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Jan. 3, 2025 - Jim Bakker Show
58:28
The Jim Bakker Show with George Barna
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Cultural Transformation Now 00:02:58
Hello and welcome to the Jim Baker Family Show, coming to you from the Village Morningside, USA, nestled in the beautiful Ozark Mountains.
Today, our special guest is the Director of Research and co-founder of the Cultural Research Center in Arizona Christian University and the founder of the Barna Group, George Barna.
Our co-host today is Reverend Mondo de la Vega.
And now, live from Gray Street of Morningside, USA, here's your host, Pastor Ricky Baker.
Hello, you're watching Jim Baker's PTL Television Network.
It's an honor you chose to tune in with us today.
Today, we're going to be talking about some important cultural issues, as well as having a biblical worldview versus having a worldly worldview.
Mondo, it's important that especially nowadays, every believer of every generation should have had a biblical worldview.
But we're seeing that the biblical worldview, even amongst believers in church, is drifting away.
Listen, this ought to be the number one conversation on every Christian's table talk because I want to tell you something.
Culture is changing.
Yet the word of God never changes.
Amen.
But yet, at the same time, God prepares people to help us understand how to navigate through the changes of life.
I believe there's three Georges that you ought to know in your life.
George Lucas, George Foreman, and George Barna.
Come on, somebody.
They're the ones that are changing the culture today.
But I want to tell you something.
Dr. George Barna is a very important voice for this generation, Ricky, because as new leaders emerge into the scene, they're going to have to have the knowledge of the past to understand how to navigate through the wisdom of the future.
That's right.
The strength of the young is only good when they is paired with the wisdom of those who have been there and have done that.
Today, we have Dr. George Barna with us today.
He is the director and researcher and co-founder of the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University.
He's also an ACU professor focusing on worldview assessment and development and cultural transformation.
Mondo, we need cultural transformation now more than ever.
For more than three decades, he has conducted cutting-edge research in areas of worldview faith and in culture in America.
Dr. George Barna, we want to thank you for being on the broadcast with us today.
God bless you.
Tell us where you're coming from and how are you doing?
Well, thanks for having me on, Ricky.
And Mondo, it's great to be back with you.
I'm out here in the Socialist Republic of California today, and we're trying to figure out how we can transform this culture out here.
It's pretty wacky, but it's been a great year in terms of research, trying to figure out where the nation's at.
Election Red Wave 00:15:55
The election was fascinating.
I think Worldview played a major role in that.
And there's certainly lots to talk about about what's going on in the culture today.
You know, I'd like to start off with what you just brought up.
The election really was a cultural shift in America where the majority of the world thought it may have gone one direction, but we saw a giant, what people are calling red wave sweep across America.
People were coming out in droves to be able to vote.
What do you think that says about the American climate right now?
Well, actually, there are two things that come to mind immediately, Ricky.
One of those is that the American people did not come out in droves to vote.
We actually had millions fewer people vote than we had four years earlier.
It was a pretty average turnout.
If you take 2020 out of the equation, what you see is that we had about 55, maybe 56% of voting age Americans actually vote.
And that's about normal.
And so, you know, there wasn't a lot of enthusiasm about the election.
What we saw is that millions of people said, well, I don't really like the candidates.
I don't like where the country's at.
I'm not going to bother voting.
I don't think my vote's going to make a difference.
I think the election is rigged.
There were all kinds of excuses that we were hearing.
We actually tracked those.
One of the most common, in fact, the most common reason why people who didn't vote chose not to was they said, well, you know, I plan to, but when push came to shove, I just didn't get around to it.
Which I think, again, is another important indicator about how significant our political system and our governance is to most Americans.
We take freedom for granted.
We just assume, well, it's going to go on and they're going to fix things.
They're going to make it better.
Well, there is no they.
The they is us.
So we've got to make these things happen.
And turning out to vote is a critical issue.
One of the things that I talked about immediately after the election was Christians really did not show up in huge numbers.
Now, fortunately, more Christians showed up than non-Christians did.
And so that was a good thing because that's why Mr. Trump won.
You'll never hear this in the mainstream news, of course.
But 78% of all of the votes that Mr. Trump received came from people who called themselves Christians.
Mrs. Harris had a stronghold with people who do not consider themselves to be Christian.
She won about 60% among the non-Christians.
So when you look at what's actually going on, if Christians always turned out to vote, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.
There'd be nothing to talk about.
Christians would win every election.
And I'm not putting on a pro-nationalism argument right now if somebody wants to get all incensed about that.
All I'm saying is 68% of Americans currently consider themselves Christian.
