The David Knight Show - INTERVIEW: George Barna - Nurturing Your Child's Heart, Mind, Soul

Episode Date: October 18, 2023

Spiritainment, SAGE Cons, syncretism and a la carte worldview?— George Barna, has studied our declining society for several decades founding the Barna Group and now with the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University. He's distilled his insights into his latest book, Raising Spiritual Champions.Find out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.comIf you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-showOr you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @[e-mail] App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7For 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to TrendsJournal.com and enter the code KNIGHTBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-david-knight-show--2653468/support.

joining us now is george barna and this is a very familiar name uh to christians he has been the he's the founder of the barna group a market research firm that has specialized and looking at is what is happening to our culture and to christians in general uh the intersection of faith and culture he's been doing this for quite a while. He's written a lot of books, and he's got a new book now talking about perhaps what we can do about some of the worst problems and maybe really the core issue as to the direction that our country has been going down. So I want to talk to him about that book, but also kind of get an idea of what he has seen with a front row seat since the 1980s in our country.

Thank you for joining us, George Barner. Thank you for joining us, George. Yeah, thanks for having me on, David. Let's talk a little bit about that. Give people kind of, we all see what is happening to our culture, this detachment from reality, this postmodernism and all the rest of this stuff, but, but give us some, uh, metrics, uh, let's say that, that you would have seen as part of the Barna group, uh, over the last few decades. Yeah, there've been a number of things that I've been tracking for about four decades.

You know, one of those has to do with people's perspectives on truth. And, and what we've seen is a consistent deterioration of the notion that there is absolute moral truth that there can be such a thing as absolute moral truth so so that's a big issue because when you take that out of the equation you've got to go somewhere to get your understanding of reality. And rather than go and search for any kind of absolutes, what we do is we turn inward. And that's what's happened in America is now, rather than say that we believe in God, basically what we do is we believe in ourselves. And so that's a big game changer right there as well, where we've seen a huge increase in the proportion of what I would call the don'ts, people who don't believe God exists, don't know if he exists, don't care if he exists.

And, you know, we're basically with our young adults, people under 50, they represent close to a third of the population now. So that's a massive shift. We've seen a big shift in our morals, the basis of our morals. Of course, if there's no absolute moral truth, on what basis do we determine morality? Again, it's our feelings. And so that's a big shift and now we're at a place where most americans are confused about most major moral issues whether we're talking about abortion whether we're talking about divorce whether we're talking about divorce, whether we're talking about homosexuality, transgenderism, you know, basis of personal identity, all of that has seen major shifts in the last 10 to 15 years.

I would say that we're a society now that really gears itself toward trying to achieve happiness. And that's the major goal of most Americans. We want to be happy. We do what we can to ensure that our children will be happy and like that. And then, of course, you have to ask, well, why did all of these shifts take place? And so much of it is because of the influence and exposure to media, particularly arts and entertainment media. And what I found in the research that I've been doing is that the greatest influence on our worldview, the kinds of decisions that we make comes from media influence so whether it's movies or television or social media or video games or whatever media you choose that's having more influence than everything else combined

in our lives as best I can tell. Even education, you would say? Yeah, even more than that. Wow, yeah. Well, it certainly is visceral. And if people are just going to turn inward to their feelings, that's what they're going to pick up on. You know, it's kind of interesting as we look at this detachment from any idea of objective

truth. It's gotten so bad that it reflects in our inability to even do or care about math or anything else like that. And, you know, even our gender, our biological gender, we don't have anything that is objective. Everything is subjective and whatever you want it to be. Even now we've got kids who are dressing up as furries. I mean, it's getting to an extreme that you know all of my life I would looked at this and said this is a parody this can't be real this is like something out of the Babylon B but that's the reality that we live in right now isn't it it really is and and so when

you make your feelings the basis of your reality uh you know, the whole game changes. And so trying to reason with people becomes exceedingly difficult because Americans are less and less willing to consider, much less accept, facts. An empirical argument doesn't have much of a basis in America today. Yeah. And that's really going to tear our society apart in every regard. I mean, how do you even do science or engineering? It really was the understanding that there is a discoverable reality, a discoverable

