Searching and Dissatisfied by Choice: American Culture 2024
April 26, 2024
Host: Hon. Sam Rohrer
Guest: Dr. George Barna, Director at the Cultural Research Center
with Arizona Christian University
Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program originally aired on 4/26/24. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.
Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.
Sam Rohrer: Well, hello and welcome to this special Friday Stand in the Gap Today program. And it’s also our monthly culture update with our friend and I will say one of the most trusted, I’m going to say not the most trusted Christian researcher in America. And that is Dr. George Barna. Now he’s professor at Arizona Christian University and they’re the director of research cultural center at the university. Now in this election year, we’re all into it. We can’t get away from it. We’re in the middle of it. We are bombarded if you know, at least I’m perceiving of this, but we’re bombarded by breaking research and poll numbers, a percent up, 2% down and so forth. But I’m going to say unhinged from truth polls and research have in my evaluation become our new authority and in essence become God to the majority of the people. Truth no longer linked to absolute unchanging truth has deceptively in the dialectic process like termites eaten out the substance in the literal foundation underpinning our constitutional republic.
Sam Rohrer: And as a result, lawlessness abortion of justice, bribery, and corruption at the highest levels has become well institutionalized. But this mindset, a consequence of many choices along the way by not just political leaders and academic and business leaders, but religious leaders too, and far sad to say, too many pastors. Yet in reality, these leaders could not exist in their deception and self-deception if the people themselves were not a reflection of this very same move from God to another God and from absolute truth to feelings oriented self-defined truth. And with that perspective in mind today, Dr. Isaac Crockett and I are going to be able to converse with Dr. George Barna on the latest research from the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University where George is the director. Now, the title I’ve chosen to frame this program today is this searching and dissatisfied by choice American culture 2024. And with that I welcome George back to the program. George, great to have you back with us.
George Barna: Well, Sam and Isaac, always great to be with you. Thanks for having me again,
Sam Rohrer: George, your latest research results are part of the research center American Worldview inventory of 2024, as you call it. And I think Mark on your website will be at release number two, but you’ve entitled this, as I’m reading it, millions of Americans embrace common unbiblical perspectives. And as I’ve read over the report, it’s astounding in its findings and extraordinary, I’m going to say in its implications. And unlike most of our political research and polls, which I talked about earlier, which seek to determine truth by what people think, your research takes truth to help people consider what they believe as compared to truth. And that’s a great thing. So thankful for all what you do, but to get us going, would you give us an overview of the findings of this research as just released?
George Barna: Well, yeah. And it comes in the context, Sam, of discovering that this year only 4% of all Americans possess a biblical worldview. It’s only 6% among people who consider themselves to be Christians. Only 12% of people who theologically could be defined as born again Christians have a biblical worldview. I mean, the dominant worldview we’re finding is syncretism. We’ll talk about that I’m sure throughout this program. But essentially what we’re finding is that there are so many unbiblical views that dominate the thinking of Americans today. Some of these beliefs have well over 150 million people who ascribe to them in spite of the fact that those beliefs conflict with the scriptures. We’ve got literally dozens of beliefs that we can now identify where you’ve got more than 25 million American adults who believe these unbiblical perspectives. And why do I point that out? Because one of the things that I love to study are social movements.
George Barna: What causes a culture to change? Often it’s a social movement and what we know is if you’ve got 25 million or more people roughly who buy into a particular perspective, they can form a very powerful movement that does change the culture. And we’ve got evidence of that over the last 40 years, a number of different movements. And so we’re in a place now where there are so many unbiblical ideas that these large groups of people are buying into. No wonder our culture looks like it does. We’ve got all these theological, emotional, intellectual movements that are being sustained by these unbiblical perspectives and those are becoming the new cultural foundations. Things like two out of three Americans saying, well, people are good, two out of three, rejecting absolute moral truth. We’re above now a third of all Americans saying there’s no such thing as God. So we look at all of these things and they become really the bedrock of these unbiblical approaches that are reshaping American society.
