IndexingFaith Podcast - Ep02: Back To School

Summary

We discuss the alarming trend of young people's weak foundation in their Christian Faith and the subsequent cultural issues arising from this, emphasizing the need for Christians to uphold biblical principles while engaging in respectful conversations.

A Barna report reveals that, of Christian teenagers and young adults, only 49% of Christian teens believe Jesus was crucified, and just 44% believe in Jesus' resurrection. Additionally, only 21% believe the Bible is inspired by God and without errors.

We stress the importance of addressing these challenges and equipping youth with solid reasons for their faith and urge parents, pastors, and youth leaders to engage in open dialogues with young people, encouraging them to ask questions and seeking to provide well-reasoned answers.

Transcript

Joel: Hey, everyone, welcome to the Indexing Faith Podcast. I'm Joel Hopkins.

Mackenzie: And I'm Mackenzie Hopkins. We're parents and apologists equipping the body of Christ to win back the culture.

Joel: That's right. We're so glad you joined us today. We've got a very important topic to discuss. And it involves back to school and it involves our youth and our young adults going through middle school, high school, university and all the challenges that they face. Let's dive in.

Mackenzie: Let's do it.

Joel: All right. Well, what we want to do is just kind of start with a little bit of our background. You know, some of you know us, some of you don't. Mackenzie and I both have served for a long time in our church, both in our kids ministry, as well as in our youth and Young adults ministries. And we've noticed a pattern.

And it's not, I think, just us. I think from a lot of the research that Mackenzie has done, a lot of people are noticing a pattern. And that pattern is that our kids do not seem to have the rock solid foundation of faith that certainly that we want them to have. And I think over time, Mackenzie and I've noticed, you know, we've seen kids that we had in kids' church grow up to be in youth group and turn 18.

And, you know, at 18 they're out of the youth group then, but they disappear entirely from church. They stop coming to church. And it's like, what happened? Like, I remember them in kids church. I remember them sitting and listening and answering and knowing the Bible like I remember them in youth group worshiping and praising. And then all of a sudden they're gone.

And it's like, What? What happened? And that's what we want to discuss, because there's definitely some things that we can see have happened, but also there's things that we can do to prevent it from happening in the future.

Mackenzie: Yeah. Our kids and teens and college students especially are facing so much skepticism, even open hostility, which I don't think we had to deal with quite so much when we were younger, just to being a Christian in general and to Christian morals and about God. So, yeah, we have done some research, some polls about Gen Z, and in young adults and teens and Gen Z, specifically between the ages of like 13 to 22 year olds. So we're not talking about like the eight year olds as much in this one.

Joel: Yeah. And so these are stats that we've pulled from Barna Research. So, you know, if you don't know Barna, they're one of the most well-respected research groups in, certainly in the Christian space. And so we got these stats from them. We're going to link to these stats. Some of these are behind like a login wall. But if you don't have an account with Barna, I encourage you to. They've got lots of great resources for pastors, youth pastors, church leaders. So yeah, let's dive in. Which one do you want to start with?

Mackenzie: Okay. Yeah. So one, this is from their open generation, which is what they have labeled Gen Z. And we'll kind of get to a Y leader as a positive and a negative, as I'm sure you can probably guess. I want to start with first, because I think this is kind of shocking. It's actually a conversation we even had like in our youth group with some of our kids before was, 49% of us Christian teens believe that Jesus was crucified.

Joel: So, okay, read that to me again.

Mackenzie: Okay. So only 49% of us, Christian. So not just all teenagers, but Christian teenagers believe Jesus was crucified.

Joel: So.

Mackenzie: Yeah.

Joel: Okay. So I got to say, when Mackenzie shared this stat with me, I almost didn't believe her. Like, I was like, Oh, that's crazy. And like, as I was saying, that's crazy. I'm like, looking it up myself.

Mackenzie: Like, you didn't make eye contact. And I was like, dude, are you hearing me? 49% of Christian teens.

Joel: So we're saying, I mean, let's break that down. Is it less than half? Less than half of Christian youth believe that Jesus rose or was crucified. Like what?

