“Anxious” means worried and afraid. The title does not give advice. It describes something that happens by accident in some churches, when kind adults ask children the wrong question.
What is this page about?
Here is a short talk between an adult and a child. This page made it up. It is not about a real child.
“Do you feel that you really know the Lord?”
“I think so.”
“You think so? When it is real, you know. You just know. Have you ever felt him close?”
“Sometimes. Not really this year.”
“Well. We will pray about that. Ask yourself if you ever truly gave him everything.”
Nothing here is cruel. The adult is worried about the child, and that is good. But look at what the child has just learned, in about twenty seconds.
- There is a feeling that he should be able to find inside himself.
- Other people can find theirs, every time.
- If he cannot find his, the problem is him.
- The answer is to look harder.
Nobody argued for these things. They came inside a caring question. And they are about evidence: where should a child look to know that he belongs to God?
This page is about that one thing. It does not ask if God works in people’s hearts. He does. It does not ask if faith must be real. It must. The question is this: what should a child point to on a night when he feels nothing?
What this page does not do
It does not say that it is enough to go to church without faith. It is not medical, and it describes no real child. It gives no advice to parents. If you are worried about a child, talk to someone who can see that child.
The short answer
1. The Bible says that we cannot trust the heart to measure. “The heart is deceitful above all things” (Jeremiah 17:9). “Deceitful” means that it tells lies. People use this verse about following your feelings. But it speaks most strongly here: do not use your feelings to find out if you are saved.
2. Paul looked at himself, found nothing wrong, and said that this did not decide it.
For I know nothing against myself. Yet I am not justified by this, but he who judges me is the Lord.
1 Corinthians 4:4 · World English Bible
In simple words: I do not know of anything that I have done wrong. But that does not make me right with God. The Lord is the one who judges me.
A clear heart was not proof enough for Paul. So a twelve-year-old’s feeling about this year is not proof of anything.
3. Feeling nothing is in the Bible’s own song book. Psalm 88 was written to be sung in worship. Its last line is: “You have put lover and friend far from me, and my friends into darkness.” (Psalm 88:18) There is no happy ending. God’s people sing it anyway.
4. A very strict old Protestant statement of faith says so too. The Westminster Confession of 1646 says that a true believer “may wait long, and conflict with many difficulties” before he feels sure. In simple words: you can have real faith and not feel it for a long time. That says nothing about where you stand with God.
5. Feeling very sure proves nothing. Jonathan Edwards was an American preacher who studied religious experience all his life. In 1746 he wrote: “Some hypocrites are a great deal more confident than many saints.” A hypocrite is a person who only pretends. So the child who never doubts does not have the best evidence.
6. The question can always be asked again. That is the trap. If the proof is a feeling, you can ask next month, “Was it the right feeling?” If the proof is that you meant it, you can ask, “Did I really mean it?” The English writer John Bunyan was caught in this for years. In his book of 1666 the question is: “But how can you tell you have faith?”
7. A church can only reward what it can see. It can see raised hands, a good story told from the front, and mission trips. It cannot see a child who forgives his brother, tells the truth, or prays for someone he does not like. In Matthew 6, Jesus tells us to do the hidden things and to hide the things people can see. Children learn very early which things are rewarded.
8. Jesus tells this story, and it ends the other way round. In Luke 18, a religious man gives a sure and correct report about his own spiritual life. Another man will not even look up. He only asks God for mercy. The second man goes home right with God. Right after this, people bring babies to Jesus. He says that we must receive God’s Kingdom like a little child. We receive it. We do not make it.
9. The other way is not unclear. It is a short list of things that a child can point to in the dark. He was baptized, on a date, in front of people. He can say the creed. A minister told him aloud that his sins are forgiven. He was given the bread. All of these are still true on a night when he feels nothing.
This is my opinion. Nobody here means to be cruel. That is why it is so hard to change. People have a real worry: religion should not be empty. But they answer it with a method that has no end. If the proof is inside the child, no amount of proof is enough, because you can always ask again.