truth that came. We had a lot of foundational scientists who were coming from that Christian perspective, Francis Bacon and many others, Isaac Newton, we can discover God's truth. There is a reality here. Now we've taken God out of the equation and we've taken reality out of the equation. And so it's going to affect everything, even in our material society, the things that people are looking at to make them happy and comfortable. Those things are going to disappear as well

because everything is hinged to that. Tell us a little bit, you coined some words that, some phrases in terms of looking at this, spiritainment, that's entertainment based there as well as a spiritual, I guess. Tell us a little bit about that and why you coined that word. Well, there was a time a couple decades ago when there seemed to be a movement to really try to integrate faith into entertainment particularly the christian faith into entertainment and so that term you know was the blending of spirituality and entertainment, recognizing that every entertainment vehicle conveys a worldview. And at that point in time, there seemed to be some momentum growing

for the Christian, or excuse me, the biblical worldview being ingrained in more entertainment vehicles, particularly movies and television, but also an increasing amount of online entertainment, streamed entertainment. That seems now to have diminished over the last decade or so. So that momentum that had been building up seemed to fall off. So that phrase never really picked up much momentum, just as that approach to entertainment development never picked up. I wonder if that could be kind of applied to what we see in some of the big megachurches

that have fog machines everywhere. I always thought that the fog machine with all the contemporary worship was kind of a metaphor of something that was happening in those churches. But they tried to pursue that entertainment aspect of it and, um, you know, it, it didn't work out too well. I think it is, we've had, uh, A couple of recent successes and perhaps there will be some new movement. Um, it's hard to win a culture war if you don't have a culture, uh, if you don't engage them in certain ways.

And so, you know, we've had some fairly successful movies in the last couple of months. I don't know if that's going to be a trend or not. It's too soon to tell. Isn't it? I think it is. I think we'll probably always have one or two current examples of Christian-based entertainment that do well. Because there still remains in our culture a pretty significant number of people who really wrap their lives around their Christian faith. And so when those

kinds of media vehicles are released, yes, they'll find that audience. But in terms of building greater attentiveness and a greater appetite for that kind of entertainment, I don't think that's been done effectively. And we're not at a point where it appears that we could sustain that right now yeah yeah it's gonna it's gonna be interesting because the other the standard hollywood stuff it has gotten so dark and so nihilistic uh that uh it's kind of collapsing in and of itself it's not really entertaining anymore and uh you know with what happened with the shutdowns of movie theaters and everything. I think they've had a hard time coming back. And it's just, it's kind of just feeding on itself. And there's not really any creativity there.

It seems like there's a real vacuum in that area, but who knows what will happen with that, which brings us to another one of the terms that you coined sage cons. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, that's an acronym for spiritually active, governance-engaged, conservative Christians. Sage cons represent somewhere around 8, 9, maybe 10% of the adult population in America. And these are individuals whose lives are driven by their Christian faith. And one of the unique characteristics about them is that they're very tuned into politics, not because they care about it, not because they have a natural inclination toward it,

but because they recognize that their faith in Christ calls them to be involved in every dimension of society and to try to influence it for the cause of Christ. And so government is just one of those arenas. But the result of that is that they not only pay more attention to news and information about politics and government, but they vote every chance they get, and they really try to understand the issues more than the average American would. And you'd say that, is that increasing or decreasing, what you've seen lately?

Are we getting more or less sage cons? Right, it's been stable for the last five years or so, but as we look forward and project to what's going to happen in the population, we expect that number to be on the decline, unless there is some kind of an awakening, spiritual awakening, that's Bible-based, that takes place in America in the next decade or so. We don't see that on the horizon, but you never know when the Holy Spirit's going to

bring that kind of outpouring of faith that's right yeah that's what it's dependent upon now so you're looking at you know the sage cons are going to be adults uh probably a bit older but um as i said you've been doing this since the 1980s and a couple of decades ago you kind of had an epiphany about what was really missing in terms of turning towards focusing on children. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, well, I've been doing a lot of research and continue to do a lot of research through the Cultural Research Center on worldview.