Mackenzie: A lot of the kids I didn't pull, like, the specific numbers for this. A lot of them believe Jesus was a person or have, like, a lot of positive feelings and thoughts or Jesus. They think like he loves them. They like that he loves people. But when it actually comes to one of the actual, core tenets of our faith, that Jesus died and rose again, they don't actually believe.

Joel: You know, it's a big one. So, I mean, I just want to ask you, if you're a pastor, you're watching this. If you're a youth pastor, youth leader, what do you think when you think the stat is in your youth group?

Mackenzie: Yeah.

Joel: Well, like, if you had to put a percentage on it and if you're like me, if you're like Mackenzie, if I was to go ask our senior youth pastor or youth leaders, they would say 100%. Like, how can you, how can you be raised in church and not believe that Jesus was crucified? But here's the deal, fortunately, that's a really easy thing to prove.

You know, that's not even something that you need to take on faith. The eyewitness testimonies that are evident throughout the Gospels, both Tacitus and Josephus, who are extra biblical historians, wrote of the crucifixion of Jesus under Pontius Pilot. So the like, this stat shouldn't even be a stat in the sense of Jesus was crucified. There's no doubt about it.

And the fact that we have teen and college age kids who, you know, at least when when, you know, they were being surveyed are claiming to be Christians, yet they don't believe that Jesus was crucified. This shows me that they have a severe lack of understanding of what it means to be a Christian and what the quartet and some of our Christian faith is that the core tenets of our faith is the deity, the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And every single person who claims to be a Christian needs to hold to that belief.

Mackenzie: That's right. I'm going to read one more that piggybacks off that. And I also do want to mention we have a great article that Joel wrote about the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. If you want kind of an overview, again, like you said, this is one that's really easy to prove. So there shouldn't be one that we're like nail biting over.

Joel: And you can find that article at indexingfaith.org.

Mackenzie: Yeah, thank you. Only 44% of us Christian teens believe Jesus was actually raised from the dead.

Joel: Only 44%. So we're going down in percentage here.

Mackenzie: So even if they believe he was crucified, they might not even…

Joel: Believe that he rose from the dead. Again, these are teens that are claiming to be Christians. I mean, what? What is happening? You know, what are we teaching?

Mackenzie: Yeah. Are we talking about this enough with our kids?

Joel: Exactly. You know this. I mean, when. When we. When we read through this, you know, it just made me think of, you know, Mackenzie now, obviously serving in youth. I'm like, Am I not talking about this enough? Like what? What are we doing in our youth groups? If only 44% of Christian teens believe that Jesus was raised from the dead.

Mackenzie: And and I kind of want to say, like, I mean, very common in youth groups, right? We teach about relationships. We teach about all these things that matter, of course. But maybe it's time we all took a step back and got back to basics.

Joel: Yeah, yeah. Deity, death, resurrection. I mean, these are shocking statistics to me. And I kind of hope they're shocking to you. That should not be expected. And it certainly is not part of God's plan for his church, is that our young adults and our youth age kids would be so wishy washy on these core beliefs.

But hey, you know, we're just where we're raising the alarm, you know, where we're saying, hey, this is something we need to be aware of, but this is not doom and gloom. No, You know, these things are very easy to teach and they're very well received. And so if we just, you know, as as parents, as pastors, as church leaders, as youth leaders, grandparents, grandparents, as if we make a conscious effort to say, hey, you know, we're going to continue to reinforce this in our youth and young adults lives.

You know, I think we're going to see that these stats are going to go up. In a positive way.

Mackenzie: Yeah. We have the benefit of knowing this is happening, so that's great.

Joel: So what else do we have?

Mackenzie: Okay, so I want to jump into the Bible for a minute. I think this is also one that you'll see a lot on the Internet. If you have people trolling you or you read other people's, you know, stories about Christianity, like deconstructing, we have only 21% of Christian teens believe the Bible is the inspired word of God and has no errors.

Joel: 21% less than one in four, less than one in four believe in the infallibility and the inerrancy of Scripture.

Mackenzie: Yeah.

Joel: That again, is shocking. Well, I mean, I guess that one's not shocking given the other two. Like. Surely, if they don't believe Jesus rose from the dead. If they don't believe he even died. Well, certainly they must not believe in the inerrancy of Scripture. And that's, you know, this is a problem.

