America, ‘we are on the precipice of Christian invisibility’

OPINION:

A new study from the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University found that the spiritual beliefs of those between the ages of 8 and 12 years old are falling to the point where they think the Bible doesn’t matter and that moral truths are not absolute.

Parents are to blame. They aren’t teaching their children in the way they should go and the natural outcomes from those failures are manifesting in a secular youthful generation, accompanied by a secular culture.

If families are the building blocks for society — and they are — then America is in deep doo-doo.

How is our country to stay on a path of individualism, where rights and liberties come from God and government serves only to protect those individual freedoms and rights, if citizens don’t know God? You can’t have “God-given” if you remove God. What you’ll get instead is government granted; government disbursed; government redistributed — government of Marxism and communism.

From this study: Only 60 percent of those between the ages of 8 and 12 years old have read even a part of the Bible. Only 21 percent of this preteen grouping look at the Bible as the arbiter of determining right from wrong. Only 21 percent believe in the concept of an absolute moral truth — such as the Bible teaches. Only 27 percent of the preteens believe their number one purpose in life is “knowing, loving and serving God with all their heart, soul, mind and strength,” the survey stated. Most think their top priority in life is to make “the world a better place,” or seek and find “their own happiness” — two pursuits that play into the soft-and-fuzzy form of religion that’s taken over much of the church community; the kind the preaches love is love and so long as it feels good and isn’t hurting anyone, well then, love is love so just do it. What of the cross? That’s the point. These types of beliefs utterly dismiss the sacrificial act of Jesus on the cross — where he died to save all of humanity from their sins so all may have everlasting life — and instead place the focus on self. 

Dangerous times.

Dangerous beliefs.

That they sound so laudable — who doesn’t want to make the world a better place? — only makes them all the more dangerous.

Satan’s best work, after all, is done when 99 percent reflects truth and only 1 percent, lie.

“Only one out of six [preteens, 17 percent] consider the most accurate definition of life success to be consistent obedience to God,” the study stated. That’s because they’re falling into the trap their parents fell into and regarding success in terms of money, fame, personal happiness, economic freedom and the like.

America, wake up and smell the atheism.

A country filled with citizens who take their marching orders from their own hearts and minds, from their own desires and wills, rather than from a sovereign, never-changing authority — God — is a country whose citizens are destined to fall into moral decay. So goes the culture; so goes the politics. So goes the family; so goes society.

The numbers bode darkly.

“If you follow the data,” said George Barna, director of research at the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University, “you learn that we have had a decreasing percentage of Americans embracing a biblical worldview since we started tracking this in the early 1990s. … The incidence of biblical worldview among adults has dropped to just 4 percent and among parents of young children, it’s just 2 percent. You cannot get much lower.”

Without a biblical worldview, individuals live as they please; they fail to recognize they were born into sin — or to recognize their sins at all — and as such, become subject to the ever-changing human definitions of right and wrong, good and bad, moral and immoral. Absent concerns of any after-life accountability, mob rule becomes the governing force. Those with the loudest voice, biggest platforms, most powerful or powerfully persuasive means of imposing will are the dictators of law and order. “Lord of the Flies,” anyone?

Yes. America needs God.

Americans need biblical worldviews to stay godly, so that society, government, politics, culture and the rest stay godly, as well.

“Because of the strong correlation between biblical worldview and genuine Christian discipleship,” Barna said, “we are on the precipice of Christian invisibility in this nation unless we get serious about this crisis and invest heavily in fixing what’s broken.”

And by invest, it’s meant — go to church. Get your children to church. Read the Bible. Apply biblical teachings to modern life.

America’s fate depends wholly on whether or not parents start teaching their children in the biblical ways to go.

• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Lockdown: The Socialist Plan To Take Away Your Freedom,” is available by clicking HERE  or clicking HERE or CLICKING HERE.