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A Christian Failure: Thoughts from a Former Kid on the Fringe

I sat in the youth pastor's office, waiting for a response. He held his closely shaved head in his hands, and I could tell he had no idea what to do. I had just told him that I was suicidal. My home situation had grown from barely tolerable to utterly unbearable, and all I wanted was to die. Finally, after what seemed like forever, he raised his head, looked me in the eye, and spoke:

"If you were a good Christian, you wouldn't have these kinds of feelings. Let's pray for this spirit of death to be cast out of you. Let us pray that you repent of your hidden, unconfessed sin."

He clasped his hands on his black leather Bible, bowed his head again, and began to pray. Something inside of me curled up and fell into a bottomless darkness at his words. From that moment on, and through the rest of my high school years, I felt completely isolated from him and from the rest of the youth group. I felt like a bad Christian. I was convinced that I was demon-possessed and belonged to the devil. I thought I was doing Church—doing God— wrong. I had failed at Christianity.

Perhaps you've never treated one of your students so harshly, and perhaps you wouldn't even think of doing so. But by isolating and rejecting kids who don't fit into a certain mold— by having expectations of students that they can't possibly live up to—you might be inadvertently treating them like Christian failures.

What Kinds of Kids are on the Fringe?

At first this seems like an easy answer. As you scan your students in your mind, the obvious misfits come to mind. The angry goth-looking one with facial piercings and black lip gloss. The quiet girl who can't fit in and who you suspect cuts herself. The boy with ADHD who can't seem to sit still. The "slow" one, who doesn't quite understand the jokes and comments of the rest of the group—jokes often made at her expense.

Increasingly, though, it's getting more difficult to define exactly which kids are in crisis. We can't always just look at students and think that we can define them. Whether they have multiple piercings or are clean-shaven, whether they wear all black or the latest fashion—it isn't always easy to get under the façade and identify which kids need help.

One way of identifying hurting students is to take a slow look around your youth group and really look at them. Look past their façades and their cliques. The ones who demand your constant attention are obvious; it's easier to glance over those who hide in the corner and don't seek out attention. Are Johnny's parents going through a divorce? Does Suzie avoid looking you in the eye? Does Karen always wear long sleeves—even on the hottest days?

Notice your kids and really listen to them. Are there obvious targets in the social group? Are one or more of them constantly marginalized? Are there a few who deliberately marginalize themselves? Pay attention and look deeper than the surface. As you do, the ones who need help will slowly be revealed to you.

Remember When...

Think back to your adolescent days. Even then, you could recognize which kids were on the fringe. How did you relate to them? Did you join the crowd in mocking them? Did you befriend them? Were you one of those on the outside?

Sometimes the best way of noticing and understanding kids in crisis is to remember those we knew while in school. To be truthful, not that much has changed. The clothes have changed and the culture has intensified, but the reality of students living in the clique or on the fringe hasn't. There are still those who are marginalized; there are still those who seek out attention; and there are still those who want to disappear.

While in the midst of those difficult situations during our own youth, we were so busy trying to navigate the adolescent waters ourselves, we were hardly able to reach out to those around us. Now, though, we can have a different perspective. We can bring the wisdom and insight of our present selves into the youth culture of today.

But I Didn't Like Them Then, and I Don't Like Them Now

Many of us aren't drawn to "those types of kids." We were uncomfortable around them in our high school days, and we're uncomfortable around them now.

We like the popular kids, the ones who make us laugh, or the ones who like us. The dark ones, the ones with trouble—they seem only to point out our own weaknesses and pain. They come to us with problems that are sometimes too difficult to solve. Our easy answers and pat clichés don't work for the marginalized.

What can we do if we honestly have no desire to befriend hurting kids? How can we find grace where there is none?

Finding God's Heart

There's no magic way to make ourselves like people. Loving the unlovable is especially difficult.

I wish I could give you a perfect, seven-step, count-to-10, and add boiling water instant solution. I wish I could tell you that if you pray hard enough, the love will come. I wish I could guarantee that if you said a proverb and quoted a psalm, you'd suddenly find your difficulties with the difficult eased.

The only thing I can offer is a glimpse into what it felt like for me, as a kid on the fringe. I can open part of my own path for you and let you see some of what it was like.

I can tell you that it was like having leprosy, sometimes. Being different was painful, but even more, it almost made me invisible. I didn't know how to function in social situations, and I'd often blurt out things that only made my situation worse.