George Barna: And so I think it’s important that Christians in particular get a grip on these things. In this particular study, looked at 14 different worldviews, and now we’re starting to pull out, okay, did you know that most Americans believe this or that or this? And it conflicts with what God has told us in his word. We as the church are supposed to be the anite to that decay in our culture, but we can’t do that unless we know what we’re fighting against. So we’re hoping that these kind of reports will help Christians to understand these things better.
Isaac Crockett: That’s a great point. I have a question for you about that, and I think many of our listeners get excited when they hear you’re back with us. In fact, as I run into people who listen to the program, when is George Barn going to be on again? But when they hear Dr. George Barna, we sometimes think you’re a numbers guy and you love numbers and details, you pay very close attention to them. But those numbers matter because they represent people, they represent souls, they represent eternal souls that are going to spend eternity somewhere. And so you kind of brought that up at the end, but what the purpose is, and I’d just love to have you state that when you’re conducting this analysis, like what you’ve done, what is that research done for? What is the purpose and what do you hope to accomplish as you look through these numbers and interpret what this means to us?
George Barna: Well, Isaac, there are really two things that I’m interested in. One is waking up Christians so that we can be more pure in our worldview and therefore in our behavior also so that we can be more effective as agents of transformation in our culture. That’s why we’re here is to be Jesus representative of his truth in the lives of everyone around us. So yeah, I want to wake up Christians, but I also want the numbers to become a challenge to non-Christians, help them to consider the Bible as a resource and Christianity as a community of people seeking meaning and purpose.
Sam Rohrer: And George, we got a break for that, but that’s fantastic. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to get into this research for the purpose of helping to wake up Christians and to better fortify them, to help us all understand the problem and be able to be more effective salt in this culture. It’s why we’re here. We’ll be back and we’ll continue in just a moment. Well, if you’re just joining us on this Friday afternoon or whenever you’re listening to the program, it’s great to have you on board. Isaac and I and our special guest today, Dr. George Barna. It’s been just a little while since he’s been back with us, since he’s had to undergo some surgery on his throat. Little raspy yet, as you can tell, but that’s why pray for him. I ask you that the Lord would bring full and complete restoration. It’s very tough when you speak a lot as a pastor and a pulpit, George does, Isaac and I do.
Sam Rohrer: When you speak a lot and you don’t have your voice, it’s really tough. So let’s pray for him and I’d ask you to join us in that. But our theme today is this searching and dissatisfied by choice, American culture 2024, and we’re actually walking through the most recent just put out by the Cultural Research Center, Arizona Christian University that George directs now according to this latest worldview inventory in the research center that I’m just talking about, the report that just came out that we’re discussing now, a part of it says this, more than two thirds of Americans say that they are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country today. Yet few of them pause from their busy schedule long enough to consider that the problems they see are the result of increasing numbers of American adults making decisions based on shifting foundational beliefs and values.
Sam Rohrer: Well, in the end, it all comes back to worldview. We talk about that on this program all the time, the making of decisions regarding personal happiness or family work or entertainment or such things. They determine our politics, our laws, who we vote for, who we choose not to support. It carried into the court, it determines our court decisions taken into office. It determines our laws, our geopolitical decisions that don’t affect just us, but the entire world. It ultimately comes down to determining well, what’s right and wrong? Acceptable. Unacceptable. I’m going to take it here. Heaven, I hell. Alright. George is a part of your survey. You went ahead and made a statement here that I’d like you to expand upon because I thought it was really pertinent just like the one I just read, but in this one you said quote, the typical American adult is not a worldview purist, but as essentially a worldview plagiarist combining beliefs and behaviors borrowed from an average of nine recognized worldviews into their personal worldview blend. You go on to say most Americans have no idea that they are engaged in philosophical theft or complicit in crafting a worldview that is uniquely theirs. That’s a brilliant statement a lot in there. Can you explain and expand upon that?
