Are “moral relativism” and “pluralistic theology” to blame?
Barna makes a remarkably broad assertion that creeping moral decay and wimpy theology are to blame for the slide in “Bible-believing” teenagers. There’s little evidence to pinpoint these two “usual suspects” as the only guilty parties. But in a Barna survey of teenagers who were asked to report on the “outcomes” of their church experiences when they were children, the lowest-scoring outcome was “understanding enough of the Bible so that every decision you make is based on biblical principles.” Barna says that only half (53%) of churched young people say, as children, they learned to base every decision on the Bible. I teach an adult Sunday school class, and my guess is that half of the people in my class are still struggling to understand the Bible well enough to apply its wisdom to “every decision” they make. The point is that some of these “Bible-believing” standards are ridiculous when you consider how they’re applied to children, including teenagers. ♦ Rick Lawrence has been editor
