I was looking around in a bookstore and saw a bible there titled, “Rock Hard Faith Study Bible.” My first thought was, “Couldn’t they have chosen a less weird sounding title?”

But not dwelling on that question any longer than necessary I moved to “How does rock and hard relate to ideals for faith?”

I know that the study bible is for teens, and maybe the title works for them (or maybe not). Or perhaps it is really marketed to parents who are afraid that their kids will “lose their faith” in high school and university.

I think, however, what parents REALLY want is faith resiliency. That is, they want a faith that can endure the battle of worldviews, ethical perspectives, and competing faiths that comes with the years of the upper teens and early adulthood.

I used to be a mechanical engineer, with a focus on material science, and I love me a good analogy. Rock, hard, and resilient are all terms for materials, so let’s look at that.

Resiliency lines up with “toughness.” Toughness is the materials ability to absorb energy from stress without fracturing. This involves (1) handling a lot of stress without fracturing and (2) being able to deform a lot without fracturing.

Rocks can handle a lot of (compressive) stress, but they are too brittle to handle much deformation. Chewing gum can deform a lot but cannot handle much stress. Steel, on the other hand, can handle both and so would be recognized as a tough, or resilient, material.

Hardness is a bit less technically defined but generally has to do with the ability of having its surface scratched or indented. Generally, the hardest materials tend to be more brittle and so are less resilient in a wide range of uses. Okay, enough of the analogy for the moment. Therefore, a rock hard faith would tend to be a less resilient, more brittle type of faith.

What might a faith look like that is “rock hard,” as in a brittle, non-resilient faith?

1. Have a non-reflective faith. Focus on teaching statements of faith while squelching understanding one’s faith.   Encourage young people to accept things as true by calls to authority only.
2. Confuse the forms of faith. Make it seem as if faith in God, faith in Scripture, faith in a creed, and faith in a denominational interpretation of Scripture are all the same thing.
3. Crush doubt. Suggest that doubt is tantamount to a loss of faith. Make church or a bible group a dangerous place to talk through doubts.

Bringing us back to my analogy, steel is a very resilient material. Part of its toughness comes from its structure. It is an in situ composite. As steel cools, it forms thin layers of cementite (a ceramic compound of iron and carbon) and ferrite (essentially iron metal). The cementite gives the high resistance to stress while the ferrite gives it the ability to deform. The combination is a very strong, tough, resilient material. Many manufactured composites do a similar thing such as with various forms of glass or carbon reinforced composites.

I would like to say that the foundations of our faith are like the hard ceramic material in steel. This gives faith its strength. Doubt and self-reflection are like the softer, pliable part of steel. While it may seem reasonable to assume it would weaken it, it makes it more able to flex and give under stress.

Related to that last point is that young people should understand that questioning a specific doctrine from one’s own faith tradition is very different from questioning one’s faith in God.

And questioning one’s faith in God may be part of a process towards a resilient faith rather than necessarily being a rejection of one’s faith.