Who’s Minding the Children?

Many times as I scanned the attendees, you could see a stiffening of a husband’s back while his wife’s face became overcome with grief. They were taking it personally, undoubtedly because they had experienced a child “fall away from the faith,” so to speak.

That isn’t surprising, because 70% is a big number. And it’s probably why the couple two rows over, and two rows down, and the other couple sitting across the aisle from them were often having the same reaction. The sad fact is, the Christian church has been bleeding its young people out of the church at catastrophic rates for decades…

We Just Don’t Know What Happened to Little Johnny!

Sometimes, after I was done speaking, folks would want to engage me in private conversation and tell me their experience. It often had a very similar outline. Their son/daughter had been raised in a godly environment, loved going to youth group, reading the Bible, and attending church. They recalled an alter call where their nine-year-old child went forward and “gave their heart to Jesus,” and they went home and celebrated the event with such joy!

But now Johnny is 17, he’s got blue hair, his favorite band is Marilyn Manson, and his face looks like it got caught in a staple gun with so much steel hanging out of it. And we just don’t know what happened!

OK, maybe that was a tad hyperbolic, but you get the gist. Everything seemed to be just fine and then . . . click! All of a sudden there was resistance: “I don’t want to go to church!” “You’re forcing me!” “Not everybody thinks like YOU do, Mom and Dad!” This is certainly the case here in Canada. There aren’t many Christians here percentage-wise at all here, especially ones who stand on the authority of the Word of God without compromise.

So what happened? Well even with all of the wide variety of personalities, situations, and circumstances, it’s actually quite easy to figure out:

A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher. (Luke 6:40 ESV, emphasis mine)

Now there’s a big clue. Who specifically is teaching the vast majority of children from Christian homes educated in the state-run schools they attend, especially at the higher levels of learning when they are “fully trained”?

Well, author Vox Day’s 2008 study on atheism, The Irrational Atheist, contains the following quotes:

A 2006 paper by Neil Gross of Harvard and Solon Simmons of George Mason University reported that 72.9 percent of the Professors they polled described the Bible as “an ancient book of fables, legends, history and moral precepts”1

Now if that’s true (that roughly 70% of University Professors are atheistic in their thinking—or even 50%), then what worldview are they likely imparting to their students? Considering that any one educator can affect thousands of students during their career, this is important to think through because the very Word of God says they will become like them (at least to some degree)!

Firstly, because they have to have a way to explain their existence without God, all thinking atheists are evolutionists, and evolution is taught as fact in all Western state-run school systems. So quite literally, the bedrock of atheism is taught as fact/science in the Western education system, and the majority of “higher” educators are themselves atheists. What’s the result? Atheists teaching atheism to produce more atheists.

Don’t believe it? Several studies have shown that this current generation (Gen Z) is the most atheistic in outlook of any generation we’ve seen in modern times. Even among those who don’t fully succumb and maintain some semblance of “faith,” they are most often compromised, trying to somehow make the story of evolution fit with the Bible (but it doesn’t).

And as the story of evolution is the most antithetical worldview to the Christian faith, those that have been immersed in it often seem almost immunized against the gospel message.

Personal Experience

I distinctly remember (and often share with church audiences) two incidents in my own life that highlighted this. The first was an incident that took place years ago “when I was meeting a pastor friend of mine at a coffee shop. I had arrived early and so was working on my laptop when a well-dressed gentlemen approached me and asked if I was so and so (he was meeting a client he had never seen face-to-face before).”2

“I explained I wasn’t the person he was meeting and we struck up a conversation. He asked me what I did and I told him I was a youth pastor. He never blinked an eye and said that was great. He was very friendly and we continued talking about various subjects until finally he asked what I was working at on my computer. I told him I was working on an article debunking the story of evolution.”3

“All of a sudden he sat very upright, his expression became very serious (almost hostile) and he challenged ‘Well what about carbon dating!?’”4

“I have to admit I was taken aback at his change in his countenance and attitude, as well as the specificity and choice of question he chose to lead with. Why had he not reacted when I told him I was a youth pastor? Likely because it didn’t overly challenge his belief system. He knew that there were ‘religious people’ in the world and probably thought that I was helping young people with moral teaching, etc.”5

“But when I told him I did not believe in evolution it challenged his worldview directly and he responded with something he thought was solid evidence that backed his position; C14 dating (supposedly showing the earth is older than the Bible says it is).”6 Essentially, though I hadn’t meant to be provocative, by stating I didn’t believe in his belief about our ultimate origins, I had kicked him right in the worldview.

Dinosaurs and the Gospel?

Another time occurred “when I was out with one of Edin’s teams [the gospel outreach teams from my local church] evangelizing on the streets of London, Ontario. The group of four I was with were passing out tracts when we came upon two men at a bus stop”7 (who couldn’t run away without missing their ride), and “Edin [our team leader] began to share the Gospel with one of them.”8 While one fellow just turned away, not listening at all, the other fellow “listened impatiently to the most important message any human could ever hear.”9

“Finally [after an entire gospel presentation] when he could get a word in edgewise he blurted out ‘OK! What do you people believe about dinosaurs!?’ Our group seemed a little dumbfounded for a second.”10

“I started to explain that dinosaurs were a great way of confirming the truth of the Bible. I explained soft tissue, red blood cells and even fragments of DNA had been found in dinosaur bones, which was strong evidence that they died just a short while ago, not millions of years ago. His demeanor changed, he looked puzzeled and he started to comment when unfortunately his bus came and our conversation ended.”11 But the dramatic change from boredom to engaged was profound.

