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Let those who, still in their youth, have preserved their faith and fullness of hope, keep looking up.

I grew up in a religious community, and like everyone, I went through a period of doubt and later made a conscious choice to embrace the faith of my childhood.

When you come to Christ as a real young person, I think when you become a teen-ager either you rebel or you search, doubt, and wonder.

When you are young, you are fervent about the things you believe in.

Young people all over the world are very frustrated. They are very disillusioned. Many of them are turning their backs on religion. They are walking away from the faith of their parents, and most of this is because religion has failed them.

I have tremendous respect for teens who navigate the quagmire that is modern religion. If there is any message in my books, I want it to be that it's okay to ask questions, and it's okay to come up with a belief system all your own. Teens who change their worldviews in the face of tremendous social pressure are heroes to me.

I was a pretty wild kid, and I probably lived 48 years in my first 20. But I always seemed to have a true line of faith for some reason.

Teens are passionate, questioning, curious, have a bit of the idealism I still cling to, and they're making decisions for the first time that can alter the course of their lives - and sometimes, the course of the world.

My first encounters with faith came about the time I was a Boy Scout, at about 14 or 15. I made the logical deduction that they operate the same way; I treated my faith like earning a merit badge, and everything about Christianity was about earning merit badges.

In many ways, the young are more religiously minded than the older generations. I think it's the flip side of an age of individualism. Youngsters are not afraid to tell you what they think, to express their faith and be quite exuberant about it.