Think Like Jesus - Part 1 of 3

This transcript has been adapted from the attached audio. It may not be in its final form and may be updated.

LAND: As someone who has had his hand on the pulse of the church in America for many years, George, what is your greatest concern?

BARNA: Well, it is not easy to say this is the one thing, but I think if I had to prioritize the various concerns that I have, probably the greatest one would be that in this country, cheap grace reins. What we have is so many millions of individuals who would say that they have turned their life over to Christ and who would say that they believe that when they die they are going to heaven because they confessed their sins and accepted Jesus as their Savior and yet, when you observe and you study, you evaluate their life, when you get inside their heads and their hearts in terms of what they believe and how they live and why they live that way, the thing that troubles me the most is that we find that the vast majority of believers, much less the rest of the country, do not have a biblical worldview and without that kind of worldview, the chances of you living a life that not only reflects the spiritual transformation that should be taking place in your life, but that really honors and glorifies God, is very, very slim. I think a large part of the reason for why America struggles today is because the church is not really being the church. And when I say “the church” I mean the accumulation of all believers in this country. We’ve got people who say, “Yep, Jesus has let me in to the kingdom, He’s let me in to heaven because of what he did for me on the cross and I’m happy to take that gift,” but we’re not really going through that transformation process, the renewing of our mind that Paul talks about in Romans 12. Consequently, our entire culture struggles and suffers.

LAND: Well, you have just cited my favorite two verses from my favorite apostle in my favorite book of the Bible. Romans 12: 1-2, “I beseech you, therefore, brethren by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, which is your reasonable service. Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.” That word for renewing there and transformed is literally the word for metamorphosis. To have a metamorphosis of your mind so that you may discover what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. The term “worldview” has become almost a buzz word these days. For the sake of our listeners who may not be familiar with it or how you are using it, what is a biblical worldview?

BARNA: I guess I would describe it as a way of experiencing and interpreting and responding to reality in harmony with biblical principles and perspectives. The whole idea of a worldview is that it is how you understand the world and how you deal with the world where we are constantly making decisions and choices and everyone of those choices comes from our basis of what we believe to be right or wrong, what we believe to be valuable, what we believe to be meaningful and purposeful and it is the worldview that we possess that gives us that perspective on what is right or wrong or valuable and so forth. Every person on the face of the earth has a worldview, not everybody has a biblical worldview. In fact, based on our research, I would contend that most Americans, in fact, most born-again Christians do not have a biblical worldview. Our research shows that currently only about 9% of the born-again adults and only about 2% of the born again teenagers in this country have a biblical worldview and, to me, that’s critical, that’s huge, because this essentially is your lens on reality—it is how you understand and respond to life. If you don’t see it in relationship to God’s principles and perspectives that He gave us in order that we would live an appropriate and purposeful life, there is going to be all kinds of problems.

LAND: Your research also shows that among born-again adults, only about one-quarter make their moral and ethical choices on the basis of the Bible, or what they think is the Bible. I mean, you know, so even if they are, a lot of them don’t have a biblical worldview, but even if they think they have one, only about a quarter are making their moral and ethical choices with a thought that the Bible might have something important to say about those choices.

BARNA: Yes, it is so true. What we find is that Americans have become very spiritually, morally, and intellectually lazy, and what we do now is we tend to make decisions on the basis of our feelings, on the basis of what other people expect of us, on the basis of what we’ve seen other people do, but we don’t tend to go back and say, “But wait a minute; let’s go back to the source of all truth and determine based on that source of truth, what’s the appropriate thing to look at.” You know, when I talk about whether or not people have a biblical worldview, it is also important to understand how we measure that, and essentially, we look at three things. Do you believe that there is such a thing as absolute moral truth? Most Americans do not believe that that exists. Secondly, what do you believe is the source of truth, and, of course, to have a biblical worldview, it would have to be the Bible, but most people do not perceive the Bible to be the source of moral truth. And then, what do you believe on certain key elements. When we measure this, we look at seven important belief elements. You know, people’s perspective of God, their perception about the Bible, whether or not they think they have a responsibility to share their faith in Jesus with others, whether or not a person can earn their way into heaven or if it is just the gift of God through what Christ did for us on the cross, our perspectives about the holiness and the deity of Jesus and whether or not that we even believe that Satan is real. So we look at all of those things and it is on that basis that we come to this conclusion that only 9% of born-again believers have a biblical worldview and I’ll be the first to stand in line and say, “And you know what, that probably over estimates it,” because there are many other elements that we could look at that are part of a biblical worldview that are not included in that framework.

