I should know; I'm one of those fans. "Buffy" is still my favorite show after all these years.

Just to show my nerd cred:

• I served a term on the editorial board for the academic journal Slayage: The Journal of Buffy Studies, which was later renamed to Whedon Studies, and maybe renamed again to rid itself of the association with Whedon.
• I presented a paper at the first-ever national conference of Whedonverse scholars. (My husband even played the piano for our huge group singalong of the "Buffy" musical episode.)
• I published a book about the vampire slayer as a spiritual guide, poring over every episode and analyzing the show's religious themes.

So yeah, I guess you could say I am a fan.

It's acutely painful anytime you realize someone you have admired has hurt people, especially when the particular ways in which that person has visited destruction on other human beings seem so ironic, so antithetical to that person's own values.

Like Whedon, who taught a whole generation about female empowerment, objectifying women and systematically disempowering women in the workplace (and, apparently, in his marriage). Or like J.K. Rowling, who brought us beautiful stories about the evils of racism and about a wise gay father figure in Albus Dumbledore, coming under fire for not extending her famous progressive stances to include transgender women.

People are complicated. Very, very complicated.

But our cultural response is not.

In fact, it has become devastatingly simple: cancel.

Burn it all down.

Whatever beauty or wisdom the now-tarnished individual has contributed to the world must be expunged, gone forever because we're tainted if we so much as look at it, let alone honor any goodness abiding there.

I find this a problematic response, though an understandable and human one.

It keeps things simple.

It keeps us from having to do the hard work of ferreting out what is still life-giving about a cultural touchstone from whatever mess its creator has also created.

When we cancel culture, we like to believe we're standing in solidarity with the people the creator has harmed, and some of us are.

Others of us are just abiding with a herd mentality, an all-or-nothing response that switches us from idolizing a creator to demonizing him or her, all overnight. It's just easier that way.

As a Christian, I've found guidance about cancel culture from a source both unexpected and zero percent surprising: the Bible.

You see, as I was thinking about cancel culture earlier this month, I had also just read Kristin Swenson's new book from Oxford, "A Most Peculiar Book: The Inherent Strangeness of the Bible."

One of the things that didn't make it into my published interview with her was her nuanced discussion of "Good People Behaving Badly" in the Bible, which was, basically, every single character except for Jesus.

Like David, who was revered as the ancestor of the Messiah and the greatest king of the Bible's history, who committed adultery (and possibly rape) with Bathsheba and then arranged for the subsequent murder of her husband.

Oh, and when one of David's sons rapes one of David's daughters, King David gives him a pass.

Or Sarah, the mother of the nation of Israel, known in the Bible for her joy when she learned, at an advanced age, that she was going to become a mother.

This is the same Sarah who condemned her slave Hagar to die, along with Hagar's small son Ishmael, by banishing them to starve in the wilderness in the cruelest of ways. She was not exactly Mother of the Year material.

And then there's Jonah, honored as a prophet of God, who brought a message of repentance to Ninevah, but only after he had fled from all responsibility and done everything he could to reject God's call.

And then when Jonah finally does make it to Ninevah, he offers a lackluster rendition of what God wanted him to say (as Swenson notes, it's the "least persuasive bit of preaching" in all of the biblical prophets) and is ticked off when it actually works and the people repent. He wanted them to die, because that's what he thought they deserved.

What does the Bible do with these rather horrible people?

Well, it's interesting.

And it's mixed.

The David story, in particular, gets two very different kinds of treatment in the Bible — the warts-and-all story we find in 2 Samuel, and the utterly sanitized version of those same years in Chronicles, with all of the unsavory bits gone.

If we only had the Chronicler's account, we would all think the sun shone directly out of David's arse.

But the Bible, wisely, preserves both versions.

Swenson told me that in writing her book about how strange the Bible is, she wanted to correct some believers' tendency to look at only a fraction of the Bible and wield it as a weapon.

But she also wanted to correct what she sees happening on the other side, in which nonbelievers see all the revolting things the Bible seems to countenance (slavery, rape, misogyny, racism and genocide, to name a few) and reject the entire book as worthless.

It's all there, and we have to learn to read it like grown-ups, rejecting what is evil and holding fast to what is good.

To only see the happy or loving aspects of the Bible is to embrace a fallacy, one the Bible itself wants to dispel.

And to only see the negative, canceling anything good because it sits cheek by jowl alongside things we know to be wrong, is just a fallacy of a different kind.

Our job is to call out injustice, and also to celebrate what is good — even when, especially when, they appear inextricable.

So I won't be torching my Harry Potter books or throwing my Buffy DVDs on a bonfire. I'd have to throw my Bible to the flames as well.

• Jana Riess is a senior columnist at RNS and the author of many books. First published in RNS. Reproduced with permission.

He understands the problems we're all facing with religious retention in America; now he would like to be pointed to solutions, especially for Millennials and Generation Z.

What ideas or practices are actually "working to mitigate or reverse those trends," and is there solid research about what can help?

His timing is excellent, because this week I interviewed researcher David Kinnaman, who is the president of the Barna Group and the co-author of two prior studies that have been extremely helpful in diagnosing the problems (You Lost Me and UnChristian).

Kinnaman's third book is Faith for Exiles, co-authored with pastor and consultant Mark Matlock.

It takes some of Barna's research and turns it around, focusing not on the characteristics and views of those who have left their churches, but those who have stayed.

First, the bad news

In the years that Barna has been tracking young Christians' engagement with their faith, retention has gotten worse.

