“I mean, I think there’s something,” she said, “I’ve always had that sense. It fades in and out sometimes, but yeah, I do. I mean, I even pray sometimes.”
Jenni laughed at herself, as if it were incongruous for her, raised with no religious affiliation, to admit to praying.
“Yeah, I reckon loads of people pray, but we don’t talk much about it,” I replied. And she nodded in agreement.
“But, like, what are you picturing when you pray?,” I asked, “Who or what is it you’re praying to?”.
She raised her eyebrows and replied, “Well, that’s where it gets tricky; I really don’t know … and I don’t know how I would know. It gets a bit fuzzy if I try to think about it.”
We might call Jenni a somethingist. Neither a firm believer in God, nor a convinced atheist. She’s open to the possibility that there’s something more out there than we can see or touch. But she doesn’t subscribe to a particular religion. Theologian Tomáš Halík describes “somethingism” as the position that says, “I don’t believe in God, I don’t go to church, but I know there is something above us.”
Our kids are surrounded by somethingists at school, in the neighbourhood, and everywhere else they go. Not that anybody applies that label to themselves. Jenni certainly didn’t. The term was coined by sociologists as they interviewed rising generations about how they view the world. The phrase seemed to neatly summarize what they were finding—a sense of “something more” pervades even the non-religious.
You might know a somethingist or two. I certainly do, and your kids too too. Over the past decade I’ve helped facilitate hundreds of conversations on university campuses in various countries. My chat with Jenni, for example, was at an event organized by Cambridge University students. There, as with everywhere else I go, I found a growing openness. A burgeoning somethingism. As your child heads out to university or into the workplace, they’ll need to know how to converse with the somethingists around them.
In the UK, where I am based, there has been a 9% rise in belief in God over the past three years, while belief in spiritual forces remains steady. In the United States, overall belief in God or a “universal spirit” remains high, at over 80% nationally. Atheism, for all its prominence, continues to be a minority pursuit.
When I decided to write a book engaging the kind of people I was meeting on campus, and who populate my everyday life, the title seemed obvious — it had to be called Somethingism. I wanted to help the somethingists in my life begin exploring what, or even who, was out there.
Somethingism isn’t a surprising phenomenon. It’s what we should expect to find in those around us. John, in the first chapter of his Gospel, calls Jesus “the true light that gives light to everyone” (John 1:9, NIV). There is a sense, he is saying, in which every person we meet has had an experience of God.
It’s no wonder, then, that so many people—Jenni included—have a sense of something more. C.S. Lewis, in one of his poems, describes us as being like those born remembering music we have never heard. At our very core we find a restlessness to hear that tune again, to move from intuition to encounter.
If we want our kids to help people like Jenni move towards this encounter, then we as parents can help them be ready to do so. Part of that is creating a hospitable and welcoming environment into which our children can invite their friends. Beyond this, though, there are a couple of other simple places to start.
Connecting Through Conversation
The first concerns the kinds of conversations we have with people. Imagine there are three levels on which we can talk with someone:
- Level One: Connecting Conversations. We might ask someone how their day is going, or their plans for the weekend. It’s all quite on the surface here.
- Level Two: Personal Conversations. We might chat about our interests, our families, or movies, games and books we enjoy. Now we are getting to know each other as people.
- Level Three: Deeper Conversations. We might talk about our fears, our dreams, our frustrations, or even our spiritual experiences and intuitions. Here we are opening up on the stuff that normally stays hidden.
Kids raised in secular cultures, and in families that are non-religious, simply won’t be in the habit of routinely discussing the question of God. Conversation about their sense of something more is only likely to crop up at the third level. This means our kids need to have real relationships with their peers, where conversation regularly strays beyond the surface.
We can help them in this by cultivating their sense of curiosity about others, and modeling that ourselves. I am genuinely intrigued by how my friends view God, or how they think about life, and I ask them questions out of interest, rather than just to tee-up an opportunity to share my own thoughts. Let’s encourage our kids to have the same mindset.
Connecting Through Good Questions
Having these kinds of conversations includes knowing how to ask good questions. When I spoke with Jenni, for example, the question projected on the screen at the event was, “What comes to mind when you think of the word ‘God’? How would you normally picture or describe ‘God’?” A question like this can open up the topic, and it’s one reason every chapter of Somethingism ends with some questions for readers to consider. I wanted to provide Christians with a model of the kinds of questions I have found helpful to ask.
Alongside deeper conversations, the other starting point is to consider how Jesus speaks to our intuitions of more. Lots of people today are open to something more, but what that “more” means isn’t clear, and they often aren’t taking steps to bring it into focus. It’s more of a hazy inkling than an active pursuit.
The Gospel writer John, after describing “the true light that gives light to everyone,” goes on to say that this light “became flesh and made his dwelling among us” in the person of Jesus (John 1:9, 14, NIV). It’s a crucial claim that it is possible to move beyond our vague and fleeting sense of something more, and to begin bringing the something of somethingism into focus. And it turns out that the something is a someone.
This speaks very helpfully into a somethingist context. We may be conditioned to think that sharing our faith means beginning with a conversation about, say, sin or the cross. But for most somethingists the first question on the table is often whether we can know anything at all about whatever is out there. As Jenni told me, “I don’t know how I would know. It gets a bit fuzzy if I try to think about it.”
But it doesn’t have to be fuzzy. God, according to Jesus, has a human face and a life story, and it is his own. That, in fact, is what I shared during my talk in Cambridge that evening, after I spoke with Jenni. I said, “Let me tell you what I think of when I hear the word ‘God’,” and then proceeded to tell the story of Jesus. It’s the tale of a God who comes near, enters the mess of our world, invites us to know him, and makes a way to do so.
With our kids, then, we may want to have similar conversations. We’ll need to help them think through the question, “If Jesus shows us God, then what does he show us about him?” Because, as they have curious and open conversationswith their somethingist friends, this is likely to be the focus of what they share. They will need to be able to say in their own words, “This is how I know, and this is how it affects me.”
Not everyone is a somethingist. And almost nobody calls themselves one. But as we have deeper conversations with those around us—and as our kids do the same thing—we may be surprised to find just how many people are aware of those glimmers of light that God has shone their way. And they, like Jenni, may welcome the chance to actually talk about these things for once, and to discuss the intriguing possibility that their fuzzy sense of more could come into focus and move from intuition to encounter.
Join us for Can’t Do It All, the newest season of the Rooted Parent Podcast, on Rooted’s website and wherever you get your podcasts.