Why the Change?

“Now think about it. Why was this person impatient and not listening to the Gospel message?”12 He was bored, unengaged, and impatient. “Why was his ‘big question’ about dinosaurs when the topic being discussed was sin, salvation etc? Likely because he’d been taught about evolvution occurring over millions of years.”13 This meant in his mind creation isn’t true, which means the Bible can’t be trusted! So why are these Christians telling me this story about some dead guy that came back to life, based on some fairy tale?

“This [the story of evolution] is a replacement for the Creator God of the Bible, so all of the words [in the gospel presentation] seemed meaningless to him in light of what he had come to believe. Dinosaurs are evolution’s poster boys and so he brought up what he thought was an ace card to trump the Christians, probably believing that we wouldn’t have cogent answers,”14 which would justify his unbelief.

Don’t Underestimate the Power of Media

Another powerful “teacher” of our youth is the faceless, nameless megalithic entity we’ll simply call media. News shows, movies, video games, etc. almost always portray a reality devoid of anything reflecting the things of God and His Word. This hit home with me years ago when I was relaxing one afternoon watching an episode of Star Trek. My youngest daughter (likely around six at the time) walked in and sat down with me. After watching with me for about five minutes, she looked at me and said something very profound.

She turned and pointed at the TV and said, “So God’s not in this?” It was a gut punch I’ll never forget because her unfiltered mind had nailed it. Most entertainment assumes God doesn’t exist and has nothing to do with anything except perhaps as some dusty, discarded, primitive belief system from the past.

In an age where media is consumed faster than dough at a pizza party, we need to recognize there’s a tremendous amount of messaging going into children’s minds that stands in opposition to the truth of God’s Word. Much of it is more passive, but much is definitely, purposefully driven by the ideology of those who wish to push a Godless society. As Richard Rorty, the former Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University and self-proclaimed postmodernist, once said,

The fundamentalist parents of our fundamentalist students think that the entire “American liberal establishment” is engaged in a conspiracy. The parents have a point . . . [W]e do our best to convince these students of the benefits of secularization. So we are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than discussable.15

What’s Science Got to Do with It?

That is what educators have done. They have made belief in the Bible in general (and a literal Genesis specifically) seem “silly” to most. Hence the mocking questions Christians often hear: “You don’t believe in a talking snake, do you? You can’t believe all of the races only came from 2 people? You think that dinosaurs and people co-existed, that the Flintstones was a documentary? You believe in a Jewish zombie that saves people from hell?” Har hardy har-har! Silly Christians!

Answers in Genesis has been alerting Christian parents for years now to the dangers of the teaching of materialistic naturalism to children. And we’ve cited studies done by credible evangelical statisticians showing the catastrophic amount of young people falling away because of the faith-killing effect the story of evolution has had on the next generation.

And a comprehensive study called the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) headed up by Christian Smith, Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame, further supports what we’ve been saying.

“Conducted over a 16 year time period (1999–2015), the NSYR is the most extensive sociological project on youth and religion ever undertaken. Sampling over 2,000 13–17 year olds from all over the US, it interacted and collected data on participants in a variety of ways including ongoing, extensive, personal interviews. The study started in their teens and lasted into their mid to late 20s, asking in-depth questions regarding faith, spirituality, family, moral behaviour etc.”16

“The voluminous quantity of data recorded and analysed by the NSYR produced numerous reports, articles, books and multimedia presentations from their responses.”17

“In an online video explaining the NSYR’s findings titled ‘How American Youth (Mis)Understand Science and Religion,’ Professor Smith specifically addresses how the topic of ‘science’ affects youth in America. He explains his research indicates that seven out of ten college-age emerging adults believe there is a conflict between science and religion and that religion is ‘always the loser.’”18 19

“However, his research shows these conclusions were reached earlier on in life. He says by age thirteen, seventy percent of youth from all Christian denominations indicate they ‘strongly agree’ that ‘The teachings of science and religion often ultimately conflict with each other.’”20 21

One conclusion he makes is this:

Nearly all American youth associate “science” with “evidence” and “proof,” but associate religion with “blind faith” and private, subjective opinion.22

Of course, “in Smith’s presentation, it is interesting to note tha there is no reference to the important differentiation made between operational and historical science [but then again most secular educators don’t either]. So, what Smith is referring to is actually not a conflict between ‘science’ and ‘religion,’ but the manufactured evolutionary ‘history’ contrasted with true Biblical history. By ‘science,’ he is not referring to chemistry, biology, etc.”23

And “this real conflict is reflected in a quote Smith uses in his presentation from a NSYR student participant”24:

I mean there is proven [scientific] fact and then there is what’s written in the Bible—and they don’t match up. So it’s kind of whatever you wanna believe; there’s fact and there’s a book, and some people just don’t wanna believe the truth [of science].25

So a crucial point that Answers in Genesis has been making for years is that young people need creation apologetics training from very early on, because those who do not get answers from an early age are often extremely vulnerable to apostasy.

“The data is in from multiple sources and it is conclusive. Young people from Christian homes that attend state run schools already believe ‘scientific facts disagree with religion’ by the end of junior high/beginning of high school level and so and are ‘already gone’ before they even enter College/University. Overwhelmingly these people cite ‘science’ (read evolution) as the reason they don’t believe the Bible. The vast majority never received effective teaching on creation apologetics.”26

So be wise with those who are teaching your children, and supply a steady antidote of God’s Word and a solid apologetic understanding of it for the spiritual health of your children. As scripture says,

You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. (Deuteronomy 11:19)