April 15, 2015

The results of a survey by YouGov, released on February 12th shows that as many as a third of all Britons do not believe in God or any kind of higher power. Among 18-24 year-olds the proportion of people who denied belief in God rose to 46 percent.

PARENTS HEART-BROKEN

For several decades it has been clear that more and more young people who were brought up in the Church are leaving it. And a large precentage of young people who have had no Christian background are rejecting the moral, Biblically-based values which have been the foundation of our society for generations. Many Christian parents have been heart-broken to see their children drift away, and there has been endless discussion about how to stop this happening.

  There is a reason which many within the Church are unwilling to face: the uncritical promotion of the theory of evolution in our schools. Recently, the Department of Education, caving in to pressure from humanists, ruled that even Christian schools are not allowed to teach any alternative to evolution in science classes. A directive issued last June prohibits the teaching of "any doctrine or theory which holds that natural biological processes cannot account for the history, diversity, and complexity of life on earth.” Evolution has become a dogma that can’t be questioned, and its many scientific flaws can’t even be discussed. A 2012 newsaper article revealed the hypocrisy of such thinking: “Real Education is about open-ended questioning and challenging the mind. … Blinkered, limited, propagandist, religious thinking attempts to hold back or stop that process.1   The uncritical promotion of evolution is the very opposite of “open-ended questioning.” To quote DrMichael Ruse: “It has become an alternative religion, as Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion—a fully-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality.”2  So why do so many Christians allow their children to be robbed of their faith by a philosophy dressed up in scientific clothes?

NEED TO ANSWER OBJECTIONS

Why is it acceptable to teach children they evolved from slime through millions of years of chance mutations, but harmful to tell them they are created in God’s image? This is all part of a vigorous campaign to secularise our educational system. It seems quite clear that evolutionary teaching is causing the younger generation to embrace atheism, and the Church needs to wake up to this fact before it’s too late! Although conversion is a work of the Holy Spirit, Christians — especially the young — need to know how to defend their faith, and answer the objections of sceptics. This must include the truth of creation, which is the most-often attacked aspect of our faith today.

  When a man asked Jesus what the greatest commandment was, He replied, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” (Mark 12: 30) Here, Jesus added the words “with all your mind” to the original quote from Deuteronomy 6, emphasising that Christian belief is not anti-intellectual.

 Some have suggested that young people are turned off by outmoded styles of worship. This may well be part of the problem, and  modern music and worship styles certainly have their part to play. However, unless young people find the Christian faith intellectually satisfying, modern music is unlikely to keep them, and they will not be equipped to defend their faith in the face of the growing secular onslaught we are facing.

  1. The Independent 20th July 2012
  2. National Post USA(2000)

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