. The boy's troubles with free will are understandable, and not to be brushed aside with the simple assertion that God makes us free. We say we can do no good apart from God -- His grace is required. So what happens when He doesn't give the necessary grace? But then He also says, "My grace is sufficient for you." And we haven't even started on Augustine and the predestination of the saints.

Even when there is no error, theology is rarely the way to sanctity. Knowing about God is not knowing God. Study is not prayer. When we say that to know God is to love Him, we're not talking about the distinguishing of persons in the Trinity.

It's tempting to tell the boy to accept that he's 15 and in thrall to his passions -- in this case, anger over the death of his grandfather. That he needs to get over himself and accept that his understanding is limited, and should not be employed as the measure of the Faith. But what I think I'll actually say is this: The first time I read the name of Flannery O'Connor was in the liner notes to a Christian (in this case, Catholic) rock album, Steve Taylor's I Predict 1990. (This was in 1987; I was 14.) The last song on the album was a ballad entitled "Harder to Believe Than Not To." The title was taken from O'Connor's statement in a letter that "it's much harder to believe than not to believe." Your family is Catholic, so you see unbelief as outside the norm, appealing to a teenager struggling for identity. But there are a thousand reasons not to believe. Quit flirting with despair and start digging for faith.

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