The second question is the hardest for me. It comes one year after the child has already answered. The first question can be kind. The second question teaches the child that his own answer about himself was not good enough. He will not forget that lesson.
Does this worry you?
Here are some people who feel nothing, or feel far from God. Do they sound like people whose faith is in trouble?
- “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1) “Forsaken” means left alone.
- “Why are you in despair, my soul?” (Psalm 42:5)
- “How long, Yahweh? Will you forget me forever?” (Psalm 13:1)
- “Will the Lord reject us forever?” (Psalm 77:7)
“I keep coming and doing the right things. But to be honest, there is nothing there. It has been like this since March.”
“Everyone else at the camp seemed to get something. I sat there and felt as if I was watching through glass.”
The first four are from the Bible. Jesus himself spoke the first one from the cross. The last two are modern, and this page wrote them. They say nothing that the Psalms do not say.
So feeling nothing is a normal part of the Christian life. If we treat it as a sign of trouble, we must say that much of the book of Psalms is in trouble too.
Two children
Here are two twelve-year-old children in the same church. This page made them up.
| The first child | The second child | |
|---|---|---|
| Church | Every week | Every week |
| How he acts | He is kind to the younger children. He says so when he has done wrong. He sits with the boy who sits alone. | He is hard on the younger children. He says “It was not me” when he is caught. He chooses his friends carefully. |
| What he says about God | “I do not really feel anything. I do not know if God hears me. I hope so.” | “God spoke to me at camp. I felt him so strongly that I could not stand up. I have never doubted since.” |
| His story | He has none. He cannot name a date. | It is moving, it has a date, and he has told it two times from the front. |
Now the question. Think of a church where the feeling inside is the thing that counts. In the normal life of that church, which child is treated as the stronger Christian?
Most people answer: the second child. But look at how the two children act. The church has no tool to see inside a child. So it can only judge how surely the child speaks.
Children who are very sure of themselves
Does this kind of church teach some children that they are better Christians than the others? It does not need to teach it. It shows it every week.
Think about what a church does each week. One child tells his story from the front. One child leads. People say of one child, “He is really on fire for God.” Each choice alone is fine. Together they make a list, with some names at the top. Children read such lists very fast. Nobody told the child at the top that he is better. He saw his name near the top, week after week. And he was told that the list shows how close a person is to God.
Nobody plans this. Here is why it happens. Nobody can check what is happening inside a child. So only one thing is left to judge: how surely he says it. Most children who speak surely are honest. But the church cannot tell the difference. So it rewards every sure child in the same way. And the child whose honest answer is “I do not know” pays the price.
What this part says and does not say
It is about how a system works. It is not about any child. It does not say that sure children are pretending. It does not say that a strong experience of God is not real. Edwards’s point is that being very sure proves nothing, good or bad.
The Bible knows this danger. “For if a man thinks himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.” (Galatians 6:3) And Paul speaks of people “measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves with themselves” (2 Corinthians 10:12). He says that this is not wise.
At the other end is the child who already worries a lot. A Christian teacher in the 1540s, Ignatius of Loyola, saw something true. Some people have a very soft and careful sense of right and wrong. Temptation tries to make it even softer, until the person is troubled all the time. So when an adult tells a worried child to look at himself more closely, the worry grows.
This is newer than people think
Christians have always believed that God changes people inside. But the methods to produce this change and to check it are new.
- In the 1700s, great revival preachers taught people to look for an inner experience.
- In the 1820s and 1830s, preachers in America began to use new methods, like a special seat at the front for worried people.
- Later came the call to walk to the front at the end of a meeting, summer camps with a “decision night”, and the life story with a date.
Many people who grow up with these things think that they are as old as the church. They are not.
And who warned against them? Not people outside the faith. The great names of the same movement gave the warnings. Edwards wrote in 1746 that being sure proves nothing. John Wesley wrote in 1767 that many confused people had imagined that they had the inner sign from God. Hannah Whitall Smith, a famous teacher, warned in 1875 against using our feelings as the test.
