Troubling Jesus - how non-Christian young people make sense of Scripture 

From a report by Youthscape

Throughout history God has spoken through young people, often using their youth to challenge and disrupt older generations’ traditions. Each generation must work out how to contextualise the Christian story within the culture and lives of young people.

In recent years the spiritual landscape has shown a rapidly ageing Church and a younger generation more likely to describe themselves as having no religion. Many haven’t so much “left” church as never been part of it. As society grows more secular, we can no longer assume young people have a framework for understanding Christian faith, its stories, or its practices. With some now reportedly turning up in church, this translation task feels even more urgent.

Youthscape partnered with The Bible Society to listen to how non-Christian young people make sense of Scripture. What they shared was sometimes deeply uncomfortable, unsettling interpretations we may be overly familiar with and offering fresh perspectives on God and Jesus that can sound almost heretical at first.

Yet this is where their lived experience meets the living Gospel, and what happens in that space should matter to the Church.

The research was based on 40 non-Christian young people aged 14–18 exploring five scripture stories that youth workers had identified as “good news.” These were Jonah, The Woman at the Well, The Paralysed Man, Zacchaeus and Peter (forgiveness).

Three groups met in person and two met online over a week. They read the stories and discussed their meaning together. These groups aimed to understand how non-Christian young people engage Bible stories that youth workers felt spoke “good news” into struggles such as pressure, judgementalism, anxiety, and complicated relationships with labels. Would they recognise any good news, and what would they make of it?

However, analysis showed something more: their interpretations also reveal how adults shape the contexts and relationships that influence what young people can see, hear, and experience of the Bible. In other words, their readings read us back - exposing what society, schools, and the Church have communicated to them about God, the self, and the world.

Some examples:
"He's gullible." Jack, 17 on Jesus meeting Zacchaeus
"He's mansplaining." Ant, 17 on Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman
“Don’t follow the path of others if it doesn’t correspond correctly with your way of thinking.” Amy reflecting on Jesus and The Paralysed Man

There is a challenge to the Church here - the themes that emerge hint at hidden questions, concerns and challenges that should cause the Church to stop and listen more deeply to what young people see when they read the Bible. This is more than just adjusting language or tone in order to be understood by a younger generation – their insights may get to the heart of issues the Church has ignored or been unable to recognise.

In this way, young people are a gift to the Church – genuinely helping us explore deep theological questions and their practical application in the Church and the life of the Christian. We often think of what we might do as the Church for young people – but their insights in this research hint at what they might do for us.

None of these questions have easy answers. They may demand changes to Church structures or the exploration of theological questions that we often leave undisturbed for fear of where they might lead. Young people are looking, perhaps even hoping, for a Church that is not afraid to have these conversations. They are no easy or quick answers – and young people certainly will not always be right in their assertions. But their questions are sharp and deep and deserve our attention in the coming months and years.

The reading sessions surfaced nuanced, sometimes unsettling views on responsibility, trust, salvation, change, and Jesus. This often jarred with the familiar Christian story of a Jesus who is in control, offering grace, forgiveness, and disrupting religious hierarchy. For some, Jesus seemed well-intentioned but naïve; for others, manipulative or barely worth notice. Their interpretations disrupted our defaults - noticing Jesus’ humanity, empathising with his pain at Peter’s betrayal, imagining his vulnerability, or his risk around Zacchaeus. They also exposed our blind spots, like overlooking God’s violence in Jonah. These readings reflect who they are and the worlds they live in, revealing their experience and worldview. If young people’s reality and complexity were truly present in our communities and our reading of Scripture, how different might those communities be?

Many of these young people have met the Bible in school as abstract “lessons for life,” where Jesus’ actions become moral points. That helps explain why, in the paralysed man story, Jesus didn’t feel central: it was the paralysed man and his friends versus the crowd. Forgiveness and healing became metaphors for mindset, not shocking realities.

The gospel isn’t self-help; it’s a collision with the unexpected and an invitation into an upside-down kingdom where the lost lead, the least belong, and the last come first. Have we been brave enough to meet this troubling Jesus ourselves, or are we asking young people to take a journey we haven’t taken? If we introduce them to Jesus, we must ask whether the Jesus we present is the one we truly believe in.

School and Church both carry hidden curricula - unspoken rules about what counts as “spiritual growth” and what answers are acceptable. We can still imply there’s a “right” response. Are we willing to notice and dismantle those norms so young people can react authentically?

Those familiar with the Bible naturally read through what they’ve been taught; these young people weren’t. Many Christians grew up with simplified theology - stabilisers that help early on but can hinder faith on uneven ground. These young people start on the bumps of real life, and maybe that lets them encounter Scripture’s strangeness more directly: questioning motives, challenging actions, changing minds.

You can buy the report here.