I’ve often heard the term “worldview” compared to a pair of glasses—your worldview is the lens that sits right in front of your spiritual eyes and affects the way you see everything. If your glasses are scratched, the whole world will look scratched. If your glasses are smudged, the whole world will look smudged. And if your glasses are pink-tinted, the whole world will look pink. And so, the best way to deal with someone who insists the world is pink is not to endlessly debate back and forth about any particular object whose color you disagree about, but rather to change out their glasses for a pair that lets them see the world as it really is.

But your worldview is similar to your glasses in another way—both require intentional effort to maintain. Give someone a new pair of lenses, and they can quickly become scratched and smudged if they aren’t consciously taken care of and maintained. And in our fallen world, we encounter scratches and smudges in our culture every day.

The same is true of our worldview. Our fundamental beliefs about God, creation, man, sin, redemption, and the trajectory of history all prompt us to bend the information we receive in one way or another. Using the wrong worldview, we’ll see the world in a distorted, discolored, or downright smudgy manner. Using the correct worldview, we’ll see the world clearly as God sees it. But—just like with your physical glasses—merely starting off with a correct worldview does not guarantee a lifetime of wisdom. Your worldview must be guarded against the scratches of half-truths and compromises that will cause it to deteriorate over time. Such seems to be the case in America today.

A recent poll conducted by the Wall Street Journal and the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center (NORC) reveals saddening trends in the American worldview. Although the study was not explicitly a “worldview survey”—it covered a wide variety of topics ranging from the economy to childbearing—a few of the poll’s questions shed light on how Americans’ deep worldview principles have changed over recent years.

Of today’s Americans, only 39% say that religion is very important to them, as opposed to 62% in 1998. Even as recently as 2019, approximately 50% of Americans affirmed this. Further, only 30% of today’s Americans say that having children is very important to them, a sharp decline from 1998’s count of approximately 60%. And since 2019’s percentage was still in the low 40’s, much of this decline appears to have happened just over the last three years. These declining numbers point to a decline in major tenets of the Christian worldview—God is the center of life and the most important focal point of it, and man is called to be fruitful and multiply.

Other factors, which are not as directly tied to one’s spiritual worldview, but important nonetheless, have declined as well: patriotism is “very important” to just under 40% of Americans (as opposed to almost 70% of 1998 America), and community involvement is approaching a meager 20% (contrasting with almost 50% in 1998).

Why are such principles—historically assumed to be “American values”—now on the decline? WSJ offers a possible explanation:

A number of events have shaken and in some ways fractured the nation since the Journal first asked about unifying values, among them the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the financial crisis of 2008 and subsequent economic downturn and the rise of former President Donald Trump.

Well, that seems to be a decent partial explanation, especially for factors such as community involvement in the post-Covid world. However, it’s important not to take such materialistic explanations too far and think that as long as the country is clipping along in relative peace and prosperity, then Americans will begin to seek God again. One of the most repeated messages in the history of the Old Testament is that prosperity is actually a pitfall for godliness—when a nation is prosperous, she tends to forget God, because she assumes He is now unnecessary. And if a nation truly fears God, hardship will prompt her to call on Him in her distress. America’s declining Christian worldview is not merely a product of troublesome times. It is a symptom of spiritual decay.

So what is the spiritual solution? How do you restore something as fundamental as a nation’s worldview? Only the work of the almighty God can do that, but thankfully, God tends to leave the same sorts of fingerprints where He works. Dr. George Barna and Arizona Christian University’s Cultural Research Center have identified seven basic beliefs strongly correlated with a biblical worldview; 80% of adults who adhere to them are classified as having a biblical worldview. As ACU puts it, they are:

1) An orthodox, biblical understanding of God.
2) All human beings are sinful by nature; every choice we make has moral considerations and consequences.
3) Knowing Jesus Christ is the only means to salvation, through our confession of sin and reliance on His forgiveness.
4) The entire Bible is true, reliable, and relevant, making it the best moral guide for every person, in all situations.
5) Absolute moral truth exists—and those truths are defined by God, described in the Bible, and are unchanging across time and cultures.
6) The ultimate purpose of human life is to know, love, and serve God with all your heart, mind, strength, and soul.
7) Success on earth is best understood as consistent obedience to God—in thoughts, words, and actions.

On the one hand, none of these should be surprising. Didn’t I just list 7 biblical teachings? So am I not just basically saying “if you want a biblical worldview, you need to believe the Bible?” In a way, yes—the answer doesn’t get much more simple than that. God offers no substitute for repentance, and He offers no alternative framework for reality than His own inspired Word. If America is going to recover a Christian worldview, it will simply have to start believing the Word of God again, and it doesn’t get much simpler than that.

On the other hand, however, these seven tenets do provide us with a clarified look at the problem we face. The generalized and slightly nebulous question, “how well does my family/community/government believe the Bible?” can mean many different things to many different people. But these seven principles help us examine the specific ways in which our community is falling short, and thus specific directions for preaching the truth to those who need to hear it. Once we identify the individual scratches in a pair of glasses, it’s a lot easier to deal with them.

With these specific cornerstones of a biblical worldview identified, ACU found that only 3% of adults currently adhere to all seven. This means that 97% of adults have a sub-Biblical worldview. We have a lot of work to do.

Earlier this year, a Gallup poll announced that one in six Gen Zers identify as LGBT. That was a significantly higher number than ever reported in any previous years. Then, last month, a new survey released by Arizona Christian University reported that about 39 percent of 18 to 24-year-olds claim the label.

