Why Young People are leaving the Church in Record
Numbers, and who is to Blame?
It is clear that America is no longer guided by Christian principles. Secularism now directs the public affairs of our nation.
This worldview of secular humanism denies the authority of God, Christ, and the Bible. Secularism removes God’s standards and allows man to substitute his own standards instead. Without God’s Word and the Gospel, man has no reliable moral compass. People make decisions based upon they felt needs and desires (i.e. “I want to live in the present” Taylor Swift). Each individual becomes a law unto himself—choosing what is ‘right’ in his own eyes without respect to God’s standards.
God’s Word says in Judges 21:25, “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” There could hardly be a more accurate assessment of our country today than the description found at the end of the book of Judges (www.wakeupamericainc.org, “God Rejected”). Christians are not immune to this ubiquitous influx of moral relativism. Things that once appalled are now commonplace—shameful things are the subject of TV sitcoms. Like Lot of old who took up residence in Sodom, many professed believers have become desensitized to the immorality that surrounds them.
The church has been lulled asleep—she has reclined upon the false security provided by humanist philosophies such as the separation of church and state.
She has settled into a perpetual state of indifference toward the public affairs of our nation. Consequently the government and the academy (educators) have systematically removed God from the fiber of our nation while the church has stood by passively. With its chief spiritual weapon sheathed, the church has watched in apathy—without unleashing the constraining power of God’s Word (Ibid.). But, when the church imagines she is static, she is actually in ‘retreat mode.’ Our young people are paying the price; they are becoming the casualties of our culture. It is the ‘Christian’ college students who have never been trained in Christian worldview who are at greatest risk of departing from the faith (David Noebel, Understanding the Times; The Religious Worldviews of our Day and the Search for Truth).
College students who leave the faith are, for the most part, those who were never taught a unified worldview which has Genesis and biblical creation as its foundation.
Students who are never taught what is at stake if the foundations of Scripture are destroyed are astonishingly vulnerable to erroneous worldviews (Jerry Fallwell, Ken Ham, If the Foundations be Destroyed). High school and college campuses are indoctrinating our youth in the satanic philosophies of humanism and naturalism at an alarming rate. And, without systematic training in biblical discernment, students are highly vulnerable. Rampant moral decay is the result— accompanied by a gross loss of confidence in the reliability of the Scriptures.
We are standing at a crossroads in human history. Now is the time for the church to become proactive in training its members in biblical worldview.
Biblical worldview is the very foundation of ethics, life decisions, values, and behavior. Believers who have been equipped in biblical worldview develop the resolve and discernment to live life without compromise; to live in light of God’s total truth; for His honor and glory. Training in Christian worldview enables believers not only to stand firm in the face of our culture’s non-biblical ideas, but also to tear down the atheistic ultimates of false worldviews.
Several informal, public polls have revealed a large number of Christian adults revealed that they thought they were a Christian when in high school or college only to learn later that they were a false convert.
What Biblical teaching did these adults encounter that revealed their false conversion and thus lead them to true repentance and salvation? What was going on within their churches and/or homes that fostered this false conversion? What can we learn from these former false converts that will help us stop this dangerous trend? (Summit Ministries, 2006).
- Seventy-two percent of Americans agree, "There is no such thing as absolute truth; two people could define truth in totally conflicting ways, but both could still be correct."1
- Seventy-one percent of Americans agree, "There are no absolute standards that apply to everybody in all situations."2
- Fifty-three percent of those who claim there is no such thing as absolute truth identify themselves as born-again Christians.3
- Forty-two percent of those who identify themselves as evangelical Christians agree, "There is no such thing as absolute truth; two people could define truth in totally conflicting ways but both could still be correct."4
- 88% of young people from the Southern Baptist Churches deny their faith before they graduate from a secular college. Denominational leaders across the board report that 69% to 94% are leaving the traditional church after they graduate from high school and not returning.
Postmodernists (quotes compiled by Summit Ministries)
“For the pragmatist [postmodernist], true sentences are not true because they correspond to reality, and so there is no need to worry what sort of reality, if any, a given sentence corresponds to – no need to worry about what ‘makes’ it true.”5 “Truth isn’t outside of power, or lacking in power: contrary to a myth whose history and functions would repay further study, truth isn’t the reward of free spirits, the child of protracted solitude, nor the privilege of those who have succeeded in liberating themselves. Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it induces regular effects of power. Each society has its regime of truth, its ‘general politics’ of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true from false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true.”6
Critique in Academia
"There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative. If this belief is put to the test, one can count on the students' reaction: They will be uncomprehending. That anyone would regard the proposition as not self-evident astonishes them, as though he were calling into question 2 + 2 = 4.... Openness—and the relativism that makes it the only plausible stance in the face of various claims to truth and various ways of life and kinds of human beings—is the great insight of our times.... The study of history and of culture [according to this view] teaches that all the world was mad in the past; men always thought they were right, and that led to wars, persecutions, slavery, xenophobia, racism, and chauvinism. The point is not to correct the mistakes and really be right; rather it is not to think you are right at all. "The students, of course, cannot defend their opinion. It is something with which they have been indoctrinated."7
Endnotes:
1 George Barna, Virtual America (Ventura, CA: Regal, 1994), pp. 83, 283.
2 Ibid., pp. 85, 230.
3 Ibid., p. 83.
4 Ibid., p. 83.
5 Richard Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1982),p. xvi.
6 Michel Foucalut, “Truth and Power,” in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon, 1984),pp.
72–73.
7 Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987) pp. 25-26.
8 Harry Blamires, The Christian Mind: How Should a Christian Think? (Ann Arbor, MI: Servant, 1963) p. 107.