And there are a number of startling things I think about worldview in America, one of which is how few americans have a biblical worldview it's four percent among adults right now even less among young people in spite of the fact that 68 percent of americans consider themselves to be christian so there's a huge disconnect there but a couple decades ago as we were looking at some of the uh the details of this what we found is that a person's worldview begins developing between 8 to 15 to 18 months of age and 13 years of age by the age of 13 a person's worldview is almost fully developed tell us a little bit before we go tell us your definition of a worldview there.

So we, I mean, it's kind of self-explanatory, but maybe you've got something more specific. And then tell us what you would say a biblical worldview is. Sure. Yeah, everybody has a worldview. You need one to get through the day because you make hundreds and hundreds of decisions every day. You need a basis on which to make those decisions.

And that's what your worldview is. It's the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual filter through which you make every choice that you make. It's the basis on which you make the decision. So it's based on your core beliefs about the world, about yourself, about life. And all of your behaviors come from those beliefs. And so the idea here is you do what you believe. So I do research and a lot of people tell me they believe a lot of things but i've learned that i can't just take that at face value if you tell me you believe something then i have to find some behavioral evidence that you actually do believe that because a lot of people say they believe a

lot of things but there's no evidence that that's the truth. You know, they act in contrast to what they say they believe. So your worldview is the conjunction of those two things, what you say you believe and what you do to prove that you believe it. And so there are dozens of worldviews that people can choose from. One of those is what we call the biblical worldview. Now, the biblical worldview is based on biblical principles and precepts, those kinds of teachings that we get from Jesus, those kinds of principles that are laid out for us in the scriptures. And when I say only 4% of adults have a biblical worldview, that means that only 4% of adults have a biblical worldview. That means that only 4% of adults consistently believe what the Bible teaches and then display that in their lifestyle. Why does that matter?

From a Christian point of view, it matters because we've been called to be disciples of Jesus. And what that means is that we're going to be Christ-like. You demonstrate your Christ-likeness through your behavior, but you've got to have biblical beliefs in order to have those behaviors. So that's how all those things fit together. What we find is that about 92% of Americans are syncretists. And what that means is that we've chosen not a single worldview, whether it's the biblical worldview, postmodernism, Eastern mysticism, nihilism, you know, there are many different worldviews to choose from. But what we do as a syncretist is we say, I don't buy any of those lock stock and barrel i'm just going to pick

a few things that they believe that i like they make sense to me and i'm going to combine them with a few beliefs from other world views as well so in other words as a syncretist you'll buy into post-modernism you'll buy into secular humanism you'll buy into marxism you'll buy into post-modernism you'll buy into secular humanism you'll buy into marxism you'll buy into eastern mysticism on and on down the line taking bits and pieces from each of those and crafting a customized worldview that makes you happy makes you comfortable and gives you tracks to run on yeah kind of do it a la carte right very much so yeah that that fits in with all the post-modernism as well uh so you were talking about children and you said they start forming that worldview at what about 15 months so just a little bit before

toddler and and then it goes up to 13 that's kind of interesting because so many societies have you know looked at 13 years old as the beginning of manhood or womanhood, bar mitzvah or whatever. And that's not just in the Jewish society. It's in many, many societies at 13. It's an interesting age, but we see that over and over again. Yeah, and of course, over the course of decades, we've had a lot of political leaders who, as they've been trying to figure out how can I stay in power for a longer period of time, have made statements about give me a child until they're seven and I'll rule the world, you know, give me a young person until they're nine

and they'll be mine for life, you know. So, you've had people from Aristotle on down to Hitler and Stalin and Mao and Mussolini who have made those same kind of pronouncements for different purposes, but they've recognized the importance of childhood. The Catholic Church over the course of centuries has made similar kinds of pronouncements recognizing that importance, and that's why you have, you know, Catholic education being such an important thing in the Catholic world. And so, yeah. I think we really dropped the ball on that. Yeah, I think we really dropped the ball on that.