If they understood that voting is an issue of stewardship, trying to use the influence that we as believers have to advance God's agenda, to build his kingdom and advance his kingdom, and that governance, politics, elections, that's all just one part of God's kingdom.
But we're here to be stewards of that and to do his will.
And so if we were to take biblical principles, biblical values, and translate them into the laws that we have in America today, you know, people say, government, gosh, you can't legislate morality.
That's foolish.
That's the only thing the government does is it legislates morality.
But, you know, morality is determining right from wrong.
And that's what our laws do.
It tells us, well, this is wrong.
And so we're going to punish you.
Or this is right.
We're going to leave you alone.
So government really matters.
And Christians need to be right at the center of it, taking God's principles into government.
Amen.
I just want to say something because Dr. Barna, you are one of the most important voices in our generation.
And thank you for not giving up.
Thank you for never quitting.
Thank you for not allowing yourself to just walk away into the sunset and let us fight this battle on our own.
I believe you have been anointed for this time right now.
Your research, your ministry, your dedication to educate the Christian community is more vital today than when you started many years ago.
Your books have literally made an impact in our culture, how we want to preach, how we do ministry, how we impact our generation.
Yet, Dr. Barna, one of your studies showed that 104 million people of faith, including 32 million Christians.
This is, again, this is before the election, Ricky.
Will not vote in elections.
Dr. Barner, how critical was this research in order to understand the impact that this election could have had if some of those Christians did not go out and vote?
Well, I'll tell you, Mondel, you know, it's interesting because we put that out, I don't know, maybe six weeks, eight weeks before the election.
And we were very fortunate there.
There was a group of people, David Barton, Chad Connolly, a group of others, Lynn Shackelford and so forth, who took that information and went to churches.
And they spent those last two months just going from church to church, meetings of pastors, congregations, wherever they could get Christians together to try to sound that message.
It's like, hey, this is an emergency, folks.
We're about to lose America.
We're about to lose American culture and everything that it stood for earlier in the program.
Thank you.
You know, you said there were three Georges to pay attention to, George Lucas, George Foreman, and me.
I'd had George Washington on there because he was critical in helping to shape the foundations of this nation.
And that's what the current administration, the Biden administration, has wanted to completely change.
And so they've wanted to bring in Marxist and socialist ideals.
And people, in many cases, were not standing up to that.
Well, in this election, it was our chance to say enough, enough.
This is silly.
And so it was critical that our churches get people to understand we as the majority of this country, we as the moral conscience of this country have a huge responsibility to not just vote, but to be having conversations with everybody we encounter about, hey, are you going to vote?
Who are you going to vote for?
Why are you going to vote for them?
What do you believe about the key issues, whether it's abortion, the issue of life, the federal debt, and what that's going to do for the long haul?
I mean, there are all kinds of issues, law and order, border control, you name it.
So many critical things were under attack and still are during this last month of the Biden administration.
And so Christians, as the moral conscience of the nation, have to be at the forefront of what's going on.
We have to do our homework.
We have to have those conversations.
We have to be well informed.
We have to be godly in our conversations with people, not hatred, not angry, but helping other people to understand what's going on and to see a biblical point of view in the midst of what we think of as politics.
There's no politics.
It's all life.
And that's just one dimension of it that we need to be flavoring.
And so I think that research may have been important toward getting pastors to recognize, yeah, I may lose the freedom to ever preach another sermon that the government doesn't dictate to me if we don't get Christians out to vote.
I may lose the opportunity to unlock the back door of the church if we don't get Christians out to vote and to vote biblically.
So, yeah, I think that research was critical.
You know, in the end, one thing that did disturb me, because the day after the election, we did our post-election research, and we've got that out as a report that people can download for free.
But what we found is that there were still 77 million Christians who did not show up to vote anytime during the election.
Could that have spelled the doom of America?
Absolutely.
And then you look at the outcome of this election.
And Mr. Trump won, and a lot of conservatives won.
And that's a good thing.
But a lot of conservatives lost.
Some conservatives won by a very small margin.
What would have happened if the church had really shown up in force, in power, to vote on Election Day?
There wouldn't have been any close elections, any close races.
And so I think for the future, we've got to keep thinking about what is our role as believers in this country.
It's not to sit back and say, God, bless me.
I want your blessings.
No, our role is to say, you have blessed me.
You have called me.
You have gifted me.
I may not have the same gifts as my neighbor.
I may not have the same gifts as you and Ricky, but I have spiritual gifts that the Lord has given me to use for his glory and to advance his agenda, to do his will.
And how we treat our government, what we do in elections, that's one part of it.
It's only one part of it, but it's an important part of it.