George Barna: Yeah, Sam, essentially, excuse me. What I was saying is that when you look at a person’s worldview, if you start to look at all the things they believe and trace it back to where those beliefs are coming from, what we find is that on average a person is borrowing ideas from about nine different philosophical threads, nine different recognized worldviews. And so let me give you an example. It would not be uncommon for a person, let’s say, to believe that it’s possible for a married couple to be bonded to each other for eternity. Now, that’s a Mormon idea. That is not a biblical idea. Add to that, then you might believe that humans have no right to dominate animals or plants or nature. We’re supposed to live in harmony and interdependence with them. Well, again, not a biblical idea. That’s an animistic idea. You could add to that because there are tens and tens of millions of people who believe that a messiah has been promised to us, and you’re confident that that Messiah will make his or her its initial visit to earth to save its people.
George Barna: Now that idea actually comes from Judaism. It’s not a biblical idea because we don’t believe that Jesus, who is our Messiah is going to make his initial visit. He already made his initial visit, and so the second coming is when he will come and take his people. Judaism is still waiting for that initial visit, but we’ve got millions and millions of Christians, people who call themselves Christians who buy into this idea plus many, many millions of other people. Add to that the idea that when it comes to God or a higher power, you believe that well, a higher power or God may exist, but nobody can really know for certain. That’s a postmodern idea. Add to that the notion that you’re successful in life by being a good person that comes out of moralistic therapeutic deism, or the idea that the basis of all truth is scientific verifiable proof, very popular idea in America, again, more than 50 million Americans buy into that, but that’s drawn directly from secular humanism.
George Barna: Well, this is just six things that I’m bolting together here, which are very common ideas that tens of millions of Americans believe in. That’s what I’m talking about in terms of, excuse me, this philosophical theft that I was referring to. We’re picking and choosing things that feel good, that sound right, that are popular, that are comfortable, and we’re embracing those as part of our personal worldview without thinking of first of all, does it harmonize with God’s word, his truth, principles, because those are the only truth principles. And secondly, thinking about the implications of those things for who we are, our own identity, our lifestyle, and the kind of influence that we’re going to have on the world around us and what we allow to influence us. When we embrace all these kinds of things, what happens is that it changes how we live. And so just those simple, what five or six things that I pulled out of the research, I mean it’s going to change our lifestyle in terms of how we treat animals, how we think about and respond to the environment.
George Barna: It impacts our relationship with Christ. It has to do with our marriage and our family. It deals with our concern for our understanding of our identification of truth. It deals with our self image and our identity and what we do in the world as a result of that. I mean, the implications just go on and on and on for each one of these things that we embrace. But when you realize that we are embracing literally dozens of disparate worldview ideas from all these different philosophies of life, not only does it get complicated to understand, but our lives become a mess as a result of it.
Isaac Crockett: George, when you’re talking about syncretism like that, you’re really describing a word that I became familiar with when I moved into the area of the country where Sam is at right now, and that’s a smorgasbord. Sam is at our headquarters, which is not far from shady maple. I think they’re supposedly the largest smorgasbord in the country. But you go through and you can pick out whatever food you want or you can have prime rib or a quesadilla or shoe fly pie or whatever, and you just heap any and every kind of food type you want onto this big plate or tray and you just go and get whatever you want. And that’s what you’re saying the dominant philosophy is in America, and I believe your report is putting that at about 92% of Americans have that syncretistic religious philosophy, just kind of pick and choose. And so I’m wondering with this syncretism, are we seeing would appear that as a whole America is embracing it? I just curious what you’re seeing as you study this. Is it growing? Is it shrinking? Are people satisfied as they pick and choose? Are they satisfied with their choices? Are they coming away from it saying, well, I don’t know if that really works for me. What are you seeing as you look at these numbers?