You know, train up a child in the way he should go, and when he's old, he'll not depart from it, right? That's, you know, Hitler understood that. Why is it that children don't understand that, right? I mean, Christians don't understand that. Certainly, and you go back to the early chapters of the Bible, you go back to Deuteronomy 6, and you've got a classic teaching there to Jewish families about, you know what? It's your responsibility, parents, to take on the education of your children. So talk to them when you have the opportunity, when you're out on the road, when you're having dinner, when you're spending free time together. You know, write these things on your foreheads, you know, post them on your wrists, put them over your doorpost. The things

that matter, make sure that you're always conversing to your children about these. And I would say, yeah, that's certainly something that we in the Christian community in contemporary America have dropped. Yes, yes. Yeah, when we homeschooled our kids, they required us to create a name for our school. And so I said, well, let's call it the Peripatous Academy because we'll do it peripetically. You know, we'll walk along with them in the way, in the same way that Jesus would do his disciples. And we'll point out as we're going through life with them the good and the bad this and that

don't relate to academic subjects but relate to real life. And so, as we've done our research over the past couple of years in particular, we found that homeschool children are the ones who are most likely to grow up to have a biblical worldview. And it's precisely because parents have the luxury, if you will, of that time spent with their children, looking at every aspect of life, not just worrying about addition and subtraction, but really trying to figure out what are the important life principles that I can convey to my children, sometimes through an academic subject, sometimes not. Yes, yes.

And they have sacrificed to do that. But it's that very interaction that they have for the kids that is their true reward. So it is kind of an interesting way that this works itself out if you've got your priorities straight. So from 15 months to 13 years, they're establishing their worldview. And then what happens? Well, during the teen years and through maybe the mid-20s or so, what we find is that's a period of time where now that the worldview has been developed, young people are trying to figure out how to articulate it, how to implement it, how to refine it so that it works most effectively for them in any given situation. In the course of that period of time, that 15-year period or so,

they're also sometimes changing some of their worldview beliefs and behaviors based on the ways that they're trying to articulate and implement it. But then what we find is from the late 20s on through sometime in the 60s, typically people just accept what they've developed during those earlier years. And they actually become evangelists most americans though don't evangelize for jesus they evangelize for themselves what they're trying to do is to get other people to buy into their beliefs and behaviors because if somebody else embraces your worldview or elements of it, you feel better about yourself. You feel like you've proven that you got it right. And then when we get into our mid to late 60s, that then becomes the final worldview era of our life. When we sit back and examine how we did, and we ask the question,

did we get it right? Could we have done it better? And at that stage, most of us, I'm in that stage now, you know, we're grandparents or some of my peers are great grandparents. And so we're thinking about, okay, with our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, should we be teaching and preaching and modeling something different than we had earlier in our life because now we can see yeah we we kind of blew it in this aspect of our worldview we still have a chance to get it right and to pass that on now that's a very interesting perspective there's four stages there um and now your newest book and you've written about 50 books but your newest one which just came out Labor Day, is Raising Spiritual Champions, Nurturing Your Child's Heart, Mind, and Spirit. Tell us a little bit about the book and the message that it's giving people in terms of, you know, how do you do this? Everybody's looking for

a how-to book, but a bigger, you know, a larger perspective, I'm sure, is what's involved in it. It's not just a step-by-step program. But tell us a little bit about that book. Well, the book is based on the seven original research projects that we did across the nation, trying to understand parents and churches and adolescents and teenagers. We even did a study, a content analysis study, of the most popular media that children are exposed to. The television programs they watch consistently, some of the streaming programs they consistently are exposed to, those types of things. What I was trying to do in the book was to give us

an understanding of what's happening in parenting today. what does the Bible exhort us to do as parents, and how can we get closer to that biblical model of parenting given the existing culture in which we're being called to raise our children. So, it's kind of a full-orbed approach to understanding all this. Why? Because as parents, we have the primary responsibility to raise up our children. And how are we supposed to raise them? We're supposed to help them to become disciples of Jesus Christ. So, the book is geared toward helping parents understand

