Never Too Late: Encouraging Faith In Your Adult Child

God.

Chapter 1

HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN?

I FIRST MET MIKE when he was a high school student. He participated in our youth group’s annual hiking trip on the Appalachian Trail. When you’re hiking, there isn’t much to do besides talk, and God provided me with an opportunity to share with him the message of the gospel. By God’s grace, in the middle of the wilderness, Mike responded and put his faith and trust in Jesus. He came back and became very involved in the life of our church. He rose to be a leader in the youth group and after graduating came back and worked to mentor the younger students. I longed to see more young men like this one.

Fast-forward eight years. Mike had moved away to another part of the country. I was in my office and the phone rang. Hi, Rob! It’s Mike. Do you remember me? I’m engaged, am moving back to the area, and would like you to do our premarital counseling. I was thrilled to hear the news, and immediately arranged a time to reconnect with Mike and meet his fiancée.

Within the first few minutes of our meeting, it became apparent to me that Mike’s fiancée was not a Christian. I began to gently probe into that issue by sharing with them how unity is at the core of a healthy marriage—two people becoming one—and I sensed that they might be in different places when it came to matters of faith and spirituality. It was an awkward but necessary conversation. My gentle approach didn’t seem to be working, so I turned up the volume and asked, What happens if God blesses you with children? What would be your plan for their spiritual training? At this point, Mike looked at me and said, I guess we’re going to let our kids figure that stuff out on their own. There are a lot of different ways to God. I don’t think Jesus is the only way, and I don’t think that the Bible is the only holy book.

I was stunned! I’d assumed that Mike was an active follower of Jesus Christ, and that he was about to marry someone who was not a believer. The truth was that Mike and his fiancée were in the same place spiritually. They were both completely adrift. I’m in no place to judge Mike’s salvation, but he’d come to the point in his life where there were few if any outward signs of his Christian faith. For me, the realization was deeply disturbing.

At age eighteen, Jenny was a shining star. She had a sterling reputation in her school for being a young woman of character. At our church, she was viewed as a model for younger girls to emulate. She demonstrated a passion for serving others and spent time leading small-group Bible studies. If you had asked me, Has Jenny been evangelized and discipled? I would have answered with a resounding, Yes! I would have put a check mark next to her name as someone who has clearly and firmly set the course of her life toward following Jesus.

After graduating from high school, Jenny went to a secular college in Washington, DC. When she was a junior in college, she happened to come home on a weekend when I was preaching. That Sunday afternoon, she sent an e-mail to me expressing serious concerns about the content of my sermon. Her fundamental disagreement was that I kept referring to the Bible as the Word of God. She said that it was offensive to her when I kept using this phrase, as if the Scriptures were the only means of authoritative truth that we had. Again, I was stunned. After further interaction with her, I realized that in three short years she had gone from passionately following Christ to the point where she no longer believed that the Bible was the unique and authoritative Word of God.

Steven was the grandson of career missionaries to Southeast Asia. Not only were his grandparents missionaries, but his great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents were as well. He had a marvelous and rich spiritual heritage. Steven, however, was not a Christian. He didn’t consider himself a religious person at all. When he was growing up, his family never, in fact, went to church. How could this happen? The answer is both simple and tragic.

Steven’s mother, the daughter of the third-generation missionaries, rejected her parents’ faith. She then raised her children in a nonreligious home. Three generations of men and women had a radical Christian commitment on the mission field, and yet just two short generations later all signs of Christian faith had vanished.

THE CURRENT FAITH-CRISIS

Eighty percent of young adults are disconnected from church.

Stories like these are replicating themselves millions of times over in our culture. George Barna’s research from 2006 indicates that 80 percent of young adults in their twenties are disconnected from church. Three out of four of these young people were connected in church as teenagers but drifted away. Barna surveyed not only church connections for young adults, but also their faith convictions. He set out to discover what percentage of adults in their twenties and thirties expressed a strong commitment to faith in Christ and belief in the Bible. He wanted to determine specifically how many people

have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ;

view their commitment to Christ as very important in their lives today;

believe that when they die they will go to heaven because they have confessed their sins and have accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior;

believe that God wants them to share their faith;

believe that Satan exists;

believe that eternal salvation is possible only through grace, not works;

believe that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth;

assert that the Bible is accurate in all it teaches;

describe God as the all-knowing, all-powerful Creator who is actively involved in all things.

Take a moment and reread the list above. Does that list describe you? Barna found these basic benchmarks of biblical Christianity in only 6 percent of young adults in their twenties and thirties.¹

Researcher Thom Rainer, from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, affirms this heartbreaking reality. He led a study to determine what percentage of Americans claimed to be Christians based upon having put their faith in Christ. In other words, what percentage of Americans identify themselves as Christians and understand that being a Christian means putting one’s faith in Christ alone for salvation? Here’s what he found. Among Americans born before 1946, 65 percent identified themselves as Christians and were able to articulate the basics of the gospel. For those born between 1946 and 1964, the number dropped to 35 percent. For those born between 1965 and 1976, it fell to a scant 15 percent. Finally, among Americans born between 1974 and 1994, only 4 percent of the population identified themselves as Christians and had trusted Christ alone for salvation.²

Evangelism and discipleship are in dire crisis, and it is a generational crisis. We’re losing more of our own children to the world than we are winning adult converts to faith in Christ. As a result, the percentage of Bible-believing Christians in the United States is in steady decline. The United States is, in fact, following in the misguided footsteps of Western Europe. The lands that birthed the Reformation are now overwhelmingly secular, with Bible-believing Christians making up just 1 percent of the population in some countries.³

How could this have happened? There are many reasons, and we need to understand the past if we hope to lead our children toward a different future. In the remainder of this chapter, we’ll explore some of the cataclysmic changes that have rocked Western culture, and how those changes have had an impact on the souls of our sons and daughters.