George Barna: Well, one of the things we find, Isaac, is that people don’t think about their worldview. It’s developed before the age of 13 and they just run with it for the rest of their life. Unless they run into a wall because of something in their worldview, then they might stop and reconsider a portion of it. That doesn’t happen very often. It usually happens only in a time of crisis. That’s when we have to reevaluate something’s not working, what is it? But what we’re also finding is that actually over the last couple of years, the proportion of people in America who can be recognized as tists has dropped by two percentage points. Now, some people might say, well, that’s a good thing, maybe not. Because when we look at where those two percentage points went, what we discover is that what they’ve done is they’ve chosen worldviews other than biblical theism, the biblical worldview.
George Barna: In other words, they’ve chosen things like secular humanism and postmodernism and Mormonism and others that are out there. So by a few tenths of a percentage point each year, it seems like these alternative worldviews are growing. Marxism another great example of that. And so what we’ve got is a situation where people are saying, yeah, my worldview’s not working. I’m going to embrace something from one of these other worldviews. But then when we look at what it is that they’re choosing from, sadly, and I think this is again part of that wake up call to the church in America, they’re not turning to the biblical worldview. They’re turning to these other worldly solutions which are destined to fail just as much as the ones that they’re fleeing from. So we really need to do a better job of not just talking about beliefs that comprise a biblical worldview. Most importantly, modeling for the people around us as they watch us. Let them see what a biblical worldview in action looks like.
Sam Rohrer: Well, ladies and gentlemen, do you hear that? Do you consider your worldview? I mean, we use that word a lot here on this program that as George said, one thing we know is that people don’t really think too much about their worldview or how they think or why they think the way they think that we must do and approaching scripture the right way. That helps us. And of course, when we come back now, we’re going to do it further into identifying some of the amazing results that are part of this research. We’re in the middle of the program right now. And again, if you’re just joining us, we’re midway through. Dr. Isaac Crockett and I are together today, and our special guest is Dr. George Barna. And we’re actually talking with him about not all of the details by any means, but some of the bigger findings and recent research that just came out from cultural research center at Arizona Christian University…
Sam Rohrer: …where Dr. George Barna is now the director of research. And our theme is this searching and dissatisfied by choice American Culture 2024. And we’re talking about the findings of the values and the thoughts and the beliefs held by American people. And so if you’re just joining us, we’re going into another aspect of that now, but one that holds to a biblical worldview, which we do on this program and an understanding of scripture which underpins a biblical worldview. One thing that it does is provides a certainty regarding life. We have confidence in living and choices that we make in simple terms, there’s a concept and principle that runs through all of God’s word says about that, and you could sum it up by this, choices have consequences. And those consequences are enormous as they never affect just the person making them, but also those around him, and certainly within family circumstance, the next generation.
Sam Rohrer: So for those of us who embrace a biblical worldview, we know that when we fear God, and if we keep his commandments and we make our choices in life and view life from that perspective, God will bless it’s assured. We know that He says it will. But if we reject God in favor of our own, doing our own thinking, then judgment will follow and not blessing, but cursing. But there are always causes or precipitators, I would suppose in every generation that causes people or at least kind of contributes to the seeing people move either away from God or to him. At this point in American history, I would say that we’re seeing yet the majority of people content to move away from God’s word and absolute truth in exchange for their own view of God, their own religion. As Dr. George Barna just referred to it and Isaac discussed with him, well, this new religion really called syncretism, which 92% of Americans right now subscribe.
Sam Rohrer: It’s a staggering number when you think about it. So George, let’s take the segment now and talk about some of the most significant common unbiblical perspectives that you found being embraced by the great majority of Americans. You identified a few of those in the last segment as some examples and go back into them a little bit more and highlight what you would term the most significant and perhaps identify with that the impact that we’re seeing on our culture or in our culture. And then we’ll go two and three as far as this time allows in this segment.