And so we've got to constantly be on our toes doing our homework, knowing what's going on out in the culture and being ready at all times to give a reason for the hope that lies within us.
That hope is Jesus Christ.
But if Jesus were here, he would understand what was going on in the culture.
And he would want to talk to everybody about how should we be thinking biblically about these issues and what can we individually do to advance God's ways.
Amen.
You know, I want to ask you this question.
How did we get to the point where we as Christians have lost a biblical worldview?
And I want to ask, is this a big crisis that many people are ignoring right now?
Oh, bless you, Ricky, for bringing that up.
I mean, to me, that is the question of the hour for America, really for the world.
But let's just focus on America.
We got to clean up our own house before we, you know, start doing things overseas.
Yeah, I think it's a huge thing.
Now, why does worldview matter?
You know, some people may hear the term worldview and they roll their eyes and they go, oh, no, another academic discussion.
It's not an academic discussion.
This is the heart of how we live.
Why?
Because every person has a worldview.
Your worldview is the mental, emotional, and spiritual filter that helps us to understand and experience and interpret and respond to everything that happens in our life.
Our worldview is like the brains of a computer, the central processing unit.
You turn on a computer.
If it doesn't have a CPU in there, it's just a box of wires and trinkets.
But once you start linking it up to the CPU, it can start to do some pretty amazing things.
Well, our worldview is the same thing.
It's our operating system, really.
And what it helps us to do is to make every decision.
Every decision that every person makes every moment of every day of their life flows through their worldview.
And so it's that worldview that helps us make sense of the world and helps us to make every choice that we make.
Now, what's happened with Christians is because churches and families have gotten away from being focused on developing the worldview of children because a person's worldview is determined by the age of 13.
Those first 13 years of life, we're trying to figure life out.
And so we develop all of these ideas about who I am.
Is there a God?
What's that God like?
What difference does he make?
What power does he have?
What power do I have?
What's my role and my purpose in life?
All of these things and more.
Kids are trying to answer those questions every day.
And they eventually come to answers and they keep those answers in their mind, their heart, their soul for the rest of their life.
Our research finds that people's worldview rarely changes after the age of 13.
Most people die with the same worldview that they had at the age of 13.
Maybe it's a little better articulated.
Maybe they flushed it out a little bit, but by and large, it's the same worldview.
And so it's critically important that churches and parents take that role of developing that young mind and heart and soul around the principles of the Bible.
But what we've done instead is we've noticed that our research shows at least that most churches, pastors tell us, you know what?
We measure how we're doing in ministry and we think we're doing really well.
And we ask them, that's great.
Why do you think that?
And they say, well, we measure five things.
We measure how many people show up to our services and events, how much money they give, how many programs we're able to offer to people, how many staff people we can hire, and how much money we've raised for all of that activity.
And if those numbers keep going up, which they have been, then we must be doing a great job in ministry.
And my response to that is, look, I'm a measurement guy.
I'm glad you're measuring things.
That's very important because you get what you measure.
But think about what we're measuring in our churches.
How many people we're able to attract.
What does it take to attract a person to come back week after week after week and to give up their money?
Is it going to be something where we're constantly challenging them to think about, are you reading the Bible?
Do you know God's word?
Are you applying it in every situation?
Are you a servant in the community?
Are you consistently moral in the choices that you're making?
You know, a lot of people don't want to hear that because they've been won over by the devil.
But if you're just going to preach good times and happiness and feeling good, yeah, they'll come for that because that's a good time.
And unfortunately, that's what's happening in so many churches.
We're not teaching people God's word.
We're not holding them accountable.
We're not building the kind of community where we're able to ask each other the tough questions about our lives.
We're not actually seeing people disciple each other one-on-one.
And because of that, we have parents who don't have a biblical worldview.
They're not concerned about the worldview development of their children.
And generation after generation after generation, the incidence of people with a biblical worldview continues to drop to the point where in America today, only 4% of our adults have a biblical worldview.
Dr. Barnard, that's an unbelievable observation of where we are in the temperature of church culture, let alone the culture itself, Ricky, because there are events that are taking place that scream biblical worldview.
Biblical Literacy Crisis 00:10:33
Yet the only way you can interpret the times and the seasons is through the word.
Most people don't want the word, Dr. Barnard.
Most people reject the word because it shifts their cultural view into what society has deemed to be what's right, yet the Bible calls that wrong.
I believe, and this ministry believes we are living in a time that Jesus talked about that his return would appear to be very chaotic and people will walk away from the faith and deception will take place.
Yet, at the same time, there's biblical prophecy in an only in wait, Ricky, what I'm trying to tell you is in order to be able to interpret the times and the seasons, we have to look back.