I felt like I was standing beyond the edges of everything else looking in—hardly daring to want to be a part of it all, fully aware that I was separate.

I truly felt like a Christian failure. I thought God couldn't possibly love me, as isolated and full of self-loathing as I was. I thought when I cut myself or punished myself for failing, God was all the more disappointed. It was a vicious cycle I couldn't escape, and I was stuck.

The resonating thing that echoed in the pit of my soul—along with all the other noises and darkness—was I am not loved.

So perhaps finding the heart of God for students on the fringe—students like me—is simply realizing, on an almost molecular level, that we are loved. Perhaps it's a matter of finding and feeling the desperate, deep love that God has for us and allowing that to fill us up and radiate out of us toward our youth group.

I don't mean a New Agey, "God is love," bumper-sticker kind of awareness. I mean a soul awareness—a glimpse into our belovedness as God's creation, a knowledge that we're each made and destined for a purpose, and that we all fit, somehow, inexplicably into God's plan.

It sounds so easy, doesn't it? But do we really believe it? Do we look at the hurting kids in our youth groups and know that they're loved? That they fit into God's plan? Or are we too busy trying to redeem them ourselves—to make them fit in— to wait until they straighten up?

We spend so much of our lives fixing and pretending. If we could just straighten our parts, tuck in our shirts, keep the emotional façade over the uncertainty and the fright—then we could sleep better at night. If we could just have a swell Jesus, a Jesus who doesn't see past it all, a Jesus who pretends, too—then we'd be able to look beyond the hurting and broken in our world and still call ourselves "saved."

We perfect pretending. We perfect pretenses. But at what cost? How does all of our pretending and imagining do a disservice to kids on the fringe?

1. We Minimize Their Reality. The students on the edges of your youth group are the ones who are the most passionate. They have the sensitivity to know what it means to be broken, and they're acutely aware of it. They live in a world fraught with difficulty.

2. We Minimize Jesus. Is your God big enough for the fringe kids? Does your God hold even the most unlovable in loving arms? By not embracing the most difficult ones, you're creating a small god. You're offering to them a god of the beautiful—a god of the put-together—a god of the popular.

3. We Minimize Relationships. As Christians, are we capable of having relationships with each other that go beyond pretending? Can we truly look at each other's darkest places and still know we're safe? When we elevate pretending, we risk losing real relationships. We risk being known and loved for who we are—for offering that same love to others.

Stop Pretending

So—stop pretending. Try to cultivate authenticity in your group. Cultivate authenticity in your own life. It's acceptable to be imperfect— if we were as put-together as we pretend to be, we'd have no need for Jesus.

As you let yourself be human, you invite your students to be human, too. That includes the outcasts, the misfits, the ones who intentionally hurt themselves.

Don't get me wrong—you're not justifying sin. You're acknowledging sin. You're acknowledging the mess and wreck that it makes, and seeking out a God big enough to forgive it and to stand present amidst the mess.

So be real.

See Your Students

Make a point of seeing your students. Noticing them. Not just the ones who clamor to be noticed, but even those who go out of their way to hide. You'd be surprised how much your acknowledgement will impact them.

Look beyond their own pretending. Be curious about what motivates them, why they act how they do. Separate them from the dynamics of the youth group, and try to see them individually. See their passions. See their fears.

Offer a Big God

It's so easy to offer a small God of conveniences—a God of small things.

The words of Romans 8:28 come too easily—we make promises for God and justify them with Scripture. We tell our students not to worry—we point out the lilies of the field, the birds of the air, and we wrap it all up with a tidy promise of eternity in heaven.

The reality is—life often sucks. There's pain. There's death. There's loss and brokenness and despair. God doesn't always fix it. God doesn't always feel present. But if your students can know—really know—how deeply and dearly they are loved, they'll know there's hope.

Offer them a God who loves them. A God who died for them—just as they are. Give them a big God, a God who knows them intimately and loves them, anyway.

And then love them, too. Even the ones who are unlovable. Even the ones who push your buttons and frustrate you 'til you want to scream. After all, that's why you work with students. Because you know how amazing they are and how much they matter. And you can give them a God and a Christianity that's bigger than they can dare imagine.

Renee Altson is a former kid on the fringe, a former youth worker, the Web content specialist at Youth Specialties, the Web editor for YouthWorker Journal and the author of Stumbling Toward Faith: My Longing to Heal from the Evil that God Allowed (emergentYS).