George Barna: Okay, well, it’s not an easy thing to order him in that number in that way, but let me suggest that because life is all about God. He’s got to be first. So when I look at a bunch of data points like these, for me, probably the most significant one is the fact that we’ve got more than a third of Americans right now who say there is not or cannot be any such thing as God, or they don’t care if there is a God, it doesn’t affect them. That’s pretty scary, frankly. And to know that that number is growing and to realize that with our two youngest generations, that number is closer to four out of 10 and growing, that’s scary. So we’ve got about 26% who buy into that postmodern perspective of, well, we don’t know if there’s a God. We’ll never know, so we’re just going to live life the best we can and not worry about it.
George Barna: You’ve got about 6% who fit that atheistic mold that says definitively there is not such a thing as God. There is no higher power, there is no universal force. And that’s kind of a Marxist secular humanist idea. A number of other worldviews buy into that as well. But of course that’s important to me because the implication is not only do we dishonor God, do we sin against him by rejecting not only his existence but his greatness, his goodness to us. But we’ve got to put something in its place. And what I find in our research is that most people therefore elevate themselves to the throne of God where we then think we’re the center of everything. We’re the ones who should be making every decision. We’re the only ones who can know what truth is. We can’t do anything wrong. There’s no such thing as sin.
George Barna: I mean, we make mistakes. It just goes on and on and on and on. So we lose sight of what’s real, what’s good, what’s proper. And we live in many ways, a very unreal and unrealistic life. We’re fooling ourselves, or as Neil Postman wrote 47 years ago, maybe amusing ourselves to death. We turn on the TV and we have a good movie and we don’t worry about what we see there, and then we go out and live the kind of worldview that was just shown to us on the screen. I mean, that’s the kind of lifestyle that’s characterizing us. So I would say the fact that we don’t take God seriously if we believe in him and a growing number of people don’t, not really putting him at the center of our minds and our hearts and our souls. Maybe we’re considering what he’s suggested, but a growing number of people who are just rejecting outright. And gosh, why would God bless America when we have more and more people who are saying, Nope, it’s under my control. Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of things, rather than saying, you know what? We’ve got no power, no authority other than that which God gives us. He is the ultimate power and authority. He alone knows truth. I need to turn to him for guidance. We’re just marching down the wrong trail here.
Isaac Crockett: Yeah, it is. You’re right. That’s the wrong trail. And Jesus Christ especially talks so much about humility and followers of God are after his kingdom first and his righteousness. That is very scary. As you said, it’s not necessarily easy to rank these. Okay, here’s the first, here’s the runner up, here’s the next one. But what would be would be a second area or philosophy that really concerns you as you look at these numbers and responses to the surveys that you sent out?
George Barna: Well, I would say people’s rejection of absolute moral truth. We’ve got two out of three Americans rejecting the existence of absolute moral truth. We’ve got a huge share of people in Christian churches rejecting the idea that there is absolute moral truth. And the interesting convolution within church circles is people saying, well, God gave me wisdom and intelligence, and therefore I’m capable of discerning what truth is. And so I don’t need to turn to any other source. I don’t need to rely on anything else. If I feel it, it must be. And wow, is that dangerous? And that’s one of the things that’s really hurting the Christian witness in American society today is how confused even many self-professed Christians are about this notion. But realize, I mean, we’ve got more than a third of all Americans who just come outright and embrace the secular humanist, postmodernist, satanistic approach saying that truth must be based on reason or emotion rather than on God’s word.
George Barna: That’s scary. You’ve got more than a quarter of Americans saying that the basis of truth is scientific verifiable proof. Again, a secular humanist perspective. But we buy Bibles sometimes we open them up and we read them. But my sense is, and I don’t have the actual data on this, we will within the next year, but my sense is that we read the Bible for confirmation of what we’ve chosen to do based on our own emotions or experiences or best thinking practices, rather than saying, you know what? I bring nothing to the table. God brings it all. And so knowing that God himself is the embodiment of truth, he by his very nature defines truth. And in his goodness, he was willing to give us truth in his word. Let me just read it as he wrote it, take it at face value and run with that. And if it doesn’t work, I’ll reconsider it. But I got to tell you, as one guy who’s trying to do that, it always works. God knows what he’s talking about because he is truth. He gave us truth. His truth works when we put it into practice the way he wants us to.
