Mental Illness and Worldview: The Diagnosis…The Misdiagnosis…
Sept. 27, 2024
Host: Dr. Isaac Crockett
Co-host: Hon. Sam Rohrer
Guest(s): George Barna
Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 9/27/24. 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 Friday Stand in the Gap Today program. And it’s also our monthly visit with a good friend of this program and all of you who love the Lord, Dr. George Barna, director of Research of the Cultural Research Center, Arizona Christian University. Today we’re going to consider his latest research release concerning worldview here in America and its cultural impacts. Now today, Dr. Isaac Crockett joins me as we have a conversation with Dr. George Barna about his findings and his analysis about an issue of health that according to the federal government, is negatively impacting, get this negatively impacting one of every four American adults. About 25%, I think said 23 is what they’re actually saying. But one of four, this issue in particular is driving hundreds of thousands of Americans to spend tens of millions of dollars investing in drugs and other solutions which provide little help as they are treating the wrong problem.
Sam Rohrer: And according to the statistics, this problem is so pervasive. Get this now, it’s negatively impacting 56% over half of Gen Z. Those are people born between 2003 and 2021, 40 9% just under half of millennials. Those born between 1984 and 2002 and 39% of Gen Xers, those born between 1965 and 1983. And the smallest group, although the biggest number is 14% of baby boomers, that category of which I am a part, those born between 1946 and 1964. In fact, this problem is so pervasive and the percentage is so high that there are likely few families or people listening to me right now who are not affected. So what is the issue? Well, it’s some form of diagnosable mental illness. So today’s program with Dr. George Barn, we’re going to bring data and research together to bear and focus on the definition of mental illness, the description of mental health, the diagnosis, the common diagnosis, common, I’m going to say misdiagnosis and present a curative solution to this nationwide problem and actually hope for a nation provide some hope for our nation weighed down under depression, fear, and anxiety. So the title I’ve chosen to frame our conversation today is this Mental Illness and World of View, the Diagnosis, the Missed Diagnosis. And with that today, welcome back to the program Dr. George Barna. And George, thank you for being back with Isaac and I today.
George Barna: It’s great to be back with both of you.
Sam Rohrer: You, there’s a whole lot more that you have that will be able to get into this program. So let’s get right into it. Before we get into what you found to be the causes for what is referred to as mental illness, let’s do like we normally do, define the terms, define mental illness, and then define mental health. And are these, I’m going to say subjective or objective human conditions?
George Barna: Well, Sam, there’s a lot of ways of talking about it. I’d say that mental illness refers to conditions that affect a person’s thinking, feeling, mood or behavior. So that can include, but it’s not limited to things like anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and many others. Now, mental health, on the other hand, reflects our emotional, psychological, and social wellbeing. It affects how we think and feel and act. And mental health has a strong impact on the way that we interact with others, the kind of relationships we have, how we handle and solve our problems, and how we make decisions. So if you think about mental health as compared to mental illness, it’s similar to the relationship between physical health and physical illness. And the term mental health implies the absence of some kind of mental illness or mental disorder. But there are lots of ways that people can be mentally healthy or mentally ill.
George Barna: Just like there are a lot of ways to be physically healthy or physically unwell. So I would say that when we think about mental health and mental illness, there are states of being that exist on a continuum, if you will. So you’re going to be somewhere on that continuum from low to high, from completely healthy to very unhealthy, somewhere along that range. And many of the people we’ve got to keep in mind who get diagnosed with mental illness experience, periods of physical, mental and social wellbeing, our mental health, our mental illness, these things change over time. So we’ve got to be careful of stigmatizing people with these things. We don’t want to rush to decisions, and we have to keep in mind that these things are changing all the time. You can have a temporary bout of mental illness like say depression after a divorce, or you can have something that’s more permanent, and these are things that really do impact our lives.
