Mike Laheta, 13, of St. Matthias Catholic Church in Parma, figures it this way when it comes to alcohol, drugs and sex:
"If you do something bad, it's like you're hurting God," he said. "The more you do it, the bigger the barrier, and the more empty you'll feel."
Mike is not alone, as more than a million Northeast Ohioans on Ash Wednesday began observing the 40-day Lenten period of spiritual reflection leading up to Easter.
A new study of more than 3,000 teenagers and their parents, the most comprehensive research ever done on faith and adolescence, finds a teen nation where more than four in five youths say religion is important in their lives. But the survey also indicated that many teens know little about their religion and many activities compete for their time.
Among religiously active teens like Mike Laheta -- those who attend services weekly and belong to a youth group -- their faith appears to be making a significant difference in their behavior.
The National Study of Youth and Religion revealed that these faithful teens are more likely to:
Do better in school.
Feel better about themselves.
Shun alcohol, drugs and sex.
Care about the poor.
Make moral choices based on what is right rather than what would make them happy.
Researchers considered variables such as the possibility that more obedient youngsters are more likely to attend church and still found "that religious faith and practice themselves exert significant, positive, direct and indirect influences on the lives of teenagers, helping to foster healthier, more engaged adolescents who live more constructive and promising lives."
What religious groups have to worry about, the study found, is not rebellion, but teenagers' "benign 'whateverism' " that tends to reduce their perception of God to more of a valet - someone meeting individual needs - rather than an authority figure.
The result is growing numbers of teens replacing traditional faith with an "alternative religious vision of divinely underwritten personal happiness and interpersonal niceness," said Christian Smith, the University of North Carolina sociologist who led the study.
Researchers talked to 3,370 adolescents and their parents in a national random telephone survey in 2002 and 2003.
The study also involved in-depth personal interviews with 267 of the respondents from 45 states. The project was funded by the Religion Division of the Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment Inc.
Several studies in recent years have found positive relations between mental and physical health and religious participation among adults.
But there is little research among adolescents. The first major findings have just been released in the new book from Oxford University Press entitled "Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers."
Not all of the results are positive for organized religion.
Only four in 10 teens attend services weekly or more frequently.
Homework, television and other media, jobs and sports increasingly compete for teens' time.
"Indeed, in many adolescents' lives, religion occupies a quite weak and often losing position among these competing influences," Smith wrote.
But the study also burst a few stereotypes of teen religion, foremost among them the idea that U.S. teens are alienated from or rebelling against organized religion.
More than half of the teens surveyed said religion was extremely or very important in their lives. More than two-thirds of teens report attending services many times a year, and more than six in 10 teens say they would attend services regularly if it were entirely up to them.
Nearly eight in 10 attending teens say they expect to attend the same kind of congregation when they are 25, and almost none reported having bad experiences with clergy or youth leaders.
In discussions with some 40 teens from several congregations, area youths said the storms of middle school and high school are a lot easier with God on your side.
"There's always someone who will always listen to me, who won't make fun of me, somebody who will always love me, no matter what," said Emma Clark, 12, of St. Matthias youth group.
Caralise Torres, 15, a United Methodist teen from South Amherst, said she enjoys the camaraderie of her religious peers. "When you go to church, you go to youth jam, anybody will talk to you," she said. "They're like your brothers and sisters."
Teen religiosity is important, researchers said, because the project also shows almost universal positive outcomes related with active religious lives, from success in school to vastly reduced rates of teen pregnancy or drug use.
Kim Martin, 14, of Westlake United Methodist Church, said students in her school are approached almost daily to smoke cigarettes or do drugs.
"I think our relationship with God gives us more of a conscience, and gives us the power to say no," she said.
So how do parents develop spiritual lives in their offspring? By being role models.
Among parents who said religion was extremely important to them, two-thirds of their teenage children said religion was extremely or very important in their lives.
In contrast, among the teenage children of parents who said religion was not very important, 48 percent said religion was not very or not at all important in their lives.
"They really do look to their parents," Smith said in an interview. "We'll get who we are, not what we tell them, not what we wish for, but who we are."
Some observers said the results are a "bombshell" to U.S. congregations.
" 'Soul Searching' puts American religious communities on notice," writes Kenya Crease Dean of Princeton Theological Seminary.
"If religion matters, then we had better stop 'exposing' young people to faith and start teaching it to them."
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