Sam Rohrer: George, that’s just perfect. We don’t have enough time to go into another point. But I think as I’m thinking here and talking about that, Isaac and I were just talking before we went on the program about he was at a pastor’s meeting. I am involved in doing some counseling of people, and we’re both talking about the power of the simplicity of saying God’s word is truth, and I will do it. And knowing that if we do it, we know what the outcome will be. And so ladies and gentlemen, I hope as we walking through these things, these evidences research results that we’re just talking about just briefly, not as a discouragement, but as an awareness of what this culture around us has become. And for those of us who know the truth, that we are sharpened in our confidence and our commitment and our faith level to what God says.
Sam Rohrer: Because if we commit to doing God’s will, God’s way according to God’s word, the results are guaranteed. How better can you be than that? We’ll be back with some conclusion thoughts in just a moment. Well, we’re at our last segment here of the program today, and we’re going to try and wrap it up with just a couple of additional thoughts. But I will say right up front that I truly hope that if you didn’t catch all of this program, you go back to the beginning and listen to it from the beginning and consider these things that are being shared in light of applying them perhaps to your own self. And I’ll say a few comments a bit later, but as we can go into this direction here, under a biblical worldview of life, which is what we’re talking about, we’re on this program and what Dr. George Barna measures is biblical worldview in the presence of that in people’s lives, but under that view of life, which is God’s way to view life.
Sam Rohrer: Deuteronomy 30 verse 15 is a verse, but that whole entire last chapter, frankly, and through the book of Deuteronomy in many places in scripture, the idea is there that God says there are two paths that one can take. He told his people, Israel, I’ve laid before you today, two choices, two paths. One leads to life and blessings. The other leads to judgment and death. But he says in Deuteronomy, and I’m just rephrasing, he basically tells Israel, but I’m begging you and I’m urging you to choose life. Now. That’s what God wants for us. I think that’s probably what you want as well with your family and yourself. I do. I know I want God’s blessing. I don’t want God’s judgment. And so in that regard, a person with a biblical worldview starts with fear. God keep his commandments. This is the whole duty of man because he understands that one day we’re going to stand before God and give an account for what we do, which is exactly what Ecclesiastes 12, verse 13 says.
Sam Rohrer: So within that, because the choices in our lives, again, don’t just affect us for the moment, these choices will affect our eternal destiny. Life and death truly hangs in the balance. So it is important, George, as we just go for another thought here from you, and that is the implications, the implications of a nature, a culture ours with only a 4% biblical worldview, a 92% of which 26% you say hold to a atheistic worldview, but a third, the 92% are off there with a whole composite of things that does not lead to obeying God. The implications must be significant. Put in context of where we are as a nation today, we’re in the middle of an election process. I talked about that at the beginning. These worldviews work themselves out in elections. What do we see lying ahead of us?
George Barna: Well, yeah, I mean, worldview has implications for every dimension of our lives. Every decision that every person makes, every moment of every day of their life is based on their worldview. So when we think about the upcoming elections, what we know is that we’re going to vote our worldview. Our worldview is a mess. And so naturally our voting is going to be a mess as well. Why? Because I mean, just think about what we’ve already talked about. We have no comprehensive and consistent truth ethic. Our perceptions about truth are all over the place, and yet that becomes the foundation for our choices. So what kind of choices could we make? Well, we’re only going to make choices about the things we really care about, which means some people aren’t going to bother to vote because they don’t think it’s important enough or it doesn’t apply to them, or the system is rigged or whatever.