Isaac Crockett: Well, George, I like how you put that out there as on a continuum. And I’ve worked as a case manager, an intensive case manager with mental health consumers and things. And so are you saying that as far as mental illness goes, this being a continuum, that there are some people who have symptoms to the point that it maybe disrupts their life or causes a dysfunction. And there are other people who we may notice some of the pathologies or symptoms, but they’re in a lesser degree. Or I guess if somebody’s we’re talking about mental illness, is it possible that somebody has some of those things but they’re not really considered mentally ill at that point and then maybe another time they or somebody else would be? I don’t know if that makes sense.
George Barna: Yeah, it does. And Isaac, I think what you’re pointing out with that question is that this is a very complex field. Sam asked earlier, is it subjective? And yes, there is subjectivity to you Think about it. Oftentimes you’ll get a diagnosis from one doctor and you think, gee, I don’t know about that. You go to another doctor, you get a second opinion. Why? Because there’s some subjectivity involved in these diagnoses. Is it based on objective fact, on empirical knowledge? Yes, it is. But nevertheless, the way that we interpret some of the information might change the diagnosis. And in the same way, some people can have mild cases of mental illness and function pretty normally. We might not even notice it yet. Other people can have the same degree of the issue and they can be completely disabled, really struggling in their daily lives, and it could change from day to day. So that’s why it’s important to recognize it’s on a continuum. Things change. This is one of those areas where we have to give grace to people, but we also have to be sensitive to what it is that we’re seeing and what they’re experiencing.
Sam Rohrer: Alright, ladies and gentlemen, thanks for joining us today. Dr. George Barna is our guest. Dr. Isaac Crockett and I are together here. And our theme is mental illness. And we’ll now connect it with worldview, the diagnosis, the misdiagnosis. And as you can tell, we’re going to talk about diagnosis and often misdiagnosis, but make the connection between both of those conditions and worldview, which is exactly where Dr. George Barn has been spending a lot of time. I think this excitement will be of most interest. Well, if you’re just joining us right now in the program, Dr. Isaac Crockett and I are having a conversation with Dr. George Barna, and it’s in regard to latest research that he and the cultural institute there at Arizona Christian University has come out with. And it’s concerning an issue that really affects all of us to one degree or another. We know some, it may be ourselves perhaps that have been touched with this problem, pervasive, it seems called mental illness.
Sam Rohrer: We’re all concerned about being mentally well, mental health. So anyway, we’re going to look further at this. George, in your latest report, which for those who go online@culturalresearchcenter.com, they will find it designated as release number five, ladies and gentlemen. And you’ll look for the American Worldview Inventory 2024. It’s in that grouping, you’ll find it there. But anyways, George, you state this quote, we are experiencing a precipitous rise in mental health issues in our nation with record numbers of American adults, especially young people reporting significant struggles with anxiety, depression, and fear. You go on to say, as I look at these trends, I’m convinced that the root cause of the problem may actually be the fact that significantly more adults reject biblical beliefs and behaviors. Now that’s a pretty powerful statement that I read. So let’s take off of that. How would you quantify a precipitous rise in mental health issues? For instance, when did this rise begin? When did you first notice it? The age demographics of the population that this shows up most apparent?
George Barna: Yes. I think if you look at historical data, what you begin to see is that rise happening starting maybe 30 years ago or so, but the fastest rise that we’ve seen has been in the last 15 years. And as a social scientist, I wonder, gee, why did that happen? What’s going on here? Part of it, I believe, has to do with the way that we measure things. Now we’ve got better measurement instruments, we’ve got more money and more attention paid to mental health than we had previously. We’ve had some very calamitous and significant cultural changes take place in those last 30, particularly the last 15 years. And of course with generational shifts happening, you’ve got transitions in terms of individual sensitivities, what’s going on in the world around them and to how they’ve been prepared to handle those kind of issues. And so that’s brought us to the point where now we’ve risen all the way to one out of four adults, as you alluded to earlier, 23% of adults in America being estimated by the federal government to have some type of mental illness.
