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Do you agree or disagree with the following statements?
If you do good in life, you will receive good. If you do bad in life, you will receive bad.
Meaning and purpose come from working hard to earn as much as possible so you can make the most of life.
What is morally right or wrong depends upon what a person believes.
The government, rather than individuals, should control as much of the resources as necessary to ensure that everyone gets their fair share.
These very statements, along with several others, were shared in a recent poll of Americans. The results were nothing less than shocking, not because of the responses in themselves, but primarily because of the individuals responding. While a rapidly growing majority of Americans affirm these statements, these same ideologies are held by professing Christians who attend church at least monthly. Each of these statements represents ideology that is diabolically opposed to sound biblical teaching. The first statement is grounded in the “new spirituality” movement that espouses to the belief that ultimate justice prevails due to good or bad “karma” in this life. The second statement is grounded in “secularism”, the ideology which advances the rationalistic or materialist view of the world. The third statement is grounded in “postmodernism”, the belief that all claims on objective reality are only substantiated by one’s experience; therefore, truth is relative to the individual. Finally, the fourth statement is grounded in the socialist ideology of “Marxism”, a belief which denies the existence of God and is hostile toward any religious practice.
Each of these statements represent a worldview, the lens through which we view the world. While it would be absurd for an unbeliever to hold to a Christian or biblical worldview, most disturbing is that the Barna Research Group estimates that only 17% of professing Christians hold to a biblical worldview. Instead, the very ones who should be opposing new age ideology, secularism, postmodernism, and Marxism are in fact espousing themselves to these false beliefs. Take this in again. Only 1 in 5 professing Christians (who attend church with regularity) believes “that absolute moral truth exists; the Bible is totally accurate in all of the principles it teaches; Satan is considered to be a real being or force, not merely symbolic; a person cannot earn their way into Heaven by trying to be good or do good works; Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth; and God is the all-knowing, all-powerful creator of the world who still rules the universe today.” This speaks to the moral degradation of our culture and relative ineffectiveness of the local church.
How can we change this ominous trend? Quite frankly, it is impossible to develop a biblical worldview apart from a daily intake of the Bible itself. While most professing Christians will daily spend hours on social media (a haven for non-biblical worldviews), they are emaciated toward the knowledge of God’s Word. The Psalmist would speak to our ultimate need to formulate a biblical worldview so that we would not fall prey to deception.
Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
—Psalm 1
We must begin inundating our worldview with the truth so that we will be “transformed through the renewing of our minds” (Romans 12:2). This will not occur with a “verse for the day” devotional app. Will you commit this year to read through the Bible? The church’s website contains direction for several plans that might be of help in this pursuit. If we are going to follow Christ, we should at least know the teachings of the One we are following.
Letting my mind be transformed,
Jason