What the old churches gave a child
A fair question is: “What do you give a child, then?” The answer is a short list of things. A child can name them at three in the morning, and he does not have to ask how he feels.
1. A baptism that happened, on a date, with people watching
Luther’s advice to a troubled person is one sentence. It is about something that has already happened to that person.
Nevertheless I am baptized; but if I am baptized, it is promised me that I shall be saved and have eternal life, both in soul and body.
Martin Luther, Large Catechism, 1529
In simple words: But I am baptized. And if I am baptized, I have God’s promise that I will be saved and will live for ever, in soul and body.
2. Something to do every day
A child cannot measure if the change in him has happened. But he can do what Luther’s small book for children says. Each day we are sorry for our sins and turn from them. Each day a new person rises to live for God. A child can do that. Be sorry today, and get up.
3. Signs, given because faith is weak
John Calvin wrote in 1559 that a sacrament is an outside sign. With it God confirms his promises to us, “in order to sustain the weakness of our faith”. That means: to hold up our weak faith. Calvin says that God leads us by the hand, as a nurse leads a little child.
4. Words said over the child that he did not earn
The old English prayer book of 1662 says after the baptism of a baby: “this Child is regenerate”. That means this child is born again. The minister says it aloud to the church, before the child has done or felt anything.
5. Things to learn, not a search inside himself
The same prayer book says that the child should come to be confirmed when he can say the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments. A child can pass this test, on a day that he will remember. Compare the question “Have you truly given everything?” A child cannot pass that test and can never finish it.
6. A first question that is not about him
That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ
The Heidelberg Catechism, 1563, the answer to its first question
In simple words: I do not belong to myself. With body and soul, in life and in death, I belong to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ.
A frightened child can say this sentence. It does not ask him to report anything about himself.
All six things are still true when the child feels nothing. A date is still a date. A child can still say the creed. The minister’s words over a child do not need the child’s feelings to make them true.
The old churches did not ask a child to prove that the faith was happening inside him. They put him inside the faith and taught him to say it.
This page does not argue about who should be baptized. Churches differ on that. Dossier 04 and Dossier 01 look at it. The point here is what the old churches all share: they give the child something outside himself to point to.
Where this page ends
The Christian faith is not a feeling that you must keep finding. It is something done for you, told to you, and given to you. You spend your life receiving it. Feelings come with it, and they are welcome.
But nobody should tell a child that a feeling shows where he stands with God. It does not. The Bible says that the heart cannot be trusted with that job. And a child who hears the question often will learn to give the answer that makes the adults happy.
This kind of church life can hurt children in two different ways. Some children become afraid. Others become very sure of themselves, and nobody can check it, and they are praised for it. Nobody intends this. It is a fault in the system. Wise Christians saw the fault long ago.
- Do not tell a child to look inside himself for proof that he belongs to God.
- The Bible says the heart is not a safe measure. Feeling nothing is normal in the Psalms.
- A church that rewards sure words will lift up bold children and frighten honest ones.
- Give a child things outside himself: his baptism, the creed, spoken forgiveness, the Lord’s Supper.
Check it yourself
- Read Luke 18:1-17 in one go. Why do the babies come right after the man who was so sure of himself?
- Read Psalms 13, 42, 43, 77 and 88. Read Psalm 88 last.
- Read Matthew 6:1-18 and 1 Corinthians 4:1-5.
- Read the part about baptism in Luther’s Small Catechism. It is one page, written for children.
The Bible words on this page come from the World English Bible. It is a modern translation, and anyone may copy it. The quick version and the full dossier use the King James Version, which is older and harder to read. The words are different, but the meaning is the same.
Want to read more?
The quick version says the same things in ordinary English and adds short exercises. The full dossier gives all the evidence and names every source.
Read the quick version → Read the full dossier →