Even granting that polling data should always be carefully studied, and often taken with a grain of salt, that’s a shockingly high number. And, in addition to challenging Christians about how much the culture around them has changed, these numbers also challenge the way people have been taught to think about sexuality and, specifically, cultural assumptions about sexuality.

“Born This Way”

For years, the main idea driving activism around sexual orientation was that gay and lesbian people were “born this way.” Since, went the argument, no one is attracted to someone of the same gender through any fault of their own, we must let them be who they truly are and love who they want to love. And we must, the argument continued, erase any notion that heterosexuality is “normal,” and homosexuality is not.

That idea proved quite persuasive, especially the more it was portrayed in song, film, and television. Millions of dollars went to research looking for the genetic causes of same-sex attraction. Though such causes were never found, professional activists were successful in conflating sexual decisions with already protected classes of race, sex, and disability. Even as it has become more and more obvious that sexual orientation is not fixed, the idea that it is an innate, unchangeable component of identity has already served its purpose, shifting the moral norms of society and establishing this new way of thinking about sexuality. So, today, most Americans either believe that sexual orientation is something not chosen or that it is something that should never be questioned.

The Ever-Growing Acronym

However, polls like this one should make us question what many in our culture now take for granted about sexual orientation. Otherwise, how can the explosion in self-identified LGBTQ youth be explained?

The obvious answer is: it can’t. We either have to keep foolishly pretending that nearly 40 percent of young people have always been gay, lesbian, bisexual, or (especially now) transgender, or we must admit that our ideas about sexuality have consequences for others. After all, it didn’t take long for the other letters in the ever-growing acronym to ride the success of this strategy. So today, anyone who defies traditional “sexual norms” is given elevated moral status, considered “courageous” and experts on all kinds of things, and basically given a free pass not afforded to anyone else. Given the new social climate, is it any wonder young people want to join those ranks, at least on a subconscious level?

As one of my colleagues pointed out recently, a teen who identifies as “bisexual” doesn’t actually have to do anything to gain a status boost. They can keep dating people of the opposite sex or not date at all. They can be sexually active or not. It’s the label that does the magic. It’s no accident that the B and the T in the acronym have seen the most growth.

Choices and Consequences

Even if the social costs of identifying as a sexual minority are lower than ever (and the benefits higher than ever), the consequences for young people are severe. For one thing, young people are constantly taught to see every relationship they have as potentially sexual. Among other things, this robs them of platonic friendships, especially with members of the same sex. C.S. Lewis famously wrote that “few value (friendship) because few experience it.” This has become even more true today for the loneliest generation on record.

To be clear, people’s sexual desires almost never feel “chosen.” Though the research has not fully eliminated any biological or genetic factors in same-sex attraction, there’s no justification for treating it as immutable (much less for treating gender dysphoria that way). However, given all of the cultural pressure to assume such things, it’s clear that merely believing the right things about sexuality is insufficient for eliminating someone’s same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria. To put it differently, this generation has been thoroughly catechized into anthropological confusion, literally changing the definitions of normal and abnormal, of moral and immoral, of who we are and what we do.

The sexual choices people make create, reinforce, and amplify their sexual feelings. It’s a vicious cycle that mirrors the Apostle Paul’s words, “To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.”

Though the Gospel doesn’t promise instantly repaired sexual desires, it does tell us to “be transformed by the renewing of [our] minds.” In a culture obsessed with sex, drowning in loneliness, and careening towards self-harm, it’s good news that renewing our minds is even possible. We must point a generation of confused youth toward the compassion and clarity of this much better story as if their lives depend on it, because they do.

A new poll from Arizona Christian University has some shocking findings regarding the indoctrination of America’s youth. For decades the percent of those who identify with the homosexual lifestyle has consistently been less than 3 percent of the population. However, the LGBT agenda has now thoroughly saturated our nation’s schools, pop culture, media, politics, and society.

According to this new survey, 39 percent of young adults ages 18-24 self-identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or questioning. This result, if anywhere close to accurate, blows holes in the claim that people are born homosexual, (something science has never confirmed.) Clearly, young people are choosing this lifestyle due to cultural conditions and moral anarchy.

One caveat to this poll is that this is a self-identification poll. The researchers note that 33 percent of those who identified as LGBT are actually in opposite-sex relationships. In other words, identifying as LGBT is so culturally supported that many are claiming this label while living in a heterosexual relationship. It is possible that bisexuality has seen a dramatic rise as only 3.7 percent in the poll are exclusively homosexual. If nothing else, sexual confusion is widespread according to these results.   (A recent Gallup poll placed the LGBTQ number at only 5.6 percent.)

No matter the actual numbers, young people following this agenda place themselves at significantly elevated mental health, medical health, and spiritual health risks.  (More than 7 in 10 in the Harvard survey admitted to searching for purpose in their life.  Anxiety and depression levels were also very high, appearing in 40-70 percent of those surveyed.)

Not long ago, I wrote a fact sheet touching on just the tip of the iceberg of the personal dangers of the LGBT lifestyle.  You can read that fact sheet here: “The Dangers of Pride.”

Another fact sheet we have is titled, “Born That Way?” which looks at the science or lack thereof to the claim that homosexuality is inborn.

This poll also found that depending upon the demographic 48-63 percent of these individuals consider themselves spiritual or religious. What does the Bible say about this behavior? Some say it’s OK, others disagree. You can read more on that in our fact sheet HERE.

This article was originally published by AFA of Indiana.