George Barna: And what’s most significant, I think, is that with each succeeding younger generation, that number is climbing higher and higher. And so among millennials and Gen Z, you’ve got 33% one out of every three of the people in those two younger generations, people by and large under the age of 40 who have a diagnosable mental disorder. And when we break those down to try to figure out what’s most common, we would say, well, anxiety disorders really are the most common where you’ve got about one out of five of them struggling with stress, anxiety, those types of things, depression and close on its heels would be substance addiction, whether that’s alcohol, whether it’s drugs, some other kind of addiction to sexual addictions, whatever it may be, 18%, so virtually the same again, one out of five. And young adults, of course, are most likely to have the physical manifestations of these disorders.
George Barna: What do I mean by that? Well, if you look for instance at people who act out, that is they have some kind of a major depressive episode in the past year that was true of 8% of all adults. But when you look at millennials, it’s twice as many 16%. You look at Gen Z, two and a half times as much 19%. And when you go all the way up the continuum to serious suicidal thoughts, that was true of 5% of Americans this past year, again, almost double among millennials, 9% more than double among Gen Z. Our youngest adults, 13%, one out of every eight of them dealt with serious suicidal votes in the past year. So if you project those numbers out, we’re talking about massive numbers of people here, diagnosable mental disorders. There are slightly more than 60 million adults who have at least one of those. You think about anxiety disorders, 50 million adults have some kind of anxiety disorder. We’re not even talking about children that would add to these numbers. And then you think about addictions, particularly alcohol and drug addiction, almost 50 million people fitting in that category. So you can start to see how every one of us probably has somebody in our circle of friends or in our family who’s wrestling with these things. So it’s important that we understand what’s going on.
Isaac Crockett: It’s so important. And there’s a lot of blame game that happens and people try to blame culture or education. They try to blame technology. Smartphones in my state of New York, they’re trying to ban smartphones outright during the day and public schools, and there’s a lot of things like that. But going back to your statement that Sam read just a little bit ago, as you’re looking at these facts, you said that you’re convinced that the root cause of the problem may actually be the fact that significantly more adults reject biblical beliefs and behaviors. Can you tie that into us? These things, the fear, the anxiety, the depression, the substance abuse. Can you tie that into why you think that is really rooted and founded in an unbiblical worldview? And if that’s correct, maybe explain why this is so important. As you just said, it’s such a critical moment for us to understand.
George Barna: Yeah, Isaac, this was kind of a big eyeopener for me because I study worldview all the time and I try to figure out what difference does it make in somebody’s life? How could we help them to appropriate God’s truths in such a way that it really transforms their mind? As Romans 12 talks about transforms our life because of that? And when we look at how many people struggle with mental illness and mental health issues, I think there’s a real tie here. Now remember, you do what you believe in life, and that means that your worldview, what you believe about who you are, how the world works, who you want to be, how you’re going to become that person, all of those kinds of beliefs come together to form your worldview. And that determines how you choose to behave in order to satisfy those beliefs, to not have any kind of cognitive dissonance, any kind of internal anxieties created by the gap between what you believe and who you are.
George Barna: And so your worldview ultimately determines your lifestyle, and that also therefore means that your worldview is partly responsible for your mental health, for your mental wellbeing. Now, as I looked at all the numbers here in studying and putting them all together, we found a moderately strong, what we would call an inverse correlation between having a biblical worldview and the frequent presence of anxiety, depression, or significant fear. That means the more likely you are to have a biblical worldview, the less likely you are to experience anxiety or to have depression or to wrestle with significant fear on a regular basis. So at the same time, we found that adults who do not have a biblical worldview are much more likely to struggle with these kinds of mental health issues. So let me put some numbers to it. When we look for instance at our youngest adults, those in their early twenties, their late teens, that Gen Z group, we find that 56% of them tell us that they frequently have problems with anxiety, depression, or crippling fear in their life.