what does it mean to be a disciple? How do you disciple a young person? How do we know if we're doing that well? What are churches that are doing it well doing? Because I want to be part of that kind of church. Most churches are not doing it well, as it turns out. But we found out that there are some that are doing it properly and appropriately and effectively. What kind of church should you look for there? And ultimately, how do you know when you're hitting the ball out of the park? That's great. Give us an example of something that you see that is in contrast to what is a good practice,

a biblical practice versus what is a common practice with parenting. Well, the common parenting practice in America today I characterize as outsourcing. And as I did the research, I discovered it's not with malintent that parents are throwing up their hands and say, I don't have the time and I don't have the expertise to do this. It's because they love their children so much that they're saying, I don't have the time and I don't have the expertise. So let me do the best thing I can for them, which is hire experts that I want to bring in and let them raise my child for me. And so what we do is we bring in experts in education, tutors. We bring in experts in athletics, coaches. We bring in experts in spirituality, children's pastors. We bring in experts in

various hobbies and extracurricular activities. You know, all of these experts that we hire to do what we feel I'm really not sufficiently versed to know how to do it. And I'm working hard to make the money to hire these people, so I don't have the time to do it. And I've got other interests than my children that I feel I need to engage in for some kind of self-care, you know, give myself a break, lower my anxiety levels. That's why I don't have the time. So, that's the way that parents are approaching it. Now, the biblical model is actually quite different. The biblical model says when you have children under the age of 13, this is a season of sacrifice for you. So get used to maybe not working as many hours. Get used to not doing everything you can to get the promotion, to get the raise, you know, to start

your own company, to do whatever, the things that are going to take the most time and energy and effort on your part. This is the time where you put most of your energy and effort and expertise into raising up your child to be a follower of Jesus. And so your schedule is going to look very different. And in fact, what you do during the day is going to look different. Number one, you've got to have a plan for how you spiritually develop your child. If that's your chief goal during these years, don't go about it willy-nilly, just haphazardly hoping that something good is going to happen with their faith. And maybe if you just bring them to church services often enough and church events, it's all going to work. It's not the church's job. It's your job.

The church is there to support you as you do that. And that's the kind of church, by the way, that you need to be looking for. We can talk more about that. But it's on your shoulders to be doing that task. And so, you've got to have a plan. It doesn't happen by default. People do not become disciples of Jesus by accident. And with your children, during those first 13 years, the foundations that you put in place or don't put in place are what's going to determine, to the largest extent, whether or not they ever become disciples of Christ. Yeah, that's very true. You know, when I have talked for a long time to people about homeschooling, what I frequently, what I hear from them is, I just don't feel qualified enough.

Just as what you're talking about. They're trying to outsource this to somebody else. They feel it's going to do a better job with math or this. And, of course, you know, you can pull in. There's so many experts that are available that have classes on this that you can pull that in and they can do that. Or you can set up some kind of a co-op thing or something like that. But it really is born out of this feeling that they're not up to the task. And we would always tell people,

you only got to keep a couple of steps ahead of this kid. Even if you didn't do well in school, you just got to keep a couple of lessons ahead of them. And you might learn some stuff that you never learned in school because you didn't like school. And, you know, the key thing is, from a Christian perspective, is that God gave you these kids. And so he also gave you the ability to do what is necessary. And I think that's the key thing. And it's that relationship that is there that is lost, as you point out, that's a great term, outsourcing it to other people because you think other

people can do a better job of this or that. And then you miss that time with the kid. You spend all your time shuffling them from one of these activities from one expert to another. And you just become kind of a soccer mom type of facilitator or chauffeur. You don't really ever have that time with them. I've seen that as well as I've been growing up. That is an excellent way to describe it, outsourcing, I think.

Tell us, I'm sorry, go ahead. You know, and just to tag onto that, one of the great dangers of outsourcing is that often those people are introducing different worldview perspectives to your children than you want them to have. So they might be a great soccer coach, but there may be things about anger and about treating other people and thoughts about money, you know, growing up to be a professional soccer player. I mean, all these other ideas that are being introduced to your children that are ones that the Bible might not agree with. And so when you hand your children over to these other authority figures, you're handing over your authority at the same time. And that's a great danger.