George Barna: And other people who do vote, they’re going to vote on the basis of what matters to them. How do they figure that out? Do they go back to God’s word to figure that out? No, they look inside. It’s like, well, what do I feel really matters? Because we become so selfish, and part of that selfishness is that we don’t want to devote the time to educating ourselves about the issues, about the candidates, about the process, about the implications, and so on and so forth. It’s a very selective truth that we pay attention to, one that we define for ourselves. And so what are we going to have once again, we have for the previous elections, nothing’s going to change really. We’re going to have millions of single issue voters, people who say, I’m choosing my candidate based on what they want to do about the environment or abortion or economics or crime or immigration.
George Barna: Pick your issue. But they’re only going to pay attention to one issue. Very shortsighted. Certainly doesn’t display the depth of truth that God gives to us in his words. We’re going to have other people who don’t even have a single issue that they care about. We’re going to have millions of people, and I see this in every election survey I do, who I call personality voters. They’re just voting on the basis of the personality of the candidates, their demeanor, their age, certain other personal characteristics that they might possess, which should that be the basis on which we vote, not in its totality. That should be a portion of it, but certainly not the whole thing. Really what we need are people who have comprehensive recognized worldviews as their guides, and really, there’s only one of those worldviews that is going to serve America well, and that’s biblical theism or what we talk here about as the biblical worldview.
George Barna: That’s what God gave to us, and that’s what the founders of the country embraced. They said, we believe in him. We believe in this word that he’s given to us, and we’re going to convert it into what our nation becomes. And so they developed the nation on the basis of God’s truths. And consistently over the last 250 years, we’ve been chipping away at it, just getting rid of this truth, getting rid of that principle, getting rid of this command. And so we’ve been reshaping things so that it’s more comfortable for us. Remember, because we put ourselves on God’s throne and rather than honor him, we’re redeveloping things. This election is going to be no different. I’m dismayed about where we’re going with all of this, but until we get people to embrace the biblical worldview, it’s not going to change.
Sam Rohrer: And George, we don’t have much time here. If you can only give me a minute of response because I want to go to Isaac to have us close us in prayer. But one of the implications that I see with a 92% of American people embracing syncretism is that 92% of our nation are in prime condition to believe a lie and to be deceived because they have rejected the truth. A quick thought on that.
George Barna: Well, gosh. I mean, I’ve got research that shows that we’re a nation of liars, and it’s not because we intend to be liars, we’re just simply following our truth. But one of the things that we find in our worldview research is that growing numbers of Americans, I think, I forget the exact number now, but it’s tens and tens and tens of millions of Americans believe there’s no such thing as absolute truth, but there’s no such thing as a personal truth either. I can lie to your face and if it serves my best interests, I can justify that lie. That’s what a growing proportion of Americans believe. And so no wonder we’ve got a mess of media. No wonder we’ve got awful relationships across the country. No wonder we don’t trust our institutions. That’s where we’re coming
Sam Rohrer: From. Yes, that’s exactly it. So I got to shift off of here. Thank you so much for that. Isaac. Can I ask you to close the program in prayer? Certainly, we have a lot to pray for, don’t we?
Isaac Crockett: Sure. Almighty and Eternal Father, we come to you now just burdened by what we have heard, even from Dr. George Barna and these numbers. We pray for your forgiveness, and I pray that we might embrace the truth, that we might truly trust in you, that we might trust in Jesus Christ, our redeemer, the living truth, the word of God, the living word. May we take his truth, he’s the way, the truth, and the life. Apply it to our lives and live in such a way that we take your word, the written Word of God, and apply it in every decision we make. Thank you for this informative time we’ve had today. We pray for your glory and your kingdom. In Jesus’ name,
Sam Rohrer: Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Isaac. Thank you, Dr. George Barna for being with us. Again, God bless you, give you strength and all that you’re doing, and all of you, ladies and gentlemen, who with us are standing in the gap for truth, who are standing firmly on God’s word. Continue to stand, be fortified, be encouraged, because truth will prevail if we stand on the truth, God’s word. God bless you. We’ll see you on Monday.
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