The NY Times this morning posts an interesting article on the problems facing evangelical faiths in America: why are teenagers not buying into their form of Christianity anymore?

In America, these evangelical Protestants contend, the persuasiveness of the highly sexually charged society as promoted on TV and in music is driving teenagers away from God. They are finding fewer teens attending their “worship” services and in an effort to combat it, they are trying different marketing gimmicks to get them back.

Maybe they should consider their fixing their theology rather than how loud the music is played at “church.”

Protestant evangelicals heavily promote the belief that in order for one to be saved, one must change their lives and accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. It is a very heavy sanctification message – one that attempts to get people to change their lives in order to believe that they can be saved.

This message is a very hard pill to swallow, no matter your age. Why? The central tenet of this Chrisitian theology is the notion that we can make ourselves over in order to get something from God, namely salvation. It is a very centralized message on ‘me and how I got my reward from God,’ something that truly never brings to one the confidence of salvation or the confidence that God loves you.

Lutheranism – or as several Roman Catholic friends have called us Lutherans, “reformed Catholics” – we understand our inability to follow the Law of God and our complete inability to accept the notion that we can change ourselves to follow that Law consistently. We believe that we can change our lives not because we are good enough, but solely because God can be there as our crutch and helper. And when we stumble, God isn’t there to condemn and to punish; He’s there to love and comfort and lead us back to the truth.

But we able to change ourselves because of the God-borne faith we have in our Lord Jesus Christ, the one who took the sins of the world on Himself in order to save the world. His life, death, resurrection and ascension is more than enough to pay our debt of sin – it is why He came in the first place. If our ancestors were able to fulfill the Law of God, they would have done it. But all of them were sinners, just like us, and because of that we rebel against God. We can’t fulfill the Law just like our ancestors couldn’t fulfill the Law.

The only one who fulfilled the Law was the Son of God, Jesus Christ, our Lord, the one where our faith is centered in solely.

As faithful believers, we do our best to live our lives according to God’s way. Why? Because we are a New Creation who doesn’t want to live in the utter sinfulness of the world. That is who we are – though, we aren’t perfect. We still fail and fall away. But we have a God and a Savior who leads us home.

We are imperfect creatures because of sin – and that sin was forgiven because our Lord Jesus gave Himself over to death. Faith in Him who saves – that is what gives us the gift of heavenly salvation.

Nothing we do can earn it since it has already been earned. We redeemed children of God live our lives in our faith – where we live differently than what the world promotes. All of us can watch MTV (why would you want a music channel that doesn’t play music?) or “The Sopranos” and know one thing: it is our faith centered in Jesus Christ that leads us. No matter what we watch or listen to, we are a New Creation.

Ours is a message of hope of a better future. Sadly, many evangelical Protestants miss this hope thing.