Yes, that is really true. Yeah, that's how we get the a la carte syncretism, right? Exactly. With all these different forces that are there. You were talking about church. And so, you know, what kind of church is a good church that's going to support the parents? So many times I look at churches and they have so many activities that they've got set up. And I often think about a cruise that I went on with our family. It was Karen's parents' 50th anniversary. I want to take everybody on a cruise.

It was a Disney cruise. And we get on there and this is a family cruise. So it's like, okay, what activities do you have for the family? Well, we'll put a bracelet on the kids and we'll take them over here and we've got all kinds of stuff. And then, you know, you can do these things. And it's like, no, no, what do you have for us to do together? They didn't have anything for us to do together.

They said, well, nobody's asked us about that before. Yeah. You, you take this family cruise and you could outsource your kids over here to be entertained and babysat and whatever. And then you could go do these other activities. And it's like, no, we don't want to do that. Uh, but it tells. And so when I look at churches, many times I see that type of thing happening in, in the churches. What, what is the kind of church that is most effective at supporting parents and their task? Yeah, one of the things that I try to get Christian parents to do, or any parents really if they're going to engage with the church, is to recognize, you know what, the single most important ministry in the entire church is the ministry to children.

Because if what we're there to do is to build up somebody's faith, develop that faith, reinforce that faith, release that faith into the world, all of the foundations for that happen before the age of 13. And so, what's going on in the children's ministry is the single most important ministry in the church. So, when you go to a church, don't go there saying, gee, I hope they make me happy. You know, I mean, frankly, what our research has found for the last 40 years is that adults don't change. You know, so, you're going to go in, believe in what you believe, you're going to come out pretty much believing the same thing. We did a longitudinal study, tracked people over 30 plus years, and found that the worldview of adults doesn't change. Most Americans die with the same

worldview that they had at the age of 13. And so, you know, let's look at that children's ministry. What do you want to look at? Number one, take a look at the children's pastor. One of the pieces of research that we did for this book was with pastors across the country. What we discovered is that seven out of every eight children's pastors do not have a biblical worldview. You can't get what you don't have. And so when children are going to seven out of eight children's ministries, they're not going to be taught biblical truth. They're going to be taught stuff that satisfies the needs of the ministry. What are the needs of that ministry? Well, parents are saying, you know what?

I want my child to be safe. I want my child to be happy. I want my child to be around some good kids, and I want them to be exposed to some kind of religious teaching. And that's about as far as it goes. You know, we know when we talk with senior pastors across the country, again, a majority of whom do not have a biblical worldview, we ask them, how do you know if your church is healthy and successful? They said, oh, we measure five things. How many people show up?

How much money is raised? How many programs we offer? How many staff people we get to hire? How much square footage we've built out? Look, I'm a measurement guy, so I'm glad they're measuring something. But as a measurement guy, I know you get what you measure. And so when those are your measures, what you're going to get is a megachurch, a place that's well marketed. But keep in mind that Jesus didn't die for any of those five things.

So those shouldn't be the key measures that we're looking at. So when you're looking for a children's ministry, look for the stuff that matters to Jesus. Because if it matters to Jesus and it matters to the church, that's what they're going to be sharing with your child. Oh, that's great advice. So, you know, it's time with the kids. There is no substitute quantity with the kids. There's no substitute in terms of quality,

in terms of outsourcing the kids. And it's very important that you understand who is going to be holding their heart at various times, right? And that really is the key thing. I think people need to think of it that way. You know, if you think of somebody holding something as fragile as a heart and you don't realize that that is really what is happening at these very tender ages is very, very malleable.

And it's kind of interesting that you point out that the worldview of adults really doesn't change. Of course, we were told that. I believe it because it's in the Bible, but your research has borne that out. So it is interesting because we do have people who've had, uh, uh, some exceptions to that, I guess, uh, that, that would be the exceptions, uh, that have had a very difficult, uh, upbringing and, uh, but God has stepped into their life and, um, worked in a way to, uh, radically change them. Right.

