More Evidence That We’re Losing Our Young People

Christians need to be doing much more to rescue our children from the culture—a culture that continues to erode the authority of God’s Word.  Our theme for AiG this year is “Standing Our Ground, Rescuing Our Kids” (Galatians 1:4). The urgency of this message—one that I’ve been giving for over 30 years—relates to a sobering study from Barna Research and the American Bible Society.

Recently, the Religion News Service reported the results of Barna’s annual study on the “State of the Bible.” The results are disheartening, but they also reveal why gospel-spreading ministries like Answers in Genesis and the Creation Museum are so desperately needed today. The RNS report explains the results this way:

• The most “engaged” readers — who read the Bible almost daily and see it as sacred — are now matched by “skeptics” who say it’s just a book of stories and advice. Both groups measured 19 percent.
• While the engaged stayed steady since 2011, skeptics grew by 10 percentage points — since the same survey was conducted in 2011.
• Skeptics cut into the number of folks Barna calls “Bible friendly,” those who read the Bible occasionally and see it as inspired by God. The “friendly” demographic fell to 37 percent, down from 45 percent in 2011.
• The percentage of people who view the Bible as sacred has dropped to 79 percent, down from 86 percent in 2011.

Those who are skeptical of the truth of Scripture jumped by 10 points—in just three years! That’s an alarming number, and I believe that one of the main contributors to that jump has to do with compromise in the church on the authority of God’s Word--especially in Genesis. We published the results of our own study (conducted by America’s Research Group) in my coauthored book Already Gone on why we’re losing two-thirds of youth by the time they reach college age. We found that young people are being taught by many church leaders that they can’t trust Genesis 1–11, and they’re developing doubts about the truth of Scripture as early as elementary school.

The drop in those who are, according to Barna’s study, “friendly” to the Bible is another confirmation of how more and more people are doubting the inspiration and authority of Scripture. You see, there are many churches whose leaders teach that Christians can mix millions of years and evolutionary ideas with Scripture. And that’s a step on the slippery road to unbelief because it teaches young people to doubt the truth of Genesis—and consequently they may go on to doubt the whole of Scripture, including the gospel! Once the door is unlocked to add man’s ideas (like evolution and millions of years) into the Bible, then those who have been taught this compromise increasingly take more of man’s ideas and add them to Scripture (e.g., reinterpreting what marriage is, for instance). Thus, fallible man becomes the authority—not God! Really, it is man doing what the serpent told Eve: “For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5).

Our sin nature is such that we want to be our own God instead of being submissive to the one true God!  Sadly, in our era, evolutionary ideas have been used to generate doubt and unbelief in this and coming generations—resulting in many walking away from God’s Word as truth.

I encourage you, if you haven’t read Already Gone, to order it from our online store today!

We’re called to raise our children in the Word of God, and to share the gospel with unbelievers. Equip yourself to do just that with the many free articles on answersingenesis.org and the great resources in our online store. Let’s capture the hearts and minds of our children for the Lord, before it’s too late!

And don’t forget to do your best to bring as many kids as possible to the Creation Museum this year for our kids free program. This is all a part of AiG helping to rescue kids from this secularized culture that is increasingly antagonistic to Christianity.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken

This post was written with the assistance of Steve Golden.