Learning, Dissonance, and Faith Formation in a New School Year

What do supernovas and Resurrection have to do with science, faith, and the spiritual development of your child? In his sermon addressed to confirmands (link below), Rev. Tom Berlin helps young people understand the relationship between what they learn in church and what they learn in the school setting…and why it matters.

As Rev. Berlin says, “When something in our life is not aligned, it will make us crazy.” There is a psychological term for this kind of craziness—cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is literally the brain discomfort that comes from holding two pieces of information that don’t seem to agree. It turns out the human brain does not like cognitive dissonance. So much so, in fact, that we are wired to simply dismiss information that doesn’t seem to fit, even if it’s true.

One of the places where young people often experience cognitive dissonance is between faith and what they learn at school. Particularly, questions about how faith and science fit together begin at very early ages and many children have an impression of conflict between science and religion by the age of 11.¹ The eventual resolution to this cognitive dissonance can be the rejection of faith, or science, altogether. By the age of 15, 60% of our children will resolve this conflict by disconnecting from church life and faith altogether.²

Sadly, this perception of conflict is totally unnecessary. So what can we do about it? We can help our children understand the positive relationship between science and faith which has predominated throughout most of Christian history. This sermon is a good first step. Though it was preached the first Sunday after Easter this year, I think it is a valuable back-to-school resource to set the “big picture” for our students as they embark on a new year of learning. I invite you to share it with the young people in your life.

Rev. Tom Berlin, “The Body Beyond Death”:

https://www.florisumc.org/the-body-beyond-death/

¹ http://biologos.org/blogs/chris-stump-equipping-educators/new-approaches-to-communicating-science-and-faith-to-children

2 You Lost Me. Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church… and Rethinking Faith by Dave Kinnaman (2011)

Image credit: “CassiopeiaA: Death Becomes Her.” Jet Propulsion Lab, NASA.