But that's, that's really the exception. Would you say? It is the exception. And one of the interesting things i did actually the biggest study i've ever done was on that very thing and what i found is that there are the way that people change is god allows them to go through a crisis you know we tend to think of a crisis as something to avoid at all costs it's painful we don't want to endure it. And yet God uses crisis to get our attention and to shake us up enough that, yes, we can move more and more toward having a biblical worldview. You know, an ugly divorce, the painful death of

someone who is close to you that you loved, contracting or a debilitating illness or having some kind of debilitating injury, losing all of your possessions in a natural disaster, spending time in prison, and going through personal bankruptcy. Those six things represent a majority of the crises that have enabled people to get to a place where God could continue the transformational process in their life. And they moved away from a secular mindset and heart set more toward a biblical mindset. So, yeah, it's possible, you know, and that's the hope that parents need who blew it with their young kids, you know, because it's never over. If you're just hearing this and you're saying, oh my gosh, my child is 14, 16, and 18, you know, what do I do now? It's like, okay, don't give up hope. Keep in mind that discipleship

is a relationship. It's a relationship with Jesus first, and it's a relationship with another disciple, somebody who wants to bring you into that relationship with Christ. So it's all about relationship. What do you do with that relationship? You invite that other person on the journey with you. It's not something where you give them homework and say, go and learn these verses. Go and figure out how to make this real in your life. It's more so like, hey, let's check this out.

Let's see how this works together. You know, we'll read the passages. We'll talk about the passages. We'll go and we'll exhibit the passages in our lives. That's how discipleship works. How do we know that? Because that's what Jesus did. Yes, yes.

Well, that really is true. And, you know, when you're talking about that through crisis and through pain, that's what C.S. Lewis said. You know, God speaks to us through our pain. That's what C.S. Lewis said, you know, God speaks to us through our pain. And actually, I think he used the analogy of, you know, the blows of a sculptor changing us in our life. Nobody wants to go through that, but it is a really loving process. And I think when we go back and we look at the crises in our lives, as I'm about your age, and we're in the review stage here, and we look at the most difficult times in our life.

That was the time when God spoke to us and moved us in a different direction. That was true. And our tendency is to try to restore everything to quote-unquote normal. That's right. Well, often the reason that we're having the crisis is because normal ain't working for us. So to be willing to say, okay, this might be a great opportunity for me to rethink this a little bit, that's the direction God may be pushing us. That's true. And when I look at some of the discussion points here about your book, Embrace an Eternal Perspective, properly define what a successful life is. That's one of

the key things. You know, if God is going to, you know, as you point out, if the normal is not working for you, maybe he's got a new normal for you. It's going to change what you really want and how you define success is not just simply being comfortable. Maybe it's something else, isn't it? It is. And, you know, for those parents who are trying to get a handle on, okay, okay, but where do I start with all of this? I feel overwhelmed. I'm not a theologian. I don't know where to start. One of the greatest discoveries I feel that I've ever made out of the data, you know, I feel like Isaac Newton here, is a really late one.

It was like one or two in the morning. I'm playing with data. And one of the things I found is there are seven particular beliefs that fit together and can serve as a great biblical worldview foundation. What the data showed is if you embrace all seven of these very simple biblical perspectives, and you try to carry them out in your life, you'll have an 83% probability of going on to develop a complete biblical worldview. If you reject any one, one or more of these seven, I'm calling them the cornerstones of the biblical worldview, if you reject one or more of the cornerstones, then you've got only a 2% probability of developing a biblical worldview. That's how important these seven elements are. And, you know, when people hear them, you know,

devoted Christians laugh, come on, that's Sunday School 101. Yeah, but apparently most people didn't pay attention during Sunday School 101. That's why we started 15 months that's right tell us real quickly what they are i'm dying to know yeah i mean number one is you not only believe that god exists but you know that in terms of his nature and character he's all all knowing all loving uh you know all powerful he's perfect he's just he wants to be involved in your life because he created you, because he wants to love you. He wants that relationship. Okay, knowing there's that kind of God who's perfect and just and holy and so forth, that's great, but cornerstone number two, but recognize that we're born as sinners.

