Worldview

Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Doesn’t she light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.” Luke 15:8-9

I have now written over 400 blog posts in the past 6 years. Each time I have tried to be true to bringing a biblical worldview perspective to a topic about mentoring the next generation.   Last Tuesday, Barna came out with a report on the American Worldview Inventory 2022 which was created at the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University. All I can say is that it is disheartening. 

The report was based on a survey of some 600 parents asking them dozens of worldview questions that were intended to measure “both beliefs and behavior in eight categories of worldview application.”  67% of the parents identified as Christian. That’s the good news. The bad news: only 4% of those “Christian” parents identified with a Christian worldview as defined by the researchers, and only 2% of all of those surveyed had a Christian worldview.

The subtitle of the Barna report is “The Worldview Dilemma of American Parents.”  As Barna notes, one of the primary roles of a parent is to help instill in their children the concept that God has a special plan for them, and their job is to help the child prepare for it.

As George Barna notes, “Parents are not the only agents of influence on their children’s worldview, but they remain both a primary influence and a gatekeeper to other influences.”  Even though only 4% of those self-identified Christians possess a biblical worldview, it was equally shocking that none of the other “alternative” worldviews is embraced by even 1% of the parents.

Those six alternatives include: Secular Humanism, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD), Nihilism, Marxism/Critical Theory, Postmodernism and Eastern Mysticism/New Age. What does that mean?  

Barna goes on to say that 94% of parents of pre-teens have a worldview known as Syncretism, which is blending of “multiple worldviews in which no single life philosophy is dominant”.  In other words, the worldview is “diverse and often self-contradictory.”

Barna continues that most parents are likely to have garnered views drawn from Eastern Mysticism/New Age thinking, MTD and Biblical Theism (i.e., the biblical worldview). This reminds me of the old Chinese food menu when you got to choose from three different columns of food choices to make up your meal. One from Column A, one from Column B and one from Column C. Your choice.

How did this happen? How did so few children under the age of 13 have a biblical worldview. The answers, based on my research over the years is not surprising in a post-Christian world. Millennials now comprise a majority of parents of pre-teens today, and they are the least likely generation to have a biblical worldview.

A biblical worldview holds that the Bible is a “relevant and an authoritative guide for life.” Yet almost 60% of the parents surveyed view the Bible as a “reliable and accurate source of God’s truth.”  Fewer than half of the parents (45%) read the Bible at least once a week.  Research also shows that if you are not in their Bible at least Four Times a week, you are losing ground spiritually.

Additionally, only three groups of churches have “an above-average proportion of pre-teen parents who have a biblical worldview: nondenominational or independent Protestant churches, Pentecostal or charismatic churches, and finally Evangelical churches.  Attendees of the first group are eight times more likely than the national norm to have a biblical worldview. Attendees of evangelical or charismatic are three times as likely.

Add to that another recent Barna study that 56% of Christians feel their spiritual life is entirely private. That percentage changes by generation with the Boomers having the highest level (63%) of believing their spiritual life is private. Gen Z fares better (that’s the good news) and are twice as likely to be part of a discipleship community.

These studies are a lot to take in, but they are not entirely surprising in a post-Christian and postmodern world. The scripture from Luke 15 about the lost coin (and later the lost sheep) gives us instruction as to how God values everyone as something special in his creation.

As parents, grandparents, and mentors, we need to lean into the next generation in ways that helps them discover what a biblical worldview is, and even better, how valuable it is to their children. Investing in millennials’ lives by mentoring is a key to passing on our Christian heritage to their children.

MENTOR TAKEAWAY:   Mentors are in a great position to pass on to their mentees a biblical worldview. God thinks it’s important, and so do I. 

FURTHER READING:

American Worldview Inventory 2022 – Barna

Parents Lack of Biblical Worldview Puts Children at ‘Spiritual Disadvantage’  Christian Post

56% of Christians Feel Their Spiritual Life is Entirely Private – Barna

WORSHIP: Behold (Then Sings My Soul) – Hillsong

For more information about MentorLink, go to www.mentorlink.org.

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