The Worldview Dilemma of American Parents
The Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University, headed by George Barna, released its American Worldview Inventory Report 2022, on March 8th. According to the Barna report, this years initial wave of focus was on the life-defining beliefs and behaviors of parents because of the substantial influence they have on the worldview developed by their children. Before I delve into the statistics of the report, let's define exactly what we mean by worldview.
A "worldview" is a comprehensive conception of the world from a specific standpoint, it is the harmony of all your beliefs about the world and your way of understanding reality. A worldview deals with at least the following questions: Where do I come from and why am I here; What is wrong with the world and how can we fix it?
Every adult has a world view. That worldview is fully developed and operational before a person becomes a teenager. A Christian worldview answers the above questions from a Biblical perspective. It covers everything from morality to finances and our views about the past and the future. Our lives and everything in it falls under the umbrella of the Bible. John M. Frame defines a Christian worldview as such: "As a Christian , I am committed to a worldview that comes from the Bible: God the Creator, the world as his creation, man made in his image, sin and its consequences as our predicament, Christ's atonement as our salvation, his return as the consummation of all things."
The big takeaway from my perspective, of Barna's study is that 9 out of 10 parents of children under age 13, have a muddled worldview. Less than 1% of the parents embraced any of the alternative worldviews tested for which included, Secular Humanism, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, Nihilism, Marxism/ Critical Theory, Postmodernism, and Eastern Mysticism/New Age. Two-thirds of the respondents claimed to be Christians but only 2 % of the parents of pre-teen childrenal actually possessed, a Christian worldview. The old adage, "If you don't stand for anything you will fall for everything," seems to be proven true. What we have are, "a full 94% that have a worldview that is a blending of multiple worldviews in which no single life philosophy is dominant, producing a worldview that is diverse and often contradictory," according to Barna. This world view in known as Syncretism, a pot-pourri of ideas that has little thought behind how or why it is strung together into anything meaningful.
I know personally of married couples who have not brought up their children to believe in anything because they didn't want to force their beliefs on them, sadly their children have become today's parents and they are now raising their children to be rudderless, lost and think nothing of it. These children are tomorrow's future and it doesn't bode well for Christianity. Count on bumpy roads ahead.
You may wonder and ask yourself, "How did this happen to our country?" There are many reasons, it didn't happen overnight and it is beyond the scope of this article to take on. I will tell you this, if you are serious about understanding our society and how we got where we are today, please read Carl Trueman's book, "The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self." Trueman spells it it quite clearly and if you had read his book before Barna's report came out, the statistics would not be a big surprise or a shock to you.
Barna does point out that one might from his statistics predict the end of Christianity in America, but he asserts that, " The reality is that culture-changing movements can transform a nation with as little as 2% of the population on board." That being said, I think the number could be far less than the approximately 6.7 million people that make up the two percent with Biblical worldviews. Remember, Christians started with only 12 apostles and spread their faith throughout the known world! We need to pray for revival in our country.