There you go.
You have to be biblically literate.
That's what the problem is.
A lot of people are biblically literate.
It's like a man being unable to read and opening up a book and saying, well, obviously, since I can't understand anything in here, it has no importance to me.
Well, no, you can't read.
So of course it wouldn't have any importance to you.
The same thing for the Bible, friends.
If you're taking verses out of context whenever you want and piecemealing half a verse here and half a verse there to make it say whatever you want, of course, when you read it within context, and of course, whenever you read it in its original text, of course it's not going to make sense, friend.
You have to be biblically literate.
Mondo, you have talked about this for many years.
You've been talking about it on your show many times, how there's actually a group of people, especially in America, who are very biblically illiterate.
Why?
Because they depend on a pastor.
for one hour on Sundays, one hour on Wednesdays, and then they don't open up the word on their own.
But I'm telling you right now, two hours a week, friends, I'm glad that you are going and getting the word continue to go.
Continue to sit under a pastor who's teaching the full Bible.
But friends, you have to have your own personal relationship with Jesus Christ as well.
It's not just a Sunday and a Wednesday thing.
No, someone said this the other day, and I had to write it down.
If you torture the scriptures long enough, they will confess to anything.
That's right.
I thought that was a brilliant statement.
Dr. Barno, I got to ask you this because as I'm watching the news, I'm watching a lot of events that the Bible screams Bible prophecy.
And anytime you have Israel in the middle of this headlines and when you have the magnitude of earthquakes and volcanoes and famine and all that, do you feel we are living on borrowed time?
Is the time getting shorter and shorter as you're seeing it?
And what does it mean to you after all the research you've done in culture?
Are we living in what the Bible calls the end times?
Yeah, you know, one of the things that the Bible tells us is that we're not going to know the exact day and time that, you know, the Lord's going to return.
But there are so many prophecies that are being fulfilled now.
It certainly appears that we're getting close to that time.
And even, you know, earlier we were talking about the election.
I mean, when I think about the fact that the current administration did not get re-elected, my interpretation of that is that there were enough of us who were praying, begging God to give us another chance to get it right, that he's given us a little reprieve.
But I think we're wearing out God's patience.
You know, I mean, everybody's a sinner, but man, we flaunt sin in America.
And this is a day and age for us to say, you know what?
We repent.
We are deeply wounded by the fact that we are constantly offending God, that we are constantly rejecting his ways, that we are constantly ignoring his presence, his power, his majesty, that we are choosing throughout the day never to even think about him, not to talk to him, not to worship him, not to praise him.
I mean, that's why we're on the face of the planet is to do those kinds of things that bring honor and glory to God.
And so, yeah, I think this may be, you know, the final times.
And one of the things that greatly troubles me is when I look at the church in America, whether we're talking local churches, whether we're talking the body of Christ, I don't see much of a sense of urgency.
I mean, obviously, you know, you too and a lot of others raise the call of, man, this is the time.
We got to pull it together.
You know, get on your knees and ask God to forgive you and give you direction and devote yourself to him unreservedly in these last days, these last hours, perhaps.
Yeah, but that's unusual.
There aren't many Americans.
There aren't even many people who call themselves Christians who are thinking that way.
So, yeah, I encourage both of you and all the people associated with your network, people in your audience, get out there and be talking about these things, be demonstrating what's going on.
Ricky, you were talking about the fact, and you were too, Mondo, about the fact that Americans right now are biblically illiterate.
And I would say we're at an unfortunate place in church history in America where many of our churches are not going to be helpful in getting us on the right track because they're so deluded, so delusional about what they are, what they represent, where they stand, the impact they're having.
They think they've just got to do more of the same.
And it goes back to that definition of insanity, you know, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
The things that got us in this mess are partly what churches have been doing for the last 30 years or so, which is not preaching the word of God, not discipling people, not emphasizing ministry to children, and so forth.
So this is a different day and age.
And I would say individual discipleship is going to be critical toward the future health of this country and its church.
So if you are truly a disciple of Jesus, please don't just sit back and wait for the local church to get its act together.
This is your time.
This is our time to be out in the world, finding people who have the ears to hear, who want to know, yeah, what is God's plan for me?
What's God's plan for the world?
What can I do to bless him, to honor him, to move things forward in a way that comports with God's word?
And so developing those kind of one-on-one relationships where we've got the trust of another individual, enough trust that we can speak honestly to them, that we can challenge them in terms of what they're doing in their life.
Challenge them not based on our feelings about who they should be or what they should do, but challenging them by going back into God's word and showing them, look right here, it says, here's what that means.
