Introduction: When Faith Asks Questions

Once, a desperate father brought his son to Jesus. The boy had been suffering for years, and the father had nearly given up hope. “If You can do anything,” he begged, “have compassion on us and help us.” “If You can?” echoed Jesus. “All things are possible to him who believes!” And the father said something so honest that it has comforted doubting people ever since: “I do believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:22–24).

Jesus did not send him away for doubting. He healed his son.

This book is about six people who had questions as teenagers: about God, about the Bible, about suffering, about whether any of it was true. Some of them believed as children and then lost their faith. Some never had faith to lose. Some believed all along but could not make their minds and their hearts agree. They were not lazy thinkers. Several of them were among the cleverest people of their age. And every one of them found, sooner or later, that following Jesus did not mean switching off their minds. Jesus Himself said the greatest commandment was to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37).

Here are the six people you will meet in Questions, the third book of They Were Young:

Augustine, a brilliant, restless teenager in Roman North Africa who stole pears just for the thrill of it, read a book that set his mind on fire, and spent years chasing answers everywhere except where his mother prayed he would find them.

Blaise Pascal, a French boy so clever that he worked out geometry for himself, built a calculating machine as a teenager, and discovered that the God of the philosophers was not enough.

Isaac Watts, a sharp-witted boy from a family persecuted for their faith, who came to trust Christ at about fifteen and went on to write some of the best-loved hymns in the English language.

Jonathan Edwards, who went to college at thirteen, argued with God’s control over everything until one day a single verse changed the way he saw the world, and who then wrote himself seventy rules for life.

C. S. Lewis, who lost his mother as a boy, lost his faith at school, and became a confident teenage atheist, before the long road that brought him to Jesus.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who lost his brother in a war, told his scientific family at fourteen that he was going to study theology, and kept asking what it really means to follow Jesus, all the way to a Nazi prison.

How each chapter works

As in the first two books, each chapter begins with a moment, a decisive scene in that person’s young life, and then pulls back to tell you how they got there and what came after. The rest of the life is told more briefly at the end.

After the story come three short sections. In Their Own Words gives you a few lines the person really said or wrote, with the source. Think It Through offers some questions to wrestle with, alone or with others. Read More on Ochorus points you to the person’s own writing, or their biography, if you want to go further.

These stories are true, and we have tried hard not to add anything to them. We have not invented conversations or made up scenes. Where the records are silent, or where historians disagree, we tell you. Where a famous story is a tradition rather than a fact, we say so.

A word about doubt

You might expect a Christian book to treat doubt as the enemy. These six people would not let us. Their questions were often the very road God used to bring them home. But you will also notice that none of them stayed in doubt as if it were a place to live. They kept asking, and they kept looking for the truth, even when the answer cost them their pride. The Bible says God made people “that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:27). That is what these six did.

For parents, teachers and youth leaders

These stories are written for readers aged about thirteen to seventeen. They take young people’s questions seriously, including doubt, the loss of faith, grief and suffering, and they show faith that thinks rather than faith that is afraid to. Some chapters touch on war, the death of a parent and execution, and one mentions a young man’s sexual relationships; all of this is handled honestly but briefly and without detail.

The Think It Through questions are meant to open conversation rather than settle it. You do not need to have read Called or Tested, the first two books in the series, to use this one. Each chapter stands on its own.