George Barna: 56% now lock that in with the fact that only 1% of them have a biblical worldview. Then we move to the next older generation of people, millennials, those in their mid-twenties to early forties, 49% of them have anxiety, depression, or major episodes of fear on a regular basis. Now that’s a little bit lower than Gen Z, but we also find that their biblical worldview is slightly higher. It’s at 2%. Move on to Gen X. You’ve got four out of 10 of the people in their mid-forties to early sixties who struggle with anxiety, depression, and fear. 39% that’s lower than the prior two generations. The percentage of them who have a biblical worldview is higher. It’s only 4%, but that’s double what you have among millennials. And then that same pattern continues with boomers. You have a significant drop in anxiety, depression, and fear battering them on a regular basis.
George Barna: It drops to 14%. And interestingly, their incidence of biblical worldview doubles over that of Gen X, it quadruples over that of millennials eight times that of Gen Z. And so you see this pattern taking place where the more likely you are to have a biblical worldview, the less likely you are to struggle with anxiety, depression, and fear. Having a biblical worldview doesn’t make you perfect. Having a biblical worldview doesn’t insulate you or isolate you from mental health issues, but it gives you the tools to deal with it. And I think most importantly, it gives you a mindset of understanding the world and how you operate within it that enables you to deflect so many of those mental health issues.
Sam Rohrer: George, unbelievable information to be able to draw correlations like that. Ladies and gentlemen, we come back. I’m going to go a little deeper into that and say, all right, what specific beliefs, values under a biblical worldview contribute to mental health? Are there specific beliefs that are more pronounced than others? And on the other side, if absent in the other, what are they? George, I want to ask a question first before we get into having you identify some of these specific beliefs that impact either mental health, if they’re embraced or impact mental illness, if they are rejected. And that was this in the last segment, you were talking about the precipitous rise, you were talking about those different things of anxiety and disorder, addictions and so forth. Here’s my question to you. With the number of people, 56%, gen Z, 49%, 39 gen, these kinds of numbers, to what extent is the presence of mental illness put this way as we are talking right now, to what extent is it impacting, for instance, these people to live a productive life, to serve, for instance, in the military, to hold down, for instance, a job? Are we talking about minor discomforts except the cases where there’s a severe disorder? Are we just talking about an uncomfortable circumstance or actually a debilitating thing where it’s actually disrupting society?
George Barna: Well, Sam, I think that goes back to what we talked about earlier, which is that when you look at these issues, they’re on a continuum. And so some people are overwhelmed by stress or by anxiety, by depression. It gets so bad that they think suicide is the only viable answer that’s more than discomfort. I mean, that’s debilitating. On the other hand, there are some people who are able to get through the day in spite of some significant stresses or anxieties. So it really depends on the person, depends on what they’re going through, how they handle it, what tools they have to deal with it, but it also has to do with their mindset. And you find, for instance, that in America, particularly with young people today, I don’t know how to put this gently or nicely, but with millions of them, there’s a mindset of victimization, thinking, I’m the victim of what the world is doing to me as opposed to individuals who enter every day with a biblical worldview, recognizing I don’t have to be a victim to anything because I have the power of God at my disposal. I have the power of the Holy Spirit to guide me forward and to open my eyes to solutions that otherwise I might not have known about. So so much of this has to do with what tools do you have to deal with this and what’s the mentality that you’re bringing into that situation that you’re going to face,
Isaac Crockett: George? So as we look at that relationship between mental health and worldview, and I’m thinking of people that I’ve worked with both as an intensive case manager and then especially a lot of young people and younger millennials and Gen Z that I’ve worked with in classrooms I the public school setting. And as you’re describing some of these things, I’m seeing people in their stories, their life stories in front of me that struggled with some of this. But what were some of the most significant beliefs that you found in your research that seemed to bring about a more likelihood of struggling with mental illness?
