Parshall Partners

Abandoning Biblical Truth

         The Bible says in Psalm 139: 13-14 "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made." Those verses erase any ambiguity regarding the preciousness of life – both born and pre-born.  But for some Christians, there is a failure to understand and apply biblical Truth.

         The Cultural Research Center, at Arizona Christian University, was founded by Dr. George Barna to survey worldviews in our culture.  Of particular importance is the work they do through their Worldview Inventories that reveals how Americans, particularly Christians, born-again, Bible believing Christians, think about key moral and biblical issues. 

         In one of their surveys, they asked 7 questions about humanity.  What the center found was that a majority of U.S. adults had a biblical answer on only 1 out of 7 questions about humanity and only 1 of 7 questions on the supernatural. For example:

* Only 57% of adults believe humans are God's creation, made in His image, fallen, and in need of redemption—despite 70% identifying as Christian.                 

* Just 30% of adults hold the biblical view that people are born into sin and can only be saved by Jesus Christ. Among Catholics, that figure drops to 24%.

• • Only half of U.S. adults (50%) believe God is the all-powerful, all-knowing Creator of the universe who rules it today—down from a clear majority at the start of the millennium.
  • One in four adults strongly agrees that Jesus Christ sinned while on Earth. Among roughly half of all churchgoers, more strongly agreed He sinned than strongly disagreed.
  • By a nearly 2-to-1 margin, Americans are more likely to firmly believe the Holy Spirit is merely a symbol than to strongly affirm the Holy Spirit as a living entity.

         On the issue of the sanctity of life, something the Bible addresses with clarity, only 1 in 4 adults (27%) believes human life is sacred. An equal share says human life has no intrinsic value. A majority of Americans (52%) consider abortion morally acceptable—and only 1 in 3 adults (33%) describes themselves as passionately pro-life. Most alarming is that just 44% of theologically identified born-again Christians, those who believe they will go to Heaven when they die because they have confessed their sins and accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior, believe human life is sacred.

         The results should concern us as followers of Christ.  Do we know what we believe and why we believe it?  Dr. Barna has said:

“Embarrassingly few self-described Christians have either studied or reflected on their alleged faith substantially enough to develop genuine, deeply-held biblical convictions and commitments. The data reveals that to millions of self-identified Christians, the Christian faith is not a Bible-based faith. That alleviates the need to know and relate their life to scriptural principles and laws.”

         This data underscores the need to know and apply the Word of God now, as never before.

         Those are my thoughts. I’m Janet Parshall.