What are believers believing exactly?
It turns out that 61 percent of Christians who attend church at least once a month and say their faith is very important to their lives and self-identify as a Christian also believe some tenets of New Age religions. Jeff Meyers of Summit Ministries, which, along with the American Faith and Culture Institute, put the numbers together, says this is a serious problem.
“The chickens have come home to roost, so to speak,” he comments. “It’s not just that they don’t have a biblical worldview; it’s that they’ve picked up other world views from the culture around them.”
54 percent of practicing Christians resonate with post-modern views, almost four in ten have some Muslim sympathies, more than a third accept Marxist ideas, and 29 percent believe ideas based on secularism.
Myers says many Christians corrupt their biblical worldview after having well-meaning conversations with their non-Christian friends.
“We’re motivated to try to want to make them feel OK about what they believe … and a lot of times we end up then just assuming that certain beliefs are probably OK; they’re not really that bad, and so they must be alright,” Meyers relays. “And then Christians end up being very confused about what they themselves believe.”
Of course that does not mean believers are not supposed to have non-Christian friends or are to avoid spiritual things with them, adds worldview expert Alex McFarland.
“All of this just points to our need, our urgent need to return to the knowledge of God’s Word and the conviction that the Bible indeed is the authority for truth and life,” he says.
He believes it is up to pastors, parents, and Christian community leaders to jealously guard the truth of that gospel.
“It’s in the home; it’s in the church; it’s in the community. That’s how the faith is passed on. We need Godly homes. We need churches where the faith is passed on to the upcoming generation,” McFarland concludes.
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