I was raised in a Christian affected home and became unchristian. I was taught creation and became an evolutionist. I was sent to a Christian school and was taught lessons from the Bible, but I rejected God and the Bible. What happened to me, is happening to many youth coming out of conservative, traditional American homes. Christian youth go to college and convert to humanism, even becoming hostile to Christianity, many become reprobate in their values. What went wrong? In the words of Francis Shaffer, I “caught” my conservative values like people catch chicken pox. What this means is that the values I held had no foundation on which to rest and no roots to anchor those values into my soul in order to resist scrutiny, challenge, and criticism. I was just a reed, or more accurately a weed, blowing in the wind. This is characteristic of most people. The tragedy of this is that the majority of youth coming out of conservative, traditional American homes are vulnerable and easy prey for liberal predators because they lack moral roots. What I mean by this is that most conservatives “like” the traditional values of America because it makes them “feel” good, they “believe” these values are good for society, these values may be beneficial for personal political gain or social advantage. This is shallow conservatism and it thrives only when expedient. Such shallow values are easily discarded in favor of something else that promises to bring greater advantage or pleasure. Such shallow conservatism is difficult to defend under rational attack and criticism. It fails to secure a future in sustaining itself as a moral compass through moral storms. Such conservatism is in fact humanistic. Humanism simply defined is any human derived idea or value. This is in contrast to Biblical derived morality whereby values are determined by, “Thus saith the Lord.” It should not surprise us that God has good ideas and those good ideas bring great personal satisfaction and fulfillment as well as societal order, peace, safety, and benefit. In addition, because these ideas are God’s ideas, they can be scientifically shown to be beneficial for the individual, families, and society. However, it is possible and a fact that many people adhere to traditional, conservative American values not because of “Thus saith the Lord,” but because they have personally concluded that it is better to live in a society that promotes honesty, fairness, fidelity, and family. Reference to the Bible for such values is nothing more than a token of religious confirmation of personally preferred values rather than the reason for values. Unlike a humanistic conservative, a Biblical conservative is rooted in an unchanging absolute authority. Whereas the conservative humanist uses the Bible when it is convenient and expedient, the Biblical conservative appeals to the Bible for his values whether it is convenient or not. Herein is the problem with most conservatism today. “I believe in the Bible as long as it makes sense to me. I believe in the Bible as long as it does not offend my friends. I believe in the Bible as long as it does not interfere with my personal agenda in life.” This shallow conservatism does not and cannot prepare youth to withstand the attack of liberalism and humanism. For example, the Bible says “In the beginning God created….” “In six days God created the heavens and the earth and all that therein is.” In the Bible we receive the ten commandments. We also learn that marriage between one man and one woman is good and morally right. But in your typical college classroom, these values and ideas are criticized as being superstitious, unscientific, and narrow-minded. Students are challenged to give a reason for why they believe these things. Most have no answers to give. But the professor does. The first day of class in college, I was challenged with the question of why people marry. When someone said because the Bible says so, the teacher pointed out that it was just a book written by men. Why rely on someone else to tell you how to think? When someone said, because our parents taught us marriage is right. The teacher asked whether our parents were always right? So then, why rely on your parents to tell you how to think? For the next two weeks every moral principle was attacked. The Bible, my parents, society, and friends were all criticized as fallible, irrational, misguided sources of moral values? I was weaned from third party authority to self-authority. I was taught to be my own person, to set my own standard of right and wrong, to establish myself as the final authority. I alone had the right to determine right and wrong for myself. I was liberated from other standards. The teacher had reasons not to trust the Bible, not to trust our parents, and not to trust religious leaders. I and everyone around me had no reasons to believe in the values we were raised on. We just believed. No reasons were needed, we just believed. For many, they learn not to ask questions but rather just believe. Thus, in our culture, youth are ill equipped to defend their values and most importantly their authority for such values. They are raised in church and a conservative family but return from college agnostic or atheist or reprobate and hostile toward Christian values. Why? They were ill-equipped to survive in a culture that attacks and undermines their authority. The bottom line – they have no reason to believe. For this reason, I train students in principles of Biblical apologetics. Specifically, I give them reasons to believe that the Bible is indeed the Word of God and a reliable authority upon which to base their ideas. I give them reasons to yield to the authority of Scriptures rather than to themselves. I equip them with scientific and historical information that makes them competitive in the clash of world view warfare. I teach them to speak ‘humanese,’ to speak the language of the contemporary culture, to understand the Biblical difference between faith and science. I teach them how to demonstrate the fallibility and credibility of world views by answering four fundamental questions. Through a systematic study of reasons to believe in the Biblical world view, students’ eyes are opened, they see the world like they have never seen it before. Light bulbs flash in their minds, and ideas grab their imaginations. The Bible becomes relevant, reliable, trustworthy, and authoritative. The results have been rewarding. Audrey Saldivar, philosophy major at the University of Arkansas, attended our program prior to attending the University and told me that without this training her faith would have been severely shaken. She wonders if she could have survived. Crystal Purvis shared with our group during graduation ceremonies two years ago that she had been wavering in her faith and compromising her values. But learning reasons to believe, those values her parents taught her were now her values, they were a part of her personal convictions, and she was ready to live by those values. Josh Crawford and Matthew Foster both develop a craving to be students of the Word. Marian Ward, as a senior high student of Santa Fe, TX attended LTIA wrote me a letter shortly after her ordeal over prayer at the football game. She said LTIA prepared her to stand up for her right and freedom of speech and for the numerous interviews with the media including Good Morning America. As a former atheist, I was an evolutionist, I was a humanist, and I know the need this culture has for good answers to serious questions. I was brought me around because of a meeting with someone who gave me good reasons to believe: reasons to believe that the Bible was right. Because of those reasons, I eventually rejected humanism, evolution, and atheism. Because of those reasons, there are students who are resisting the liberal agenda and hostile attacks on what we call conservative, traditional American values. Because of those reason, there are youth who will return home from college with the same values they left with. Because of those reasons, there are youth who will become community leaders, politicians, lawyers, journalists, and teachers with a vision to share those values. |
