Homeschool News & Views
From Homeschool Helpers
Issue 26, June 15, 2007
In association with Pass It On Ministries

The George Barna group has issued the results of a survey which demonstrates a big difference in morals between two age groups. They compared the moral beliefs of those over forty and those in their twenties and thirties.  Those in their twenties and thirties have been labeled the Baby Busters, in contrast with those who were born shortly after World War II, who are called Baby Boomers.

First of all, the Barna group reported that “Most Americans say they are concerned about the moral condition of the country.” In agreement with that, another study that was not by the Barna people showed that about three-quarters of Americans believe that moral values in America are weaker than they were twenty years ago.

However, the Barna group also reported that “the vast majority of adults describe themselves as moral people.”

So most people in the country think that most people in the country are immoral, and most people in the country think that it’s not them.

Some time ago I read of a survey taken of people in Sweden. It was not a survey of morals, perhaps because in Sweden there aren’t any.  The survey simply asked the question, “Are you an above average driver or a below average driver?”

By definition, half of all drivers would be above average and half would be below average.  Mathematically that’s the way it has to be, since in this case median and average are the same. Yet 90% of the drivers in Sweden thought they were above average.

That’s kind of like the line that Garrison Keillor uses in Prairie Home Companion, where all the kids in Lake Wobegon are above average.

Why are 90% of the drivers in Sweden above average, when half have to be below average?

They’re not.  That’s just deceptive human nature at work.  Jeremiah 17:9 says that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.  The heart is most deceitful in that it deceives the self about how bad that self is.

So 90% of the drivers in Sweden are above average, and in America, almost everyone thinks that the morals are bad in the country, yet almost everyone thinks that he himself is moral.  As a whole the country is immoral, but there are no immoral people.

As Garrison Keillor says, “All the children are above average.”

The Barna survey compared the moral views of those over forty and those in their twenties and thirties, the Busters.  We have already seen that both groups are probably too optimistic in their opinion of their own morality.  Beyond that, however, there are marked differences in moral beliefs between these age groups.

For example, Barna said that “Two thirds of those over 40 said humans should determine what is right and wrong morally by examining God’s principles.”  In other words, two out of three of the over the hill gang believe that there is an absolute right and wrong, which is set by God.  By contrast, in the Busters, only three out of ten accept that there is an absolute right and wrong.

More than twice as many of the older generations believe in right and wrong as set by God.  An overwhelming majority of the Busters do not believe in right and wrong.  That means they believe that wrong is right.

That is a huge difference which came about between these generations.  And if we go farther back, we find the same thing.  Of those over forty, about one third do not accept any moral absolutes.  That, in turn, is a far greater portion than that of preceding generations.  Really, in two generations in America we have gone from a country where almost everyone believed in right and wrong as set by the God of the Bible to a nation where most people don’t.  As Americans, Christians and homeschool families, we must not overlook this enormous change.

In the Bible, Lot was Abraham’s nephew, but must have been like a son to him.  Lot had left his homeland to travel with Abraham and Sarah to Canaan.  For years Lot and Abraham roamed the hills of Israel together, tending their flocks and herds.  Finally their herds got so big they couldn’t stay together and find enough forage.  Abraham offered Lot his choice of territory, so Lot left Uncle Abe in the upland and went downhill to the green grass of Sodom.  And his life was never the same.  He and his family were captured in a war.  He lost his wife and sons-in-law.  And even the  moral standards of Lot and his daughters were obviously affected by living in Sodom.  Lot was willing to give his virgin daughters to the wicked men of Sodom, but they didn’t want them, and his daughters later committed incest because of a lack of faith that God would preserve them.

America is like Lot.  She is leaving the upland and going downhill to Sodom.  They are leaving absolute truth and going downhill to absolute falsehood.  There will be consequences.

Homeschool families can get very focused on establishing their family enterprises, and setting up a miniature Kingdom of God.  Often this involves having a place in the country, and living a life filled with peace, plenty, and happiness.  That is good.  But this world is not the kingdom of God.  It is still the kingdom of Satan.  It was his to offer to Christ in the temptation of Matthew 4.  Many Christians are caught up in the American affluenza, where in the richest nation in history, they spend most of their time, energy and affection trying to get more riches, more property, bigger house, more money.  How much is a mansion worth if it sits in the middle of Sodom?  Christians must  remember that as they try to accumulate their properties.  Christ’s kingdom is not of this world, John 18:36.  That is the ultimate enterprise, which we must help build.

On an individual basis, Barna says that these young adults, the Busters, who do not believe in an absolute right and wrong have “less civility, respect, or patience.”

“Busters were twice as likely as their parents’ generation to use profanity in public, to say mean things about others behind their back, to tell something to another person that was not true, to do something to get back at someone who hurt or offended them, to take something that didn’t belong to them, and to physically fight or abuse someone.”

