My Jaw Hit The Floor
I was totally and completely - truly - SHOCKED. Go read this and see if it doesn't have you saying "Are you SERIOUS?? Is this POSSIBLE??" There is something desperately and terrifyingly wrong with Christianity in this age, if this research is indeed factual (and since I've seen no contraindication, nor even nay-sayers to this study, I will assume that it is an honest and scientifically accurate body of work).
This is sad... but more so, this is scary. I mean, way down in the bones, keep you up at night scary -- or at least it should be. It is to me. You mean to tell me that, on average, only NINE PERCENT of born-again Christians have a Biblical worldview?
For the sake of those readers pressed for time and unable to read the article at the moment, I'll quote the definition of "Biblical worldview" used for this study:
For the purposes of the research, a biblical worldview was defined as believing that absolute moral truths exist; that such truth is defined by the Bible; and firm belief in six specific religious views. Those views were that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life; God is the all-powerful and all-knowing Creator of the universe and He stills rules it today; salvation is a gift from God and cannot be earned; Satan is real; a Christian has a responsibility to share their faith in Christ with other people; and the Bible is accurate in all of its teachings.
What happened?? What happened to Christianity? What happened to believing the Bible? Isn't that some sort of peripheral requirement to Christianity? (I'll post on that another time---I'm too worked up to focus on my explanation of that right now)
People, what is going on?? This is probably one of the most disturbing things my mind has ever taken in.
I'm going to have to pretty much stop there, because I'm still trying to wrap my mind around that, and figure out how it could possibly be... but I did want to let you know on a sidenote that this post has prompted some discussions on other blogs... when I post again I'll try to link some of the ones I found. It's started some great discussions about how we've moved away from discipleship. That's a very good notion, and I think hits a lot of the nails in this issue on the head, but not all. Ok, I'm going to go pray for a while now... Man, I just don't want to believe this... Wow, that's some serious stuff.
- Jack -