PHILOSOPHICAL REVOLUTION

The past century has seen a radical and destructive shift in how people think. The shift progressed with each generation, and two key words capture this thought revolution—pluralism and relativism. Pluralism, put simply, is the reality that people have many choices about what they believe. Pluralism has existed since the garden of Eden and is the consequence of living in a world with good and evil. Today, our world is filled with a plurality of religions and values from which to choose. Each has its attractions. There are sides. There are differences. But there is truth and there are lies. We’re free to choose what we will believe, and God will hold us responsible for those choices.

Today’s young people are saturated with pluralism, which has become unfortunately intertwined with relativism. The philosophy of relativism suggests that all statements of fact depend upon one’s perspective. In other words, all statements of truth depend upon your point of view, and are relative in comparison to the point of view of others. If we tell someone that we believe Christianity is true, we frequently hear the response, I’m glad that you’ve found something that works for you. Christianity is true for you, and my beliefs are true for me.

Consider the basic premise of relativism: All statements of fact are relative. Look carefully at this declaration. There’s an immediate problem—if all statements of fact are relative, then no statement of fact is absolutely true. If nothing is absolutely true, then the statement, All statements of fact are relative, cannot be true either. That statement itself is a pronunciation of fact. Thus, the philosophy of relativism is thoroughly self-defeating. Its basic premise teaches that you cannot accept a basic premise. It is philosophically and logically dead before it even begins, and yet this lie has penetrated the hearts and minds of millions of people around the world.

If you were to dialogue with someone who embraces a relativistic view of the world, it may not be long before he or she brings up the famous parable from India about the blind men and the elephant. Maybe you’ve heard this one before. A group of three blind men are helping each other feel their way down a path. One of them bumps into an object that is blocking their way. An elephant is standing in middle of the path. The blind men then began to argue with one another about what stands before them. One man has his hand on the side of the elephant and explains that someone built a wall across the path. Another man reaches out and touches the tail. He argues that they’re being blocked by a thicket of sticks and branches. The third blind man reaches out and touches the legs. He tries to persuade his friends that they’re being blocked by a row of thick trees. Who is correct? This parable is repeated over and over again as an example of how truth depends on our perspective. Each blind man touched a part of the elephant, and from each man’s perspective, his report was accurate.

I have yet to fully understand why this parable is used so frequently to defend pluralism and relativism. The moral of this story is not that truth is subjective and depends on each man’s perspective. The moral is that each man was objectively wrong. The men were blocked by something in the path. It was not a wall, a thicket, or trees. It was an elephant.

Pluralism and relativism are most deadly when they come together in matters of faith. A few years ago, I met weekly with a group of high school students at a local restaurant. None of them were Christians, and it would be an understatement to say that the group was diverse. All together, they had pierced every pierceable body part, and had every shade of color in their hair. We had a great time every Friday afternoon talking about issues of faith, God, and the Bible. One day I asked them, Who do you think God is? A young man with wild hair said, I think God is kind of like my granddad in Florida. He’s there, but I never really see him. Another quickly chimed in, God is an evil being who’s out to punish us and make our lives a living hell. The third took the opposite tact: I don’t think God exists at all, she said. What would I hear next? I believe God is everywhere and in everything, said another teen. He’s the rocks. He’s the trees. The universe is God. I am God, too. At that point there was an uncomfortable pause. Finally, another student offered his opinion in a thoughtful tone. You know what? You’re all right. You all see God in a way that’s true for you, and it works for you.

I expected the other students to either fall out of their seats laughing or find some way to tell this young man that his conclusion was silly. Each student said things that were totally antithetical to one another. One said that God is an evil being who wants to hurt us, another said that there is no God, and still another that he is God. But rather than respond with incredulity, everyone around the circle nodded their heads and said, Yeah. You know what? You’re right. We’re all right. Each one of us sees the world from our own perspective, and we each have our own truth.

Pluralism offers us every imaginable set of concepts and faith systems. Relativism persuades us that all concepts and systems are equally true and equally valid—all at the same time. This insidious combination has proved to be a devastating philosophical one-two punch in the hearts and minds of our sons and daughters. It’s also become a destructive institution in Western culture. The public schools that you likely attended as a child are nothing like the public schools of today. Only a few decades ago, prayer was encouraged in public schools, the Bible could be read comfortably in class, and songs were sung about Jesus the Messiah at the Christmas program. Your children, however, had a dramatically different experience, and you’d likely shudder if you knew what your grandchildren are being exposed to. Today, the curriculum is built upon the principles of pluralism, relativism, atheism, and evolution. Many wonderful Christian teachers and administrators work in our schools today, but it’s the curriculum that is shaping the hearts and minds of this generation. Today our curriculum is not neutral toward Christianity—it is diametrically opposed to it.⁴

Science curriculum is built upon the theory of atheistic evolution. To stand up in a public-school science classroom and say, I believe that God created the world and that human beings are a unique and special creation separate from the animals, is an invitation to ridicule. A second grader in my neighborhood was asked to tell the class who his hero was. He said, My hero is Jesus. The teacher immediately and sternly announced, No one is allowed to say that name in this classroom! The student was both scared and devastated. The teacher, of course, was wrongly applying the laws related to