Tonight I’m speaking at a high school Bible study for our church. Several of those attending are seniors who plan to start college in September. The underclassmen all plan to go to college after high school.
Steve Elkins, a Free Grace pastor in the area, has in previous studies walked this group through many problem passages. He has helped prepare them for dealing with the cults or with anyone who is seeking to move them away from assurance of the free gift of everlasting life. I believe what he has done is essential.
However, I think a different concern needs to be addressed as well. My goal in this session is different. I realize that these students are well grounded in the promise of everlasting life. But I fear confusion on another front. I want to help these young people maintain a Biblical worldview in the face of what they will hear in the classroom. In my opinion, what is taught in most college classrooms today is an unbiblical worldview. College students need to be prepared, or else their worldviews will erode from Biblical to unbiblical.
That is not simply a concern for college students. All of us are being bombarded every single day by the way news outlets slant their reporting. Many television networks are teaching unbiblical worldviews. So are many of the internet news sources. While there is some fake news out there, my bigger concern is over the secular worldview represented by many news outlets.
The prevailing worldview in our colleges and our sources of news is agnostic or atheistic. Evolution as the explanation of human origins is taken as gospel. God is not the Creator. Evolution is.
A Biblical view of marriage is considered bigoted. A Biblical view of sex outside of marriage is rejected as backward, unreasonable, and oppressive.
The Bible teaches that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free. All believers in Christ are equal in our status. We are not to appraise fellow believers in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, and so forth. We are all one in Him. However, the prevailing view in our culture is that the majority of Americans (or Canadians, Brits, etc.) are necessarily oppressors. Minorities are necessarily the oppressed. Those who develop such a mindset have been subtly diverted from a Biblical mindset.
If your mindset is not radically different from that of most in our culture, then you are like the frog in the kettle. Gradually you are being cooked as the heat continues to rise.
Remember Lot. He was in a city where the worldview was decidedly unbiblical. Peter tells us that “his righteous soul [was tormented] from day to day seeing and hearing their lawless deeds” (2 Pet 2:8). That is, Lot did not accept the prevailing worldview.
Is your righteous soul tormented from day to day as you see and hear the lawless deeds that are taking place on our college campuses, in our homes, in our government, and in our businesses? A friend of mine, Bob Swift, once pointed out to me that Lot’s experience shows that we are suffering for Jesus if we are tormented by the ungodly actions and attitudes we see in our world. Bob is now with the Lord, awaiting the Rapture. I believe he is right. It is indeed suffering for Jesus if unbiblical worldviews bother us.
“Keep the faith” is not just some hippie slogan. At the end of his life Paul said, “I have kept the faith” (2 Tim 4:7). That is, he held fast to the gospel and to the mind of Christ (1 Cor 2:16).
Our aim in life should be to please the Lord Jesus Christ in all we say and do (2 Cor 5:9-10). That can only be achieved by “the renewing of our minds” (Rom 12:2). Transformation of word and deed only comes by the Holy Spirit taking the Word of God and giving us renewed minds, minds that have a Biblical worldview.
