{"id":172,"date":"2009-03-27T08:48:57","date_gmt":"2009-03-27T14:48:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.consider.org\/blog\/?p=172"},"modified":"2009-03-27T08:48:57","modified_gmt":"2009-03-27T14:48:57","slug":"in-and-just-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/consider.org\/blog\/2009\/03\/in-and-just-like\/","title":{"rendered":"In and Just Like"},"content":{"rendered":"

Listen to the MP3<\/strong><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

It is very common to hear Christians talk of impacting the world for Christ.\u00a0 Or to talk of how we are to be in the world but not of the world.\u00a0 But the latest numbers\u00a0 from the Barna Group<\/a> clearly show that the impact is the other way around.\u00a0 Rather than in but not of, American Christianity is becoming in and just like.<\/p>\n

Given that the government mandated secular worldview is so prevalent in the culture, it is not all that surprising to find that only 34% of Americans believe in absolute moral truth, or that half of Americans believe that the Bible is “accurate in all the principles that it teaches.”\u00a0 What is disturbing is the inroad such beliefs are making into the church.<\/p>\n

In the survey, “Born Again Christians” were those who said “they have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is important in their life today and that they are certain that they will go to Heaven after they die only because they confessed their sins and accepted Christ as their savior.”<\/p>\n

While born again Christians who were asked the same question did better than Americans at large, it was not much better.\u00a0\u00a0 While half of Americans did not believe the Bible was accurate, 21%\u00a0 likewise did not believe the Bible to be accurate.\u00a0 As for the belief in absolute moral truth,\u00a0 even a majority of born-again Christians, 54%, \u00a0no longer accept that.<\/p>\n

The Barna Group’s uses these and four other beliefs, such as Jesus lived a sinless life, to define a Christian world view.\u00a0 Those who hold all six beliefs are then said to have a Christian world view.\u00a0\u00a0 Based on this the survey shows that only 9% of Americans have a Christian world view. Born again Christians do better, but not much.\u00a0 Only 19% of Born Again Christians could say that they hold all six beliefs.<\/p>\n

In a broader perspective, this decline in belief has been going on for sometime.\u00a0 It reached a low point in the mid 1990s when only 7% of American held a Biblical world view. The trend reversed somewhat climbing back up to 11% by 2005,\u00a0 but now is back down to 9%.<\/p>\n

Worse however, are the statistics for the younger generations.\u00a0 Those in the 18 to 23 year age group, commonly called the Mosaic generation, were virtually completely secularized, as less than one-half of one percent had a biblical world view.<\/p>\n

Now those pushing the secular world view, would undoubtedly say that was because of the superiority of the secular world view and that people are just rejecting the false superstitions of the past.\u00a0 But then they would say that, wouldn’t they.\u00a0 Ultimately I do not think they can be blamed, any more than you could blame a prosecutor if you lost a trial where the evidence was on your side, but your defense lawyer never bother to get up to present\u00a0 your side of the case. \u00a0<\/p>\n

I do believe the evidence is on our side.\u00a0 In some cases very clearly.\u00a0 In fact, in my classes on critical thinking I would use the rejection of absolute morality as an\u00a0 example of how people don’t really think through what they believe.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

I would ask how many in the class believed in absolute moral truth, and would get results similar to those found by Barna.\u00a0\u00a0 I would then ask if torturing babies for fun was inherently wrong, or was a matter of opinion where for some it was wrong, but for other it might not be.\u00a0 With the exception of one student, \u00a0all the students in all the classes where I asked this considered torturing babies for fun inherently wrong, and the one who didn’t was not very comfortable with his conclusion but was being honest with his belief that there was no absolute moral truth.<\/p>\n

Thus with one simple question I was able to almost completely turn around people’s thinking on absolute morality.\u00a0 Granted, winning over the culture will not be quite as easy as this, but on\u00a0 the other hand it is not the insurmountable problem that some seem to think, nor is everything lost.<\/p>\n

Still the Church is like the defense\u00a0 attorney with a strong case to make who never presents it. Josh McDowell, in his book The Last Christian Generation<\/a>, discusses how many young people see church as little more than a place to go with a lot of fun activities, but with little impact on their lives.\u00a0\u00a0 This is also seen in the very large number of people who leave the church when they leave home.<\/p>\n

Yet it need not be this way.\u00a0 The Church not only has the truth, but in many cases the preponderance of the evidence to back it up.\u00a0\u00a0 Yet sadly many Christians have the attitude of \u2018I already believe’ so they don’t need to learn about things like doctrine or apologetics.\u00a0 In fact, it is not only quite sad, but very telling, that many Christians do not even know what the word\u00a0 apologetics means.\u00a0 Given this, the results from Barna, are really no surprise.<\/p>\n

This is Elgin Hushbeck, asking you to Consider Christianity<\/a>: a Faith Based on Fact<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Listen to the MP3 It is very common to hear Christians talk of impacting the world for Christ.\u00a0 Or to talk of how we are to be in the world but not of the world.\u00a0 But the latest numbers\u00a0 from the Barna Group clearly show that the impact is the other way around.\u00a0 Rather than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,8,12,16],"tags":[38,78,1072,314,1079,381,484,529],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/consider.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/consider.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/consider.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/consider.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/consider.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/consider.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/consider.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/consider.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/consider.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}