George Barna: Well, there are a number of them. They’re laid out in the report, but I mean just to identify a few, having no sense of purpose in life, believing that the God of Israel doesn’t exist or that he has nothing to do with his creation anymore. He made it and he fled the scene believing that there’s no such thing as absolute moral truth or that truth is if it does exist, we can’t know what it is having. No, what’s going to happen to us after we die? You think about each of these things, it makes a big difference. For instance, we know that seven out of 10 people under the age of 40 have a lack of a sense of purpose and meaning for their life. And so that void raises questions in their mind, in their heart about why should they bother to live? How would it even be possible for them to experience joy or happiness or fulfillment or contentment?
George Barna: When you come into each day with that kind of darkness about your life, you’re lacking that sense that, wait a minute, wait a minute. An all-knowing perfect holy God, created me specifically for his purpose that he wants me to know and that he wants me to pursue. And part of that is that I would know him, have a relationship with him and love him and serve him and enjoy him every moment of every day, and that he’s given me a real individualized purpose and calling for this life and to succeed in that. He’s given me gifts and abilities and other resources to support me in the pursuit of that going into every day, not believing that that’s the case, thinking that there is no God, that no superior being knows you, cares about you, empowers you, points you in a direction, yeah, that can cause depression, don’t you think?
George Barna: Or rejecting the God of Israel. Three out of 10 people in Gen Z and millennials who reject the existence of God, they’re in this category I call the don’ts. They either don’t believe God exists, they don’t know if he exists, they don’t care if he exists. And so if you reject God, you’re much more likely to experience anxiety, depression, fear, and all kinds of other securities. Why? Because you’re all alone and worse yet, it makes you the God of your life. And how overwhelming is that to think that the world essentially revolves around you, that every decision you make is going to radically impact everybody else and everything else that’s overwhelming. We’re not made to handle that kind of pressure or that kind of God void in our life. Think about rejecting the existence of absolute moral truth. 13% of Gen Zs, 22% of millennials are believe that absolute moral truth exists.
George Barna: That means that a huge majority, more than three out of four of each of those generations say, nah. There’s no truths that are always consistent that relate to every person that transcend the conditions that you’re in. Well, when you have that mindset, that means that every moment of every day is unpredictable. You can’t know anything in advance. You can’t trust any person, any situation, any organization, any philosophy of life, ie…a worldview, you’ve got to make it up on the run. And because there’s no God overseeing things, it all comes down to you all truth. In that situation you would say is subjective and circumstantial, do you think that’s going to raise insecurities? Do you think that’s going to make you feel fear about facing everything that you’re going to face during the day? Of course it is. And so naturally, you’re going to have higher levels of anxiety, depression, and fear, not knowing what’s going to happen to you after you die.
George Barna: I mean, part of the reason why God gave us the Bible was so that we would have the story of Jesus. We would understand what led up to him having to be a sacrifice for your sin, my sin, the sin of every individual, and that if we embrace Jesus as our savior, which he’s begging us to do, he gave up his life for us to live at peace with God. Well, you know what? When you go into it say, I don’t know what’s going to happen. You think that’s going to raise fears? Of course it’s going to. And so that’s a gateway to confusion about your life. And that’s why, for instance, we see so many young people believing in reincarnation. Why are they latching onto that? Because the media have taught them. You can’t trust this idea of a savior dying on a cross for you 2000 years ago.
George Barna: That’s nonsense. It’s much better if you believe that when you die, you’re going to come back as something else. Maybe you’ll be a cow. Maybe you’ll be president of the United States. Maybe you’ll be a rock. It depends on what you do in this life, so you better try your best. Whereas Christianity says, you know what? You can try your best. You’re still going to sin. You’re still going to fail multiple times because you don’t have what it takes to overcome every challenge, to know all the information you need to make great decisions. That’s why Jesus died for you, so that you don’t have to, you can relax. You can enjoy this life if you’re willing to let God lead you, if you’re willing to trust him, if you’re willing to look at the principles for life that he gives you in the scriptures specifically so that you’ll succeed and do your best to follow them, you’re still going to fall short sometimes. But Jesus forgives you. God extends that grace through his son. It’s a whole lot better than trying to believe. Gosh, I don’t know what’s going to happen. Maybe I’m going to come back as a pencil. I mean, we can do better than God wants us to do better than that.
