I was reading an article written by Josh McDowell in a Christian Counseling Today magazine recently. In the article it talked about how what teens that are active in the church and grow up in Christian homes believe. Many teens that are involved in youth groups, Sunday School, and other areas in church have very distorted beliefs about Christianity. Not just different denominational beliefs, but distorted beliefs about the Bible and God, the core issues. McDowell used research from the Barna Group, “Third Millennium Teens,” and shows some of the findings of the research in three different areas: God, Truth, and Reality.
The first area is God. This comes from an actual youth group from a Bible Church in Illinois. What do kids think about God? “God is like my grandfather, He is there, but I never see Him”. “God is an evil being who wants to punish me all the time.” Someone else said, “I think you are all right, because that is what you really believe.” All the youth agreed that God is whatever works for you.
Some more information about the Third Millennium Teens study:
80% of teens surveyed believe that God created the universe. 84% said that God is personally involved in people’s lives. Yet, 63% believe that Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, Jews, and all other people pray to the same god. 87% believe that Jesus was a real person who came to earth. 78% believe He was born to a virgin. However, 46% believed that He committed sins. 51% said He died and did NOT rise from the dead. 48% said that it doesn’t matter what religious faith you associate with, they all have the same principles and truth. 58% said that all religious faiths teach equally valid truths.
This study clearly shows that nearly 2/3 of Christian teens say there is no way to tell which religion is true. Their view of God is so distorted that they are not convinced that the Jesus of the Bible is the way, the truth, and the life.
The second area is Truth. I have heard kids say this in our youth group all the time, in fact I think every single youth has said this. When I ask someone what a verse means, almost all the time, they will respond with “What this verse means to me is . . .” What does that mean? Well, it means that they are looking not into the text, but into themselves for answers. Now, I realize that probably most of the time, they mean something like “I think it means…” and are simply wrestling with what the text is truly saying. But, how far do you go with that statement? If I ask a kid about drinking under the age, they may say, “Well, I think it is wrong for me to drink under age.” Ask about something even more Biblically based, like premarital sex. “Well, it is wrong for me to have sex before marriage, because I think it is against the Bible.” Okay, umm, what about Joe down the street? Is it wrong for him? What does this mean as a whole? Why are kids saying these “. . . wrong for me” and “it means to me . . .” phrases? Teens have been conditioned to believe that truth is not true until they choose to believe it. This explains why 81% of teens claim that all truth is relative to the individual and his/her circumstances. Andy Crouch says, “The historical truths of a biblical book is not the burning issue, but rather how the Scripture speaks to their situation.” So in other words, the fact of whether or not the Bible is legit isn’t the argument for teens, it is how it lines up with their situations and circumstances. They will use parts of this passage and parts of another to make a big pile of various Scriptures that they think fit them at that point in their lives.
The third area is Reality. 72% of teens believe that you can tell if something is morally or ethically right for you by whether or not it works in your life. Is it okay to cheat on a test if it makes you get into the college you want to get into? Is it okay to steal something if it makes your life easier? Is it okay to lie to a friend to avoid an argument? Many kids think that if it works right now, then yes, it would be right. That attitude doesn’t work in life, there are consequences to every thing that we do. God’s absolute ways are what works. His ways protect us and give us blessings. If you don’t follow God’s ways for this or that, there will be consequences and it will lead you down the wrong path, a path towards destruction.
So how do we as Bible believing Christians with a Biblical worldview help teens who have these beliefs? How do we share with them that truth is not relative, but rather absolute? How can we as a church help them?
The Crisis of Belief: What Teens Believe, by Josh D. McDowell, Christian Counseling Today Vol. 16, No. 3.
Barna Research Group, “Third Millenium Teens”