Here's what we should be doing as a result of that.
Let's pray right now that God will give us the desire and the power and the energy to do those very things, to honor and respect him and his word.
Wow.
I want to ask you this question.
Are you seeing a worldview deficiency in Christians, specifically amongst the universities and seminaries?
Now, I know that you are a professor at Arizona Christian University, but are you seeing around the United States of America universities that there is a deficiency in literacy?
Yeah, there's deficiency in all kinds of literacy.
Certainly biblical literacy would be at the top of that list.
What we know from various studies that other people have done, we haven't done these, but they're showing that it's very unusual, number one, to have a conservative, ideologically, either politically or spiritually conservative professor.
Secondly, most professors lean toward Marxism or socialism.
Very, very few professors who have a biblical worldview, what's known as Christian the biblical theism.
There are not many of those even in Christian colleges and universities.
And so if you're a parent or a grandparent or maybe a future college student and you're thinking about where, wow, where do I go?
Just because a school has Christian in its name or, you know, Bible college in its name doesn't even mean anymore that they really believe that the Bible is God's true, relevant, reliable word.
It might just be a label that they're using for marketing.
Maybe it's traditional or historical for the school.
You've got to be a very conscious and careful consumer if you're going to go to college or send somebody to college.
So, yeah, we've got all kinds of issues.
And of course, it's one thing to be a Marxist, to be a secular humanist, to be a postmodernist, to be an Eastern mysticist, and to be a professor.
But typically what we see is that it doesn't just end there.
They tend to take their worldview and integrate it into everything that they're teaching and saying and expecting of their students.
And perhaps you, like me, have seen all the different stories and reports.
And I get letters and calls from people all the time who are saying, oh, my gosh, you know, I took on a research project for one of my classes, political science, sociology, history, whatever.
And, you know, I did all the research.
And in my conclusions, I said, because I'm a Christian, this is what I believe.
And I failed that course because I simply brought about my Christian beliefs.
And I identified them as being, you know, my subjective perspective on this, but this is where I'm coming from in view of the historical facts in this project.
Encouragement Through Persecution 00:02:51
And, you know, they get persecuted, essentially, for their beliefs.
That's the way it is.
We have to recognize that in the end times, we are going to face persecution constantly and consistently and robustly.
And we cannot allow that to discourage us.
If anything, that needs to light the Holy Spirit fire under us to study the Bible more, to surround ourselves with like believers, even more so that we can encourage each other.
We can pray for each other.
We can understand what each other's going through and have some empathy and sympathy for each other, but encourage each other to keep going.
That's what the church is.
The church isn't the building where we go for events.
The church is the body of people who love Jesus with all their heart, mind, strength, and soul, and are willing to spend every day, even dying for his glory.
And when you surround yourselves with those people, it doesn't matter that we're a minority.
You know, what we find in our research and the books that I'm working on right now are how do you disciple people effectively in a non-Christian culture, which is what we have in America.
And one of the things that we find is that less than one out of every 10 Americans, way less, is actually a disciple of Jesus.
So look around very carefully.
Be discerning.
Figure out who is a disciple.
Spend your time with those people because they've got their mind and their heart set on God, just like you have to.
Encourage each other in doing God's will.
This is unbelievable.
This is a clear picture of where we are in the culture, where we are in the church, but yet so encouraging.
That's right.
Because if you have the information, you can do something with it.
That's right.
We can do something with the information he has just given us, friends.
I love the point that he made that the church is not a building we go to for events, but the body of Christ.
Friends, that is us, the people who come together, congregate, not just within the four walls, friends, but anywhere that we go to be the hands and feet of Jesus and loving our lives not even unto death.
Friends, if you're just tuning in, we're watching the PTL Television Network.
We have Dr. George Barno with us today.
Mondo, before we get back to interviewing with Dr. George Barno, we have an affiliate program who helps sponsor this show.
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Cardio Miracle Solution 00:04:15
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Friends, we have Dr. George Barna with us today.
Dr. George, I want to ask you this question.
In raising spiritual champions, your book that you have put together, I want to ask you this right here.
What is the pathway for Christians to become spiritual champions?
I'm sorry, how what?
What is the path?
What is the pathway for people to become spiritual champions?
Well, I mean, really, the key is what we're trying to do is to raise children to be Christ-like.
Embedding Jesus' Life Principles 00:09:46
And so, if that's the goal, how does that happen?
Well, one of the things that we've discovered through our research is that you do what you believe.
And so if you want to live like Jesus, because we do what we believe, you've got to think like Jesus.
What does it mean to think like Jesus?
Well, you've got to have the same life principles embedded in your mind and your heart and your soul that Jesus did.