Sam Rohrer: George, we just have just a tiny bit of time left. But is it safe to say that in your study that the more fervently, passionately, genuinely a person believes that God is, that God is truth, that God has given us these answers in the scripture and actually lives by them, the greater the mental health he would have and to what degree he would not believe all of them would be setting up for some degree of mental illness?
George Barna: And again, Sam, I’ll keep going back to that concept we talked about in the first segment of a continuum. It’s like the more that you’re willing to trust in Christ, the more that you’re willing to invest in reading and studying and applying the Bible, the more likely you are to have a fulfilling life, the more likely you are to advance God’s kingdom and really experience the reasons why he put you here on Earth.
Sam Rohrer: And ladies and gentlemen, if you know the Lord’s your Savior, haven’t you found that to be true? I have. The more obediently I follow the word of God, the more joy I have. It’s just the way that God has laid it out. When we come back, we’re going to take this information and bring it in application form. Well, before we go into the final segment today, just a quick reminder, this program, all the programs that we do are available in Archive Forum on our stand in the gap radio.com website and off of the app convenient. If you haven’t downloaded it, please do. It’s very convenient. You can find all the programs from tv, all three radio stand in the Gap weekend, this today program and the Minute program. So that’s number one. Number two, when you go to either one of those places, you will find a transcript that is available so you can read and you can read down through what we are talking about.
Sam Rohrer: We give a lot of information that I know is impossible for many of you may be standing in a kitchen or you’re driving in a car or whatever. You’re not able to write it down. You can get the transcript, read that along with listening to the program. Again, many are doing that. Very helpful. And then this particular research undergirding our program today, mental illness and worldview, the diagnosis, the misdiagnosis. You can get at George Barna’s website cultural research center.com, and it is number five in a series. You go through it, you can find it there. Okay, George, let’s get into it. As we wrap up today’s program, I want to bring some solution and remedy to this diagnosis. I haven’t asked you really about the frequent misdiagnosis. I want you to do that, but you do say this in your report. You said this, my latest research shows a clear relationship between worldview and mental health.
Sam Rohrer: That’s what we’ve been talking about here today. You go on and say, in fact, individuals who lack a biblical worldview are more likely to struggle with these increasingly common mental health issues. Identifying you go on to say the consequences of a faulty worldview is the first step to addressing this mental health crisis. And then you link to it. Another comment I pulled out. The best news of all of this, you say the research points to a real and hopeful solution to our mental health crisis. So talk just a bit about misdiagnosis. How often is it misdiagnosed, connect that piece, and then this question, what is that real and hopeful solution to which you are referring?
George Barna: Well, yeah, let me be really clear here because people get very emotional about what we’re talking about today, understandably so. It’s a big deal. So I want to be a little cautious here and help people to recognize mental illness is real. It’s serious. It’s important that we neither deny it nor devalue conventional mental health protocols like counseling, prescription drugs, physical therapy, institutionalization, sometimes those kinds of treatments are merited. I get that. But what I’m saying is that, but our research shows that in a number of cases, I don’t think it’s a majority of cases, but it’s a large minority of cases. What we find is that some of the psychological or emotional disorders that are being identified are not due to physical problems. They’re not due to chemical imbalances. They’re due to worldview. And so what we’re seeing is that if you’ve got a bad worldview, and a bad worldview, by the way, is anything other than a biblical worldview other than the way that God has instructed us to think and live, that’s what I would characterize as bad.
