NOT SURPRISED

From WWW.BARNA.ORG...

I invite you over to the Barna Website to their research studies on the year in review. You may or may not find some startling items regarding faith in America. If you are a student of the Word of God you will probably grin to yourself when you read Theme 3. Not that it is funny. But we Sovereign Gracers have known this for a long time. Barna seems to be just catching up.

The theme is entitled "Biblical literacy is neither a current reality nor a goal in the U.S." Barna's research finds that little progress has been made in Biblical knowledge and application in helping people become biblically literate. Really? How can there be when the preaching and teaching of the Bible has been traded for the latest social message to see to the supposed "felt needs" of the congregation? Plus, since the advent of the big screen, most post modern church attendees have shelved their Bibles and have forgotten how to use them. You can't serve and worship what or who you don't know.

Barna further writes that when people do read their Bible it has become the "religious equivalent of sound-bite journalism." In other words they open it, read a quick verse and if it feels good, okay, enough read. No wonder that Barna finds that half of all who say that they are Christians believe that the Bible is not "totally accurate" in its principals. "Not the facts," Barna finds, "just the principals." To this I would say that if you don't believe the principals how can you believe the Biblical facts from which the principals are taken? You can't, and it's absurd to think you can separate one from the other. And yet another of Barna's findings states that "an overwhelming majority of self-identified Christians (81%) contend that spiritual maturity is achieved by following the rules in the Bible." Huh? How can you have it both ways?

The reason you may grin at Barna's research findings is because you have read what the Apostle Paul wrote young Timothy: For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. 2Timothy 4:3-4. That pretty much says it all.