Now, we're never going to be Jesus, of course, but we can emulate him.
We can imitate him as best we can.
And God made that easier for us by writing down many of the core and key life principles.
That's what the Bible is.
It's our guidebook for life.
And so much of it is the words of Jesus himself telling us how to think so that when we make behavioral choices, we will actually act like him or live like him.
So with children, because before the age of 13, they're working on developing their worldview, trying to figure out who they are and how to live in the world.
It's critical that parents, first and foremost, a major influence in the lives of children, always be thinking about what lessons can I be modeling for my children and then explaining to my children so that they embrace those and that becomes part of their life.
Parents are critical in this process.
Now, one of the important things that we discovered in the course of doing the research for that book is that today, the dominant influence on children is media.
It's all the movies they watch, the television shows they watch, the videos and messages that they see in social media.
It's the music they listen to.
It's the video games they play.
All of those media entities are sending out messages about who you are, how you should live, what's important, what you should do with your resources, and so forth.
And so it's critical that parents not only demonstrate for their children, here's how to think about life, here's how to live a life that honors God, but also that they be monitoring and mediating and moralizing the media choices of their children, because otherwise the media are going to raise each generation of children.
That's what's happened for the last two generations, where parents have said, well, I'm so busy.
I've got jobs.
I've got hobbies.
I've got friends.
I've got other things that I want to be doing.
I love my children.
I want them to be great people.
But you know what?
I'm going to entrust them to others.
And one of the other things that they get entrusted to is the media.
And that's not working well for us because we know that most of the media that children will be exposed to is not going to point them to a God.
It's not going to teach them about the Bible.
It's not going to hold them accountable for biblical morality.
And so we need to instead be the ones who are doing that with our children and surrounding them with individuals and resources that will grow them up to be Christ-like.
You know, Ricky, it's so critical when I think about kids and social media.
I always go back to the question that people ask me all the time.
How are you and your wife raising such good kids?
And I believe they're really good kids.
They're very smart, straight A students.
But more than that, they're very polite.
They can hold a conversation.
They can stay in tune with their atmosphere.
But I go back to that question that my wife and I get asked all the time.
And the key is this, they're not on social media.
They're not on social media.
They don't have Instagram and they're teenagers.
You know how hard it is to keep teenagers off social media?
It is very difficult.
But yet, because my wife and I, when we're on social media, they get to be a part of it.
So, what we watch is what they watch, meaning funny videos, or we see things on different posts.
We're not keeping them away from social media, but I ask you this: can your kids watch what you're watching on social media and be accountable?
That's the key.
Because if they can't watch what you're watching, then maybe you shouldn't be watching it.
That's right.
Oh, I'm getting into grounds that is going to make you very uncomfortable.
But listen, the key is this.
Young kids today, Ricky, they want transparency.
They want honesty.
And they're not going to get it.
What you're saying to them is what you're showing them, is your actions.
It's what you're watching, is what they're able to watch.
What they're able to hear is what you're hearing.
Again, if we want to change, if we want to be able to be an example to them, it has to start with us.
That's right.
The Bible says, as a man thinketh, so is he.
Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.
What's in your heart today?
What are you putting in your eyes, in your heart, in your mind that most of the time your kids are not able to see or hear from you?
Because what you're hiding is what's going to bring you down.
Oh, man.
Well, I can go on and on with that.
But listen, if you want more information on the brand new book, Raising Spiritual Champions, Nurturing Your Child's Heart, Mind, and Soul, visit amazon.com.
It is the brand new book from Dr. George Barna.
It's going to help you.
It's going to give you the keys.
It's going to give you insights on how to navigate through this season of life.
That's right.
I want to ask you this question.
Do you believe that it's been by design that the media consumption of our youth has been going up and up since the 80s?
We have noticed that the introduction of media has been younger and younger, even to the age now of four years old.
Children are receiving cellular devices and, you know, they're consuming themselves with media, television, games.
Do you think that's been by design or do you think it's just been the lack of parenting being as direct?
Well, I think it's a combination of the two.
On the one hand, you've got the marketers in our culture representing different elements of society who have, you know, they want to sell products or they want to sell an ideology.
And so these different media tools become wonderful ways of indoctrinating people by hitting them with the same message over and over and over again.
Because we know that repetition is critical toward breaking down our defenses and toward us accepting something as being true.
That's one of the reasons why when we're discipling people, we ought not to worry about going back to the same biblical themes or stories or messages over and over and over again.
Because the more we hear that, the more that becomes ingrained in our consciousness and the more we own it as something that we believe to be true.
