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Parents' Influence on Worldview
00:04:04
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| You know, it tells us that the culture is influencing the church and not the church influencing the culture. | |
| Is that right? | |
| Well, that's what we find in the research, certainly. | |
| I mean, when we look at what kind of influence does the local church have in a typical person's life, it's truly minimal. | |
| I mean, it's just overwhelmed by the influence that arts and entertainment have, news and information, media, even government laws. | |
| And, you know, I'd love to go back to something that Mondo pointed out, which is this role of consistency. | |
| A few years back, I had the opportunity to write a book called Revolutionary Parenting, which was based on a series of studies that we did about parenting. | |
| And what we discovered is that for those parents who raised children to become lovers of Jesus and who committed their lives to Christ, no matter what their job was, no matter what they lived, no matter what their income level was, Jesus was primary in their life. | |
| And we went back to those young people who are now grown adults, and then we got their permission to talk to their parents. | |
| We talked to their parents, and we asked them all, well, why do you think you turned out this way? | |
| Because you're the aberration. | |
| This doesn't usually happen. | |
| Why and how did this happen? | |
| The number one reason was that those parents were consistent in how they raised their children. | |
| And so they understood the scriptures and they were consistently bringing God's word into the decision-making process. | |
| There was discipline, but the discipline was based on God's word. | |
| It was all consistently provided by the parents over the course of years. | |
| Now, I contrast that with the study that we did earlier this year with parents. | |
| And we found out that, first of all, only 2% of the parents of children under the age of 13 in America today have a biblical worldview. | |
| So what are the chances that their children are going to grow up with a biblical worldview? | |
| Almost none because a parent can't give what they don't have. | |
| But then we also found that the primary approach to parenting of today's parents is, believe it or not, outsourcing. | |
| And what I mean by that is they say that they love their children so much that they want to get them the best of the best who are going to train them in various disciplines in life. | |
| So they're going to get the best music teacher they can. | |
| They're going to get the best church leaders they can. | |
| They're going to get the best tutors for their education that they can. | |
| They're going to bring in all these outside people. | |
| Now, what happens when you do that? | |
| Those people bring their worldview with them and they're teaching from what they know. | |
| So they're being exposed to more and more different worldviews that are not biblical worldviews. | |
| And we also discovered that most young children in America today don't even look to their parents anymore for that kind of worldview focus or training or development. | |
| Why not? | |
| Because, you know, a worldview development is basically a process of exploration and discovery. | |
| We're trying to figure out how life works, how we fit in it, where we're going to go, how we're going to get there. | |
| And the best way to do that, most children initially think is, I'll look at my parents because I know they love me. | |
| I love them. | |
| I trust them. | |
| But what we discovered is that most kids eventually find out that I no longer really trust my parents when it comes to worldview. | |
| And the reason for that is they say, my parents may say one thing, but they live differently. | |
| They're inconsistent. | |
| They're a bad role model. | |
| And so parents, if you're listening, grandparents, if you're listening, you know, understand that you've got to be straight about who you are, about who God's called you to be, how the Bible instructs us to live. | |
| And we've got to be 100% on top of that and consistent with that at all times. | |