I mean, we believe that the Bible is the instruction manual for life. It's the instruction manual for living and how to enter into right relationship with God. And it's the story of God's plan of salvation for humanity. And if they don't believe that, they can trust it, if they don't believe that it's reliable. Well, no wonder when they hit 18 and they leave youth group that they leave the church altogether.

Mackenzie: I think part of it is they don't have a full understanding of how to actually read their Bible and how to interpret their Bibles. That's something we're really passionate about talking about, and I think we're really what we're seeing and some of this like data and these numbers specifically, is this partial gospel that's really being taught all over that we can pick and choose the parts that matter to us or don't, and that you can perceive the Bible in one way and I can perceive it in another way. And that's all completely fine. But of course there would be errors if we interpret the Bible differently than each other for sure.

Joel: Absolutely.

Mackenzie: Yeah. Let's kind of dive into more like some cultural issues a little bit.

So only about three in ten. So 29% of Gen Z and that's the youth and the young adults believe that abortion is morally wrong. That is a lower percentage than the millennials before them even.

Joel: Yeah. So we're going we're going in the wrong direction here. Again, I mean, this is one of those things, while not as central as deity, death, and resurrection, the sanctity of life is pretty central and pretty core to the Christian worldview. And if again, our youth and young adults, if they don't have this conviction about that sanctity of life, what does that say for the future generations?

You know, I want our son to grow up in a world where life is respected and, you know, above all else, we save lives. We don't take lives or murder them in the wombs. And if we want future generations to. To enjoy the understanding of that, the sanctity of that life, we need to be teaching that now.

That's not just for general congregations. That's just that's not just for, you know, conservative talk show hosts.

Mackenzie: Right.

Joel: This is something, these are things that we need to be talking about even in our youth groups.

Mackenzie: I think, too, the kids in our youth group are probably interacting even more than you and I right at our age with people who are actually considering having abortions. We're dealing with these issues right now, teen pregnancy. I mean, yeah, that's a very, very real thing. So I just think they need to know they need to be equipped to be able to talk to their friends at school.

Joel: Yeah. I mean, this is a good point in this, you know, move into like this part of the podcast, but like, your young adults, your youth, you know, if you're a parent, your kids, they're being challenged at school. You know, we're calling this the Back to School podcast, right? Because we're trying to raise awareness of the fact that they're being challenged in school.

I was challenged in school. You know, for those of you that don't know why I got into apologetics, you know, if you listen to our first podcast or if you go on to the website, there's a, you know, a summary of why I got into apologetics. But really it was because I got challenged multiple times. And one time it really knocked me down and I said, you know, never again.

I know that God is real. I know that Jesus died on the cross. My faith is not going to be the subject of ridicule or laughter. Like, I'm gonna have good reasons to believe it. But, you know, we send our kids to school and to university to get a good education. But in doing so, we have to recognize that they're going into an arena with many diverse world views.

They're going into an arena where I just saw this stat. Let me see if I can find it. College professors are five times more likely to identify themselves as atheists than the general public. Five times more likely to call themselves an atheist than the general public. Do you not think there's a bias there? Do you not think that while they're learning math, while they're learning?

Well, Lord knows, while they're learning philosophy, they are certainly encountering these atheistic ideas and if they're not, if they're if their foundation is not settled, if they are not well prepared to defend against these atheistic arguments, then we're going to see, you know, they're going to flounder.

Mackenzie: Yeah. Or if these are not conversations they've never had before, even at home, in the safety of home with your parents or in your youth group amongst each other there, that's going to be a lot more intimidating and scary. And they're going to be swayed, swayed a lot easier.

Joel: Here's another one for you. This is from the Free Republic. More than half of all college professors, over 50% of college professors, view evangelical Christian students unfavorably.

Mackenzie: Yeah, I don't actually have the numbers polled for this, but as in general polling like the general public, evangelicals have one of the lowest approval ratings of any other group of people.

Joel: And friends, I mean, this ought not be so. Well, I mean, we know the truth. We know the truth. We just have to get better at articulating it. We have to get better at articulating it, especially to talk to our young people, to our youth and our young adults, because as they go into college, they get challenged.If they have a good defense, they and generations after them can start to even change the culture.