So yeah, when we examine what's going on in our culture, the fact that children are spending more and more and more time with media messaging, is that an accident?
No, of course not.
You've got major corporations who specifically target children as a group that they want to be grooming today, if you will.
I know that has many implications, but they are literally grooming them as a marketing target for other kinds of product or service pitches in the future.
So right now what they're doing is they're breaking down their defenses.
They're starting to build that relationship.
And you say, wait a minute, but they're not a person.
That's right.
But our young children begin to develop relationships with organizations and with programs and with characters and with themes very early in life.
They become comfortable with those things and then they look for them as they grow older.
You know, so you look at a place like Disney.
You know, we have so much evidence of, you know, a place like Disney.
They're certainly not the only one.
But an organization that has targeted children for their messaging.
And what happens with those children when they grow up?
They're still Disney aficionados.
They love what Disney puts out.
And if they don't have a biblical worldview as a filter to whisk away all the non-biblical stuff, they're just going to buy into whatever is being fed to them.
I want to tell you something.
About 20 years ago, I befriended a man by the name of Dr. Gary Smalley.
The late Gary Smalley became one of my best friends, my mentor.
He married my wife and I.
He had been mentoring my wife since she was in her teens.
All these amazing things.
But I asked him one question years ago.
Recognizing Word Pictures 00:13:36
And I said, Doc, and I used to call him Gramps, but Dr. Gary Smalley, I said, Gramps, what would be the key to having a successful, effective marriage in my life?
And he said, I'm going to give you the key that will change your relationship for the rest of your life.
And if you can understand it and learn it, it's going to change the way you communicate.
It's going to change the way people present products.
It's what visual arts uses in order to affect millions of people.
It's what marketers use in order to get you to buy their product, and that is word pictures.
If you can learn word pictures in conversation and communication and your relationship, you can be effective on how you and your wife can have a successful marriage.
Now, I just gave you a million-dollar key.
Word picture is what's changing our culture today.
Word picture is what's affecting us today.
I've studied the mega churches of America, and I understood that the only difference between a mega church and a local church that is struggling to fill the seat is how they use word pictures, Ricky, in communicating.
Dr. Barna, I got to ask you this because word picture is what affects our society today.
Yet, if we as Christians understand how to do this research, how effective can we become?
Well, we would take over our rightful place in society, which is to be the dominant influencers who are transforming the culture around us.
You know, the sad reality, Mondo, as you know, is that today, the church at large in America, the church is being transformed by the culture rather than the culture being transformed by the church.
And I think the lesson that you're sharing with us is a brilliant and important one, which is that, yes, people think in particular ways.
Those of us who study how people think know that what we do is we translate words into an image that we then hold in our mind.
And when we have to make those kinds of decisions that are going to determine what we do from moment to moment, we're going back to word pictures.
We're trying to know what it looks like in our life.
And that's one of the reasons, by the way, I would say anyway, I would argue, that modeling behavior for our children is so important.
Because rather than just preaching at a child, giving them words, giving them abstract concepts to consider, to reflect upon, what we're doing is we're showing them what it looks like in practice.
And so they can retain in their minds that kind of word picture.
Okay, dad said that I should be kind.
What does kindness look like?
When he went over to that homeless person and he actually shook his hand and he asked him, what could I do to make your day better?
How could I bless you?
That was an act of kindness that my dad did.
I did this with my grandson and he never forgot it.
You know, and he'll go back to his dad, Paul, it's like, you know, when you went to the guy outside Burger King and you, blah, blah, blah.
Well, he had a word picture.
If I had told him, you be kind to all people, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But when he saw me go over to that guy that was sitting on his raggedy blanket outside the front door of Burger King, you know, and start talking to the guy and, you know, bring him inside, buy him a hamburger, pray with him at the end.
I mean, that made a lifelong impression on my grandson.
That's the kind of thing we need to do is give those word pictures.
And I'll tell you this, that modeling aspect is so critical because in the research in that book, Raising Spiritual Champions, one of the things I talk about is that parents are called biblically, of course, you know, Deuteronomy 6 and elsewhere, to be the primary influence on the life of their child.
But in order to be that kind of influence, your children have to trust you.
And what we discovered in doing the research with both children and parents is that kids love their parents, but they don't trust them.
And the reason, long story short, is that the kids said, you know, I love my parents, but they tell me one thing and they do another.
Before, when you were talking about social media, can your kids watch what you're watching on social media?
That's exactly the right question.
Because if the answer is no, your kids aren't going to trust you.
But if you're telling them, you know what, you have to be careful about what kind of media images are coming flowing into your brain because your brain retains those more easily than it does words and concepts.
