Sublime

The way that this modern moral order takes shape around chosen identity makes it complicated for pastors. If the church or the pastor tries too hard to shape a person’s life, it will be a violation of the modern moral order.

In the shadow of Secular 3, faith is flattened into a natural and material realm of church participation and the willful decision to believe certain things. It can only be about affiliation and assimilation.

To deconstruct without any desire to rebuild is the height of youthfulness, and because youthfulness is the measure of authenticity, to tear down is mistaken as the path to legitimacy. Under these conditions, faith that was supposed to be vibrant because it was youthful is actually attacked and torn down by the authority of youthfulness itself. To

because of our overexposure to youthfulness, our conception of faith formation has too often followed this expressive (even instrumental) individualism.

We add adjectives to “faith” because in the end faith is not about divine action but about maintaining religious space.

To talk today of faith formation as our objective (which is necessary) is to recognize how squarely our feet rest in the age of authenticity. We talk of faith formation because we breathe the air of authenticity and assume that everyone (young or old) has his or her own individual path to choose. We speak of faith formation because we all are uncom

Because of the false idea of subtraction, we don’t recognize that the age of authenticity has turned our conception of faith into something that more closely matches the imaginary of authenticity than it does biblical faith.

mean by faith. Rather, faith and its formation seemed to be something obvious, a solely sociological reality that could be measured.