Mackenzie: And just to kind of put a little perspective on this, when we talk about arguments, too, we're not talking about them, just like equipping them so they can win an argument. We want them to win people. This is about winning souls. That's why this matters to us. That's why your kids matter to us. That's why being youth leaders, all these things matter to us. Because these are people going out into the world. We want them to stay, obviously, Christians, but we also want them to be able to reach other people.

Joel: Right. And it's not even about converting everyone now. Certainly, we want everyone to get saved. But, you know, when you go I remember when I was in high school, I had lots of really great conversations with my biology teacher about evolution, about all that stuff. And we had very respectful conversations. He didn't believe, he was an atheist.

I, of course, was a Christian, but I was able to get him to get him to a place where he understood that I had well thought out reasons for believing in God, that I had rational and logical reasons to believe in God. Because guess what, friends, there are plenty of rational and logical reasons or good reasons to believe that there is a creator to the universe.

And so what we want to do, what Mackenzie and I do, what indexingFaith is all about, is inspiring people and giving people confidence that they can engage in these dialogs. And at the very least they can demonstrate to the person they're talking to that they have really good reasons to believe what they believe and that it's not just because the Bible tells me so.

It's not just because, well, I have this warm, fuzzy feeling inside of me and I know that's God - that might be true. But that's not a good reason for someone else to believe. And there are lots of good, good reasons. And I'm going to stop talking before I say reason one more time. But it's true. It is true.

Mackenzie: Okay, so keeping on the kind of cultural statistics train here are roughly half of Gen Z’ers. So 48% say gay and lesbian couples being allowed to marry is good for our society.

Joel: Yeah. Well, we believe as Christians that that marriage is sacred. It's a sacred union. That is something that happens by and through the love of God. And so, again, this is just one of those stats that I just really don't understand. What are we teaching? What are we not teaching is really the right question.

Mackenzie: Next one. This is a lot of numbers and it's something to try to kind of summarize it a little bit. This is about Gen Z’ers in general. They're much more likely than those in older generations to say they personally know someone who prefers to go by gender neutral pronouns. Which this is just kind of leaning into the trans agenda.

This is also something that's a little bit newer. So there's not quite as many numbers yet because we're actually like just living through some of these things right now. But about 35% compared to 25 and less for older generations. So again, this is a number that's moving up.

Joel: Yeah. I mean, again, this is just one of those things that if you hold to the Christian worldview, you're going to have a really hard time reconciling that with the belief that, you know, with the belief in the transgender ideology, you're just going to have a tough time. In the beginning, God created them, male and female, and God doesn't make mistakes.

And so if you claim to be a Christian, if you claim to hold to the Christian worldview, you're going to have a really hard time being consistent with that worldview, but also believing in the transgender ideology.

Mackenzie: And again, these are things that we're studying on purpose to be able to help your kids as they go back to school and help you be able to talk and interact with your kids. These are all issues that are in their face constantly. You cannot turn on a kid's television show aimed at seven and under without intercounty and interacting with some of these ideas.

So yeah, that's why we're bringing like this to you. And then as my last out here, and this is all Americans. So that's I think it makes it even more like, wow. So we live in a time where only 35% of all Americans agree that moral truth is absolute.

Joel: Mm hmm.

Mackenzie: Relativism. We just live in a time of relativism.

Joel: We live in a time, that is your truth versus my truth. And yeah, I was watching something the other day, actually. And two people were kind of debating the subject. And the one guy who is pro objective truth was like, you know, the person asked him like, you know, how do we know that? We can know things? Kind of like some of this like epistemological consideration.

And he said, well, you know, there's things that we have certain proofs for, right? Like, we know two plus two equals four. Like, we know that. And this person interrupted, as he was saying, and said, what do we? Do we know that? How can you prove two plus two equals four? So, I mean, I say this to demonstrate the state that we're in.

People are not only questioning moral truths, they're questioning mathematical facts. So how has our society gotten to this place? As a Christian, you know, in the Christian worldview, we certainly believe that objective morals and values exist. and that we're bound by them. We're bound to live by them, and that any violation of the moral law is a violation of the whole law.