In 2011, 59% of young Americans who grew up Christian had stopped attending their churches, but less than a decade later that has inched upward to 64%, or nearly two-thirds.

And in another trend, the percentage who no longer identify as Christian at all—not just that they're not attending church, but that they don't believe—has doubled in that time, from 11% to 22%.

"That corresponds with a trend in our GenZ work where atheism has doubled," says Kinnaman.

Glass-half-full

The rest of Faith for Exiles takes a glass-half-full approach, however, and focuses attention on the most committed disciples, the talented tenth.

According to Barna's research, 10% of young adults who grew up at least nominally Christian are not only still claiming that identity today, but engaging in a warm and vibrant faith that informs their daily decisions.

Kinnaman calls these the "Resilient Disciples."

He also calls them "exiles," but exile here is actually positive.

What the Resilient Disciples are exiled from is the frenetic consumerism and selfishness of American culture in the 21stcentury.

In an image that crops up periodically throughout the book, they are akin to the Bible's Daniel and his friends trying to live out their faith in a foreign environment.

The book calls our own environment "digital Babylon," and it is very different from the "Jerusalem" that American Christians used to inhabit.

Resilient Disciples are caught between cultures but are navigating that dilemma with their faith "firmly planted in the real world."

In fact, Kinnaman says this group actually thrives more in the hostile environment—and that there is a biblical precedent for this crucible effect.

"In the Bible there are times when the people of God who are the center of the story in the scriptures are also at the center of society, like when David was king. And whether they're doing good or not, there's a shared central narrative about how society is supposed to work. But the majority of Christian scriptures are written from and to and about Exiles, which means that they're dealing with the tensions that we're seeing today."

As America shifts from a predominantly Christian identity to a "post-Christian or even post-faith identity," more Christians will have to learn how to live "with that one foot in and one foot out," like Daniel.

With that in mind, Faith for Exiles highlights five characteristics that Resilient Disciples seem to share—and offers advice for pastors and others who want to create the best possible contexts for teenagers and young adults to flourish.

Experience personal intimacy with Jesus

According to the book, America's fixation with individualism has eroded Christians' primary identity as children of God.

Churches that push back on "Brand Jesus," emphasize regular devotional habits, and make heartfelt worship a priority are doing better than those that seek to entertain.

"This generation has a really high sense that they've been marketed to to death," Kinnaman says.

"They have a high regard for authenticity. So the first thing to ask is: what's really going on inside? Just because people are assenting or attending doesn't mean they've made a deep emotional connection to God."

Educate with a purpose

"For faith to be resilient or sticky, it has to connect with the mind," Kinnaman explains.

"The learning reformation is so important."

That doesn't just mean limiting screen time but exposing young people to the deep, challenging reflections of other Christians. It also means preparing Christians for the world as it actually is, instead of pining for Jerusalem and the good old days.

To succeed with that, the book argues that Christians need to rethink the mentality that bigger is better.

The best learning environments might happen in small groups and outside of the church building, in people's homes.

Help young people forge meaningful intergenerational relationships

This is an age when rising numbers of young people report feeling anxious and isolated. It's also an era when traditional sources of authority have less appeal—including churches, which have been scrutinized for their various sex scandals and resistance to social change.

The institution of "the church" is not automatically persuasive to today's young adults.

What is convincing is relationship.

In Barna's research, Resilient Disciples were significantly more likely than other respondents to say that when they were young they had close personal friends in their congregations who were adults.

That pattern of close relationships continues with them today: 88% agree that "the church is a place where I feel I belong," and 85% that "there is someone in my life who encourages me to grow spiritually."

Meaningful relationships are founded on congregations being honest about when things aren't working at church, and listening to young adults about their doubts and questions.

One success story in the book is of a youth group in which the pastor spent a year notplanning activities or programs and instead just listened to youth, which no topic off the table.

The group began to grow through these frank discussions, and most of its members are still active Christians today, in their late 20s.

Train young adults about vocation

The research shows that young adults are keenly interested in how their faith might be relevant to their work.

More than 9 in 10 Resilient Disciples want to use their unique talents to honor God, and nearly that number say God designs each person with a unique calling for their lives.

Yet churches often let them down by not helping them to discern their calling, or vocation.

Baby Boomers unwittingly contribute to this by slapping down young people's ambitions and pounding the drum of their own generation's pay-your-dues philosophy, or criticizing young adults for being "entitled" if they crave meaningful work beyond a paycheck.

Churches that are doing well with young people help them to discover what God created them to do in life, and give them tools to succeed at it. Because many young adults are delaying marriage and children, most spend their 20s focusing on work.

This is an opportunity for churches to teaching about "vocational discipleship," which is approaching work through the lens of an active, growing faith.

Promote countercultural mission

"Living differently from cultural norms is a change worth making," says Kinnaman. Resilient Disciples "expect that God is real and will answer prayer," and are committed to serving others, even in a me-first society.

Churches that encourage young Christians to bless the lives of others and "take epic risks" to live out their faith—whether that's in the form of a mission trip to the other side of the world or simply offering a gentle pushback to today's pervasive "you be you" mentality—are making a connection.

As well, churches that not only encourage young people to confess their sins, but that are willing to confess their sins to young people, offer what the book calls "realistic hope."

Kinnaman feels that despite the small percentage of young adults who are in the Resilient Disciple category, "the future's in good hands when it comes to the resilient faith of the next generation of Christians."

• Jana Riess is a senior columnist at RNS and author of many books. First published in RNS. Republished with permission.