Toward the end of my mission, I came up with this theory that most kids who grow up in the church are in a similar state of sickness that I dubbed BICS.
It's like this: Although you may be showing forth the correct "works," you still have not developed "faith". Faith, for these purposes, is defined as a confidence in Jesus Christ that leads a person to obey him. People with BICS aren't obeying out of confidence/trust/love for Jesus Christ. They're obeying for a variety of other reasons...parental pressure, tradition, strict conscience, etc. But they never stop to question themselves as to if they really have faith. So when they find themselves in new circumstances (bad group of friends, leave for college, death in the family, etc.), they can't sit on the fence anymore, and either choose to draw closer to Christ or they drift away. Without opposition, they could potentially remain a luke-warm Mormon for their whole lives.
The reality is, I think very few teenagers have developed real faith. At least, I know I didn't. I remember going to EFY as a 15 year old, and my counselor had us write down our feelings about Jesus Christ. I was dumb-founded. Feelings? I didn't have any feelings toward him. He was an abstract figure that I knew was very important. If she had asked what I knew about Jesus Christ, I could write a whole essay. But feelings...no. The truth was, I liked being a member of the Church. I was "strong." I kept the standards. I liked learning about things like the Second Coming, emergency preparedness, patriarchal blessings, and so-called deep doctrine. I focused on the outermost branches instead of the actual roots of the gospel. And I actually didn't get to the roots until my mission. If I hadn't gone, I don't know if I would have ever gotten to them. I thought the basics were boring. When I got to the MTC I had a major reality check and had to start at the beginning, with faith in Jesus Christ. Nothing means anything without it. You can't just teach the standards and desired behaviors without the WHY. Jesus is why. It all begins with him and the Plan of Salvation.
I talked with an Elder about this, and he had his own little theory. He said that because we've been going to Sunday School for years and have been taught so much, we have a huge knowledge level. Our conscience grows according to our knowledge level. (The more you know you're supposed to do and not supposed to do, the more guilty you feel, the more you obey out of fear of guilt). But our faith level is very small, until trials and other things cause us to develop it.
And that just made sense to me. That's what I went through. Now I'm in the process of getting my faith level up to my knowledge level. And it's one principle at a time. Gain a testimony of fasting (I "know" it works, but do I actually have faith that my fasting will work?), of prayer, of repentance and the atonement, etc. etc. etc. Now I'm going brick by brick and gaining faith in the individual parts of the gospel, through personal experience. It's not just about knowing that the Church is true as a whole and then doing what I'm supposed to without further thought. It's about personal experiences with the Spirit that take your faith to the next level. And since there is no end to knowledge in the gospel, this process is eternal.
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