Whether you steal, whether you lie, you violated the moral law. Without objective morals and values then how can we stand? Where is the line? How can we stand on any line and say, well, that's wrong, all right, You know, you shouldn't do that. You ought not to do that in a world where it's just your truth versus my truth, then anything goes, right?

Mackenzie: But we believe 100% in a biblical worldview, that's what we're teaching in our home. That's what I'm sure you guys are teaching in your homes. I do think so. A lot of times, even though we don't mean to, with the influence of culture and even growing up in a world where we're so told not to offend people, that even if we don't really realize it seeps in, that we become timid with sharing it with our kids with that same confidence.

We would like historical facts. We believe that Christianity is objectively true. Our biblical worldview is objectively true, but we teach it in a way that's almost like a hobby. We're like, We think you'd really enjoy it if you gave it a shot, but I think it's really fun. Maybe you could come to church with me, you know, if you want to, instead of with the passion that we should when we know that we have the truth.

Joel: Yeah. You know, that reminds me of something that I heard a while back about the magician, Penn Jillette. Somebody asked him, Do you get mad - because Penn Jillette is, at least he was at the time, I think he still is, you know, a pretty outspoken atheist. And somebody asked him, do you get mad when people come up to you and try to witness to you, try to convert you, you know, try to argue with you? And he said, he had a very mature, what I thought was a very mature response, he said, no, I don't. Like if you genuinely believe that I'm going to hell forever, how dare you not do everything you can to try to stop that from happening, to try and save me.

And so I think that's a good you know, it's a very mature answer. Do we really believe these things? Do we really believe that people that don't accept Christ are condemned to damnation for eternity? If we really believe these things, then it's time for us to get a little more severe.

Mackenzie: And not only for the sake of those outside of our home. That we witnessed too, but really, genuinely when it comes to our own children or the children at our church and our youth group, if we're leaders, right, are we teaching these things with that same passion, or are we just kind of like giving them the information and hoping for the best?

I know that we hear and it's scarier to live in a world where so many people have deconstructed. And I think that's where a lot of the fear comes from, from being too bold about these things, about pushing it on their kids and not letting their kids come to these conclusions on their own. But our job as parents is to come back to some of these like proofs, right? Teach them about Jesus, teaching them that he died and rose again, some of these core tenets of our faith. Let's get back to that and teaching them just as strongly and confidently as we would any other subject.

Joel: That's right. Friends, this doesn't happen by osmosis. Your kids are not going to become Christians and they're not going to become strong and have a strong foundation in the faith by default.

Mackenzie: Right. Or by going to youth group once a week.

Joel: Yeah.This is something that you as the parent have to actively, constantly and very intentionally be sowing into their lives. Allow them to ask questions. Questions like how do we know God exists? That's not a bad question. But there are certainly some bad answers. But, you know, we are very we want to encourage questions both from our both from our son, from those that were in our youth group.

And young adults ask us questions, man, if there's something that you just don't know, that if you really believe that, then give us the opportunity to give you the reasons that you should.

Mackenzie: And here's a little, like, tidbit I think we should do like another episode about this later. But I think - one, family meetings are really important. Again, we have like a very small kid, but to sit down and be like, what are some questions you have to your faith opened that dialog up and once a week at dinner and take out a notebook and be like, I might not be able to answer all these right now, but I'm gonna write them down and seriously study these out for you because I know there's an answer.

Because you can be confident there is one. And write down those, those questions that they have. You don't have to know. I guess the whole point is you don't have to know everything right away. We're still all learning as well. Joel and I included. You can't be an expert on every single subject that there is, but you can write down and you can research, right? Get together with your kids and research these.

Joel: Yeah. Do your own apologetics, have your answers prepared. And, you know, I, I know people that have said, you know, growing up it was really hard for me because I felt like I wasn't allowed to ask my parents questions. Like I felt like I wasn't allowed to say like, hey, how do we know God's real? Or, how do we know that Jesus rose from the dead?

Mackenzie: Without some being like, oh goodness, it's gone wrong. You know. That's just part of healthy development. Even our children develop, right? Yes. We leave the “what” when they're younger and then. And then the “why” comes.