So if you're putting the right filters there, biblical filters, and you're demonstrating to your kids, this is what a godly life looks like.
This is how we do it.
And you can talk about how you got there and how you evaluate how you're doing.
That's important.
But give them those models so that they get the word pictures of what it really looks like.
You know, based on extensive research and national research, Dr. Varna, you outline a biblical approach to what raising children with what you call the seven cornerstones of a biblical worldview.
Can we talk about what those seven cornerstones are and how we can help implement them in our children and our grandchildren's lives?
Yeah, thanks for bringing that up, Ricky.
You know, one of the things that happened when I was doing a lot of this worldview research was I stumbled onto, or the Lord led me to, an insight about seven particular beliefs where what I saw was an unusually strong correlation, statistical correlation between these beliefs and your worldview.
And simply put, it's if you really own these seven particular beliefs, you don't even just believe them, but you're completely sold out to their truth, their veracity, and to trying to apply them in your life.
And you have an 83% chance of having a full biblical worldview.
If you reject even one of these seven beliefs, either in your belief or your practices, the chances of you developing a complete biblical worldview are only 2%.
And these seven beliefs are, in other words, fundamental to you becoming Christ-like.
And they're such simple things.
They're Bible 101.
But what we found is that most Americans don't really embrace all seven of these.
They're simple things like understanding that there is one living, all-powerful, all-knowing God who created the world.
He's alive today.
He's active in that world today.
He's active in your life today.
He's holy.
He's just.
He's righteous.
He's merciful.
And he's going to live forever.
That's like Sunday School 101, right?
But most Americans don't believe that.
Less than half of Americans believe that.
The second belief might be something like understanding that all of us are sinners from birth.
It's not a choice we make, which is what most people think.
It's something that we are born into sin because of the legacy of Adam and Eve.
And, you know, you can read through the scriptures to learn more about that.
But recognizing that we are sinners and that sin has consequences and that we need to make a choice about our sin.
That's a second cornerstone of life.
A third one is recognizing that there's only one antidote to that sin problem that we're born with.
And that antidote is Jesus Christ.
Recognizing that he and he alone is our pathway to eternal salvation, to being able to live in the presence of that holy, righteous, all-knowing, all-powerful God that we just talked about a few moments ago, that if we confess our sins to Jesus, if we acknowledge our wrongness, our sinfulness, the evil tendencies that we have, and we pray that he will send us the Holy Spirit to help us repent, which means that we're going to turn our life around.
Not just that we're sorry, but we're going to consciously and intentionally try to act differently and ask him to save us from our ongoing tendency to sin.
That's the only antidote that we have.
You know, a fourth cornerstone is recognizing that there is absolute moral truth.
Most Americans think there's not.
They think that they're the only ones who can know truth in their life.
The next cornerstone is recognizing, by the way, God is the source of all truth.
He's the definition by who he is of what truth is.
And he loved us so much that he put that truth in writing for us.
And that's what the Bible is.
It's absolute moral truth that will change our life forever and will keep us on that godly path.
You know, the next cornerstone is recognizing that.
And as we try to live in concert, in harmony with Christ, doing things his way, relying on him for strength, that we have a purpose in life.
And that purpose is to know, love, and serve God with all our heart, mind, strength, and soul.
And then the cornerstone that flows out of that, the final one that we'll talk about, is that you can be successful in life.
Every person can be a success in life.
But you can only be that way if you define it properly.
And that means we need to go back to the Bible.
And what does the Bible tell us that success is?
It's not about how much money we make, what kind of car we have, how big our house is, how popular we are, how well-known we are.
Success is consistent obedience to God.
And so when you have all of those cornerstones as the foundation of how you're viewing life, your life, how you want to live, how you're going to live, how you're going to evaluate how you're living, that just changes everything about the choices that you make from moment to moment.
And that puts you on the path to developing a complete biblical worldview, which enables you to think like Jesus so that you can live like Jesus.
Amen.
Enables you to think like Jesus so that you can live like Jesus.
Dr. Barner, I want to thank you for being on the broadcast.
Friends, if you're just tuning in, you're watching the PTL Television Network.
We have Dr. George Barner with us today.
He has written more than 50 books, including numerous award-winning and New York Times bestsellers.
And his new book is Raising Spiritual Champions, Nurturing Your Child's Heart, Mind, and Soul.
I urge you, go to Amazon.com, find that book, order this book, and get it.
You'll get it and maybe do it as a Bible study for your family.
Read through it yourself and implement these things for yourself and your family.
Dr. George Barner, I want to thank you for being on the broadcast with us today.
It's been an honor to have you.
Thank you so much for letting me be here.
God bless you.
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