LAND: Well, that’s right. You know, George, I was being interviewed the other day and I was talking to someone about the concept of radical obedience for a Christian—that radical obedience means that if you live a life of radical obedience, you always put the teaching of Jesus first and the priorities are the priorities of Jesus. And the person said, “Well, what do you mean by that?” I said, “Well, you let me see your checkbook for the last three months and you let me see your date book for the last three months, and I’ll tell you what your priorities really are, not what you say they are.”

BARNA: Sure.

LAND: By how you spend your money and how you spend your time. Respond to that.

BARNA: It is absolutely true. I mean, you can talk a much better game than you can live in America. We find that there are tens and tens of millions of people who are church members, tens and tens of millions of people who attend church events. Of course, the Bible is the most widely-owned book in the country, but it is a whole different thing when we interview people and we say, “Well, how many people do you think live in such a way that they could be confused with Jesus?” And we find that people don’t even know how to answer the question. It never occurred to them that somebody could live in such a way that they reflect the ways and the means and the thinking and the values of Jesus Christ. And yet, that’s exactly what we as believers are supposed to be doing. We are supposed to infect the world with the love and the principles and the ways of God so that our entire life is an act of worship to him. And yet, if you were to go out and just ask a hundred people at random in your community, “Who in this community really is Christ like,” most people you will find are going to have a tough time answering that and it is in these very practical kinds of ways that you elude to, your check book, your schedule, who you spend time with, all of those kinds of issues that really get to the heart of the issue.

LAND: So, what is the bottom line bad news here in America?

BARNA: Well, probably a lot of ways of putting it, but I think one simple way that I kind of carry in my mind is, in America we struggle to understand life and to lead a really meaningful life and it is simply because we don’t act like Jesus, but the reason we don’t act like Jesus is because we don’t think like Jesus. The truth of the matter is, what you believe determines who you become. And when we look at what Americans believe, we find that for the most part, they don’t get it, even people who go to church, even many people who read the Bible, the folks who sit there and take notes at sermons, just a lot more confusion than there is in terms of clarity.

LAND: Well, you know it reminds me of what Harry Blamires said many years ago in a book called, The Christian Mind, and he said in effect in America a Christian heart has survived a Christian piety, a Christian devotionalism, but the Christian mind is virtually extinct. And by that he meant, people who have been trained to think Christianly, and that certainly seems to be where the breakdown is, and your research, George, shows a marked difference between born-again people who possess a biblical worldview and those who do not. Tell us about that.

BARNA: You know, it’s one of the biggest gaps we have ever seen in anything that we’ve studied. Let me just give you a few numbers that show that kind of gap. I mean, we know for instance, when you look at believers who have a biblical worldview and compare them to other adults, the individuals with a biblical worldview, are ninety-five times less likely to condone abortion, not 95%, ninety-five times less likely to say abortion is a morally acceptable behavior; eighty times less likely to condone pornography; thirty-one times less likely to condone homosexuality as a morally acceptable behavior. We look at other kinds of behaviors like gambling, people with a biblical worldview are seventeen times less likely to spend any of their money on gambling, and even in terms of beliefs, there are huge differences. People who have a biblical worldview are six times more likely to reject the idea that Satan is just the symbol of evil, that Satan doesn’t actually exist. And, by the way, in America today, most Americans do not believe that Satan is real. Most of them think that Satan is just a symbol of evil. People with a biblical worldview are five times more likely to reject the idea that the Bible, the Koran, and the Book of Mormon all teach the same truths, they just use different expressions and different characters and different situations to teach those truths and principles. Once again, most Americans would contend that the Bible, the Koran, the Book of Mormon or almost any other piece of religious literature you come about, all teach the same things. Most people believe that. It is amazing. We know that people with a biblical worldview are four times more likely than others to reject the notion that if you are a good enough person or if you do enough good things for other people, you can earn your way into heaven, and, once again, by the way, that is the dominant perspective in America, even among church going people. So, out of the biblical worldview is a huge delineator between individuals who really get it and are living and seeing the world differently from the rest of the culture.