Joel: Exactly right. So there's plenty of good reasons to believe those things. You should be prepared to talk to your kids about them, encourage those questions, be open with them. And I think what you're going to find is that through that, that active in that intentional dialog with your children, with your youth group, with your young adults, that through that their faith is going to get stronger and stronger and stronger.

And William Lynn Craig talks about our belief in a way that I really love. He says, You know, your belief in God, your belief in the Christian worldview should not be just a single chain of links. And if one of those links breaks the whole the whole chain falls down,

But the way William Lane Craig says it, is, it should be more of chainmail armor where there's all these interlinking chains. And just because maybe you get questioned on one portion of your faith or, you know, you start to doubt one portion of your faith that doesn't throw out the baby with the bathwater, does not throw out your entire belief in the saving faith that you have.

Mackenzie: That's so good. I love that illustration. I do want to read one last statistic, but this is like a light at the end of the tunnel kind of statistic to me. So like an upswing. Here's some good news. This generation wants to dive deeper into their spirituality and 80% of all teens, not just Christians, say they're open to learning more about Jesus.

Joel: That's awesome. Yeah. 80%.

Mackenzie: 80%. I think that's why they're called the open generation. This is a generation that's searching. Yeah, they're open to all ideas. But if we can get them to understand that, that the Christian worldview is, is the truth, yes, we have a strong chance with them because they're open to it.

Joel: Exactly right. Yeah, exactly right. That does give me a lot of encouragement. And it shows that, you know, if we help to prepare and equip our youth, our young adults, those that are going into high school, those that are going into university, if we can equip them to defend their faith properly, then I think a lot of that's going to rub off on on this open generation who is desperately looking for for truth. And we have the truth. We just need to present it well.

Mackenzie: I also hope that this statistics have been encouraging and eye opening. If you are Gen Z, a young adult or a teen to one now be on the lookout for some of these things, but that you also are equipping yourself, that you're studying with your parents are asking questions to your youth leaders. Ask them tough stuff.

Joel: Yeah.

Mackenzie: Try to stump them. Tell them what's really going on.

Joel: Right.

Mackenzie: If you have questions to like, you're welcome to message us. We would love to help you find answers because again, we know they're out there.

Joel: So what do we do? Where do we go from here? Well, I hope that you, as a parent, grandparent, pastor, youth leader, hope you feel encouraged that, you know, while some of these statistics were are pretty bad, there is a way through this in that apologetics can help us have these dialogs with our kids in a really meaningful way that establishes a really solid foundation for them that's very defensible and we just want to encourage you that as we're getting ready to send our youth, our young adults, back into the school environment, equip them, be intentional about equipping them so that they can not only survive their lectures and survive their classes, but that they can be a powerful witness for Christ and that they they come back having answered more questions than they now have.

Mackenzie: So, just kind of to close out the podcast a little bit, as parents, we got it right. This is why we named it the back to school episode. We get how much work it is to prepare your kids back to school, right? We're buying new clothes and new shoes. Every dad's wallets are getting lighter and lighter as you get closer, right?

But we prepare them with all these things, but let's make sure we're preparing them spiritually. Joel and I are here to help you guys do that. That's what we want to do. We would love to come speak to your church and your youth group, to speak to your parents and grandparents and youth leaders. Speak to your Gen Z’ers and your church, your youth and your young adults on these topics, too, to arm them with some truth and some answers to some of the questions that they have.

Like I said, we have some articles already on our website about some of these things, but these are all messages that we have ready to go as well on all of those statistic numbers that we had shared with you. And each one of those topics, we have information that we'd love to share with you and your kids.

Joel: And you know what I'll say to that too, is if you go to indexingfaith.org/backtoschool, you're going to find some resources on that page. You're also going to find a way to contact us if you do want us to come to your church and do a back to school seminar for your parents or grandparents, for your youth leaders, for your youth, your young adults, everyone, we have a seminar put together that specifically aimed at equipping young people to go back into the school environment and be able to stand very strongly for what they believe.

So, hey, thank you so much for spending this time with us. We hope that we raise the right awareness with you, but we also hope that we encourage you and we'll look forward to seeing you again next time.