George Barna: Not just because I’m a Christian, but because I’m a social scientist. I do the research. I can show you the correlation between living with a biblical worldview and living with any other worldview that you choose. And we know that those non-biblical worldviews are more likely to lead to anxiety, depression, fear, phobias, antisocial behaviors, things of that nature, as opposed to if you have a biblical worldview, I can show you the evidence that you’re less likely to not only experience those forms of mental illness, anxiety, depression, fear, et cetera, but you’re also, as a result of that, putting your worldview into practice, biblical worldview into practice, you’re less likely to go to, less likely to be responsible for an abortion, less likely to have an addiction, less likely to get divorced. You’re more likely to say that you’re leading a happy and fulfilling life. You have a greater incidence of having a longer lasting and happier marriage.
George Barna: You’re more likely to have a clear and compelling sense of meaning in life. We talked about that lack of purpose in the last segment. You’re more likely to have enduring and satisfying relationships. You’re more likely to experience joy, a deeper commitment to forgiving other people and experience regular engagement and service to others. All of those are huge benefits in our life. Now, how do you get there? One of the things I think this leads us to is going back and remembering that a person’s worldview develops before they reach the age of 13. So in a way, this is a compelling call to parents and to church leaders to take the worldview formation of children seriously. Very little changes in terms of worldview for most people after the age of 13. So invest heavily in shaping a child’s worldview. That’s what will change our culture. That’s what becomes a cost effective step toward improving the mental health of America at large, but also in enhancing the life of the individuals who have had that kind of investment.
Isaac Crockett: George started us out saying, this is kind of on a continuum, and now you’re really pointing to the fact that that worldview is developing when people are very young. So to bring these solutions, you compared it to physically. I think of we are to supplement our diet with fruits and vegetables, and some people have vitamins and different things to supplement ourselves to have the solution of this biblical worldview brings about that foundation for the rest of our life, including our mental wellness. But what do we do? We have so few people that have a biblical worldview. So I guess the question is who can help? Who’s in the best position to help our country and the younger generations in particular, and how can they go about helping them out to have that biblical worldview? Well,
George Barna: Isaac, I would say that the people who are genuine disciples of Jesus, our research shows that they typically possess a biblical worldview. What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus? You think like Jesus, so you can act like Jesus. You’re basically imitating the master. And so in order to think like him, you’ve got to have a biblical worldview. That’s how he thought. That’s why we’re trying to replicate that in our own lives. And so disciples reflect the mind, the heart, the lifestyle of the master. And so if you want to think like Jesus, you’ve got to know the Bible. You’ve got to trust the Bible. You’ve got to adopt its truth. You’ve got to implement its principles. If you’re not a disciple of Jesus, do those things and you can become one. This is not a closed club. There’s an open invitation to everybody listening to this program, everybody in this country, everybody on the planet to become a disciple of Jesus.
George Barna: But you’ve got to make that choice, and you’ve got to make that personal investment. But then remember, the only people that make disciples are disciples. We’re not perfect, but we’ve got the means and the motivation to pursue perfection in Christ through God’s words, to share what’s been given to us through Christ and the scriptures. So attack this logically. If you’re listening today and you say, I don’t really know the Bible well, then devote yourself to learning it content. If you say, well, I already know the content of the Bible, I’m just not very good at living it, then get an accountability partner, someone who will help to facilitate Godly living in your life. If you’re personally living it, but you’re not sharing it, open your eyes. Be open to the spirit who’s going to show you opportunities to become a spiritual mentor. Maybe you become an afterschool tutor. Maybe you coach a sports team with kids. Those types of endeavors will exploit your skills and the things you naturally enjoy. All of these things become a win-win experience. You grow through serving, and people who are being served will grow. Do it for your sake and the sake of the church.
Sam Rohrer: Amen. Dr. George Barna, thank you so much, Dr. Isaac Crockett. Thanks for being with me today at least. Gentlemen, you can pick up this program again, so much wonderful information, true information, practical. Go to the website, pick it up, read the transcript, read the word of God. More important than that, and as we say, fear, God keep his commands.
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