We sin throughout our lives. We're born into that approach. And every choice we make has consequences, and our sins have eternal consequences. And so, cornerstone number three is recognizing that the only real antidote to that consequence, the negative consequence of our sins is jesus christ so what we can do is acknowledge that we're sinners you know own up to it fess up to it ask him to forgive us for our sins and most importantly truly repent genuinely repent which means that not just i'm saying yeah give give me you know eternal fire insurance but it's saying i i really feel remorse over the fact that these choices of mine, these sins break God's heart. I don't want to do that anymore. So God, give me the strength to fight back the temptation to keep sinning. Cornerstone number four is saying that, you know what? We know what those sins are because God gave us his word. He gave us principles for life. So he identifies sins. He identifies the right way to live. He identifies

what gives him and us joy. And cornerstone number five is saying that, and the Bible in the course of doing so gives us absolute moral truths. And so, it's not based on our life conditions. It's not based on our feelings. It's not based on our situation. It's not based on what's most popular or most common. God has given us absolute moral truths. And when we reject those, we will reap the consequences of what we've sown through that rejection. Cornerstone number six goes to what you were saying, recognizing what success in life is. And the Bible tells us that God makes it very clear that success is not about money, it's not about cars, it's not about the trophy, spouse, you know, any of that kind of stuff, fame, etc. It's simply about being consistently obedient to God.

You can be a homeless person wearing rags, not knowing if you're going to get another meal, but if you're consistently obedient to God, you are a success in life, not in the world's eyes, but in God's eyes. And then the final one is understanding that when God created you, he loved you and he gave you a purpose for life. And that universal purpose that all of us share, there's a unique purpose he'll give to each of those who are following Jesus. But that universal purpose each of us has is very simply to know, love, and serve God with all our heart, mind, strength, and soul. So, when you put these seven things together, it completely changes your understanding of how life works, who you are, why you're here, how to live, how to gauge whether or not your life is making

the difference that God wants it to make. And yet, those seven things are very easy for us as parents to wrap our arms around and to be able to share those with our children and to go on a journey with our children pursuing those seven things. And as you were alluding to earlier, the way I say to parents is, look, you don't have to be a theologologian you only have to be 10 seconds ahead of your kids and if you are this is going to work it's going to work great invite them on the journey with you that's right yeah yeah if you can now think that 15 month old uh stay a few steps ahead of them you got it made and uh and god will give you what you need to do that you know he always does equip us for the things that he assigns to us and that's that's the key thing stepping out in faith and we've had a lot of people have to

do that over the last couple of years when they were uh confronted with things in their own life that were going to be shut off to them if they didn't violate their conscience and so i think this is uh that that may have been a difficult time of training for many people in our society. And so that makes me very optimistic about the future because we've had a lot of people who have been under the sculptor's chisel for the last few years and came through from the other side. And to this new normal, they've got a very different perspective after having gone through that. Well, that certainly is sage advice. And it looks like an excellent book. Again, the book is, you can pull the book up, Raising Spiritual Champions, Nurturing Your Child's Heart, Mind, and Spirit. And you can find that at, I guess, Best Place, Amazon.

Is that the best place to find that, or do you sell it directly? It is, yeah. And we've got it both in paperback and digital versions so whichever you prefer it's available that's great and and um how can people uh keep up with you to have a sub stack or anything like that or a website that uh you tell people that you publish on yeah if they go to cultural research center.com they'll find all the research that we do we try to put as much of it on that website for free as possible so people can take it,

use it, share it. You know, the whole idea here is for us to keep growing as disciples of Jesus. So every time we learn something, we want to be able to share it with the public. That's great. That's great.

Well, uh, certainly it's great advice and you've been watching, uh, bigger trends in people's lives and you have seen how this aligns with the Bible. So that's your biblical worldview. You have seen it validated what the Bible says. You've seen that validated over a long period of time.

And you have a lot of very sage advice for people. Thank you so much for joining us, George Barna. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, David. appreciate it thank you thank you david the david knight show is a critical thinking super spreader if you've been exposed to logic by listening to the David Knight Show. Please do your part and try not to spread it. Financial support or simply telling others about the show causes this dangerous information to spread farther. People have to trust me.

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