A survey released several weeks ago by the Associate Press and MTV claims that religion tends to make teens happier

. According to the survey, eighty percent of teens who claim to be religious also claim to be happy (compared with sixty percent who say that faith is not important to them). This is also significant because forty-four percent of respondents said that faith is very important to them, and twenty-one percent said faith is somewhat important.

 

These statistics are encouraging for youth workers, because they emphasize that - contrary to popular (and entertainment-industry fed) opinion - religion is important to a solid majority of teens. This means that there is a sizable group of young people who are at least potentially receptive at any given time to Orthodox Christian outreach (furthermore, those who are currently uninterested in religion may change their minds, and thus must be reached, and it is the calling of all Christians to reach out to others regardless of the immediate response). It is also encouraging, of course, that most teens who are currently involved in religion find at least some benefit in their faith.

At the same time, however, we must avoid placing too much emphasis on the linkage between religion and happiness. Christian Smith, head of the National Study of Youth and Religion , points out that the theological worldview of most religious teens in North America is "moralistic therapeutic deism ." Two central components of moralistic therapeutic deism are the beliefs that:

• The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
• God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when he is needed to resolve a problem.

This self-centered worldview, in which God is far more a "resource" than omnipotent Deity, is antithetical to Orthodox Christianity. It is therefore imperative for Orthodox youth workers to emphasize the proper understanding of -and attitude towards - God, and the fullness of the Christian's relationship with Him. A true relationship with God should indeed be the source of happiness for a person, but this must never be confused with the idea that God exists solely to give us happy thoughts and feelings, or even more, conflated with feeling good about oneself. Such misunderstandings of what constitutes the Christian life will almost inevitably end in loss of faith and despair.

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