We all too often hear of someone who has gone totally Satanic and kills a slew of people before killing himself.  But all the time now we see people who just act ugly.

Road rage is a modern invention.  Nat King Cole’s song about Route 66, from Chicago to LA, mentioned Joplin, Amarillo, and Gallup, New Mexico, but it did not mention road rage on old Route 66.  Rude driving is routine today.  People now routinely make obscene gestures to others on the highways, and this practice only began in the last few years.

Modern society is becoming like a pack of dogs, where nothing restrains them.  If there is no absolute truth, who can say someone is wrong?  So it has become wrong to say someone is wrong.  “I don’t want to be judgmental”, has become the left wing politically correct phrase.

But the apostle Paul said,

1Co 5:1-5
(1)  It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and such sexual immorality as is not even named among the Gentiles, that one has his father's wife.
(2)  You are puffed up, and didn't rather mourn, that he who had done this deed might be removed from among you.
(3)  For I most certainly, as being absent in body but present in spirit, have already, as though I were present, judged him who has done this thing.
(4)  In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, you being gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ,
(5)  are to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.

Can you believe that the apostle Paul, the man who wrote more of the New Testament than any other man, was so judgmental?

Young people are growing up unrestrained, disrespectful, totally spoiled brats, not knowing right and wrong, doing wrong and thinking it is right, and most of all thinking they are right, no matter how much wrong they do.  If you want your child to grow up like that, don’t ever tell them no.  Don’t make them feel bad by correcting them.  Build their self esteem instead of building character.  Be non-judgmental.  Don’t set an absolute right and wrong, with consequences for doing wrong.

The Barna study also showed that even those who are more conservative and more Christian still aren’t very much like Christ.

Among those Barna classifies as “born again Christians”, the difference in morals between Busters and the older generation was still large.  Of those “born again Christians” over 40, one third -- 33% -- thought that living together without marriage was morally acceptable.  With the “born again” Busters, 59% thought that cohabitation without marriage was all right.  65% of non-Christians over 40 thought it was right, and 80% of non-Christian Busters did.

So among the Christians, the percent of Busters who accept this sin as good is almost double the percent of over 40 Christians.

But that word Christian does not necessarily mean someone who is really following Christ, does it?  Does Christ approve of people living together without marriage?

No.

Mat 5:27, 28
(27)  You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery;'
(28)  but I tell you that everyone who gazes at a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart.

We are talking about marriage here, an institution that has endured for thousands of years, set up by God Himself, strengthened by Christ  -- and even one third of the older Christians don’t believe in it.  They believe it is morally acceptable -- that God approves! -- of two people living together without being married.  As Christians they believe in faithful fornication, acceptable adultery, sacred shacking up.

And these are the good guys!  As a group, this over 40 “born again” group are the only ones – the only ones -- who believe that people need to get married.  Of the non-Christians, only 35% of those over 40 believe in the sanctity of marriage, and only 20% of non-Christian Busters do.  And only 41% of Christian Busters believe in the sanctity of marriage.  That means that about 60% of these twenty-ish and thirty-ish Christians approve open adultery.

Where do these people go to church?

I bet they go to non-judgmental churches.

What do those statistics tell you about the prospects for homosexual marriage ultimately being accepted in this country?  People who do not believe in the sanctity of marriage will not worry overmuch about homosexuals getting "married."

Here’s the change in the country.  Grandfather believed in one wife for life.  Father believed in one wife at a time.  Junior doesn’t believe in having a wife at all, just a partner.

A Barna spokesman said, “The research shows that people’s moral profile is more likely to resemble that of their peer group than it is to take shape around the tenets of a person’s faith.  This research paints a compelling picture that moral values are shifting very quickly and significantly within the Christian community as well as outside it.”

What a person believes tends to be the same as those other people he is around.  If you want your child to grow up as an anti-Christian liberal, then send him to a public school.  Almost surely in spite of your hours of teaching, and almost no public school parents do that, they will teach him more.  If you want to be one of these liberal Christians who have grown beyond the simplicity of absolute right and wrong, then go to a church which is non-judgmental.  Someday practicing homosexuals will be welcome there, if they’re not already.  If you want to increase your chance of divorce and destroying your family, then go to a church which is filled with divorcees and supports divorce more than it supports marriage.

This slide to immorality affects all of us, to whatever degree.  Even if we disagree with it.  It affects the way we raise our children, the way we handle our marriages, the way we do our jobs, and the way we treat God.

If you want to raise Godly children, then fill their lives with God.  Christian education is not just about missing the bad of the public schools.  It is about all those hours of drinking in the teachings of Christ, and of having every class based on God.  And if you don’t want to be one of those born again unbelievers in Barna’s surveys, you must let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus, the Messiah Yeshua.  That only happens by constantly seeking that, through daily hours in devotions, through regular fasting, and through sometimes taking time off from everything for that which is everything.  90% of the drivers in Sweden are above average, and there are many Christians who aren’t following Christ at all.