Cold Case Christianity: The Challenges Facing Young Christians

This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled

The Challenges Facing Young Christians

Posted: 05 Jul 2017 01:13 AM PDT

 Every other week, from May to August, I have the honor of speaking with students at Summit Worldview Academy. I typically teach on the nature of truth, the reliability of the gospels, and the evidence for God’s existence.

Do you allow the kids to see how your evidence holds up while being cross examined by an informed bible critic in a live debate?  Or do you know what all professional marketing firms know (i.e., the less you respond to direct real-time criticism, the more you can increase sales)?

 The students are eager to learn and have many good questions during the breaks, during our lunch and dinner time together, and at an evening session specifically set aside for questions.  The students usually share a number of stories related to the ways they were already being challenged as young Christians. Many have experienced a season of doubt and are grateful for the training they receive at Summit. Dr. Jeff Myers, the president of Summit Ministries, has assembled an incredible collection of thinkers, teachers and trainers to help prepare students to face challenges and “analyze the various ideas that are currently competing for their hearts and minds.” These young people are eager to prepare themselves for these encounters. Christian students are surrounded by competing worldviews from a very young age. As I speak with the young men and women at Summit, I think about the many ways our kids are challenged from childhood through their college years:

 The bible does not require Christians to get so involved in the scholarly stuff that they cross swords with skeptics at every level.  You are allegedly doing all you need to do when you quote the bible to "answer" a skeptic.  But since, by your relentless promotion and marketing of your books, you clearly don't believe the bible alone to be "sufficient" for faith and practice, never mind.

They Are Challenged by the Media

Young Christians are challenged very early, beginning with their first exposure to television, movies and the internet. Much of the media is aligned against Christian values, and Americans spend about one-third of their free time, (more than the next 10 most popular leisure activities combined) watching some form of television. The messages communicated by television programming are often in direct opposition to the teaching of Christianity, and students are deeply impacted by what they absorb from the media. Two out of every three shows on television, for example, include sexual content (a dramatic increase over the past 15 years). 50% of the couples involved in sexual behavior in television programming are depicted in casual relationships (10% of these couples had just met, and 9% of television programs depict sexual behavior between teens). In a set of Kaiser Family Foundation studies, 76% of teens said that one reason young people have sex is because TV shows and movies “make it seem normal”. College students who were exposed to the many examples of sexual behavior on television were more likely to believe their peers engaged in those same activities.

Maybe I'm just a spiritually dead atheist, but sounds to me like the sins of television counsel that you start telling your readership to stop watching tv.  Oh wait, if they didn't have a tv, they couldn't watch your dvds, which means sales of your stuff would decrease.  Never mind.  

They Are Challenged by Elementary and High School Programming

Make no mistake about it, when Christian values are attacked in the public education system, the basis for those beliefs (Christianity) is also attacked. Here in California, for example, comprehensive sexual health and HIV / AIDS instruction requires schools to teach students how to have “safe sex”. “Abstinence only” education is not permitted in California public schools. In addition, California schools cannot inform parents if their children leave campus to receive certain confidential medical services, including abortions. Classic Christian values related to sexuality (and marriage) are under attack in the public school system.

So the best effort the Christian parent can put forward to battle this ungodly secular school system, is to take their kids out of it and home-school them.  If they don't, this shows the limit to which their faith is genuine.  If mom and dad cannot make the mortgage payment if one of them quits work to home-school the kids, then they should prioritize preserving their Christian morality above the pleasures of this temporary world that the truly faithful put no stock in anyway, Hebrews 13:14.  What's more important?  Keeping kids free from satanic influences, or making mortgage payments?

They Are Challenged by University Professors

Once students get to college, they are likely to encounter professors who are even more aggressive in their opposition to Christianity and Christian values. According to the Institute for Jewish and Community research, a survey of 1,200 college faculty members revealed 1 in 4 professors (25%) is an atheist or agnostic (compared with 4-5% in the general population). In addition, only 6% of university professors say the Bible is “the actual word of God”. Instead, 51% say the Bible is “an ancient book of fables, legends, history & moral precepts”. More than half of professors have “unfavorable” feelings toward Evangelical Christians. Charles Francis Potter (author of Humanism: A New Religion) said it best when he proclaimed, “Education is thus a most powerful ally of Humanism, and every American public school is a school of Humanism.  What can the theistic Sunday-schools, meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five day program of humanistic teaching?”

Nothing, which is why you need to start getting a bit more "real" with your "apologetics" and tell Christian parents they'd be battling Satan far more effectively if they started by taking their own kids out of Satan's school and home-school them, even if it means they'll have less money and won't be keeping up with the Jonses anymore.

They Are Challenged by University Students

The attitude and influence of hostile professors is often accepted by University students happy to reject the moral precepts of the Christian worldview. Atheist student groups are multiplying dramatically in universities across America. The Secular Student Alliance, for example, grew from 80 student clubs in 2007 to over 250 clubs in 2011. These students groups are eager to identify themselves with names that challenge the intellectual capacity of Christian students. Atheist groups often seek titles such as “Free Thinker Society,” the “Coalition of Reason,” or the “Center for Inquiry”. The implication, of course, is that Christians are ignorant and constrained by their antiquated worldview.

They are.  Only a fool would marry a woman he never previously slept with or lived with.  God does not honor his word in the practical world, and many people often experience disaster when they forge again on some mission that they know they did not adequately prepare for.  If you never sleep with or live with your intended spouse before you marry, there is nothing from God to indicate he will help fix any natural incompatibilities you might discover after the honeymoon.  Smart people prepare adequately for the mission to be accomplished.  They don't just graduate high school and then apply for a job as a rocket scientist, foolishly thinking whatever they lack on the job, God will magically provide.  God allows people to fail too many times for lack of adequate preparation, to justify thinking he'll magically fix any living or sexual incompatibility you discover after your honeymoon.  God's ultimate ideal for marriage is pointless in light of your belief that he allows human freewill to fuck up his intentions.  He won't be magically causing a sexually incompatible Christian boyfriend/girlfriend to desire each other that way if they discover their incompatibility on their honeymoon, so God cannot complain if they fix the anticipated problem of God doing nothing for them, by making sure they are compatible sexually and as living partners BEFORE they get married.

The Church will never begin to address the growing problem of young people leaving the faith if it doesn’t first recognize the challenges facing Christian students. The young Christians at Summit have already begun to feel the impact of the cultural forces aligning against the Christian worldview. That’s why they are so encouraged to discover and experience the robust intellectual tradition of Christian thought as represented by the professors, speakers and trainers over two intensive weeks of worldview training.

Can poverty-stricken young people attend too?  Or do you limit these gospel-essentials to just the rich Christians?  If your stuff is so essential to faith today, shouldn't you be conducting the Summit in a way that allows all born again people to attend at minimal cost?  Why aren't you satisfied that simply putting up videos on youtube will suffice?  If god is not involved in an atheist learning biology in college and then becoming a biologist, why do think God has the slightest thing to do with some Christian learning apologetics arguments and then becoming an apologist?  God's "presence" in this endeavor appears to be little more than a religiously necessary afterthought appended to the whole process.  You are doing nothing more than making money off of peoples' natural tendency to adhere to false religion.  Except that it must be said you do it with a bit more respectability than do the prosperity gospel preachers on TBN.

These young people are forever changed by their experience at Summit. They are equipped to meet the challenges they already face, even as they prepare for an even greater challenge in the university setting.

Not if you have anything to say about it.  You've routinely declined multiple invitations to answer critiques of your book in a real live debate session.  Some would argue this refusal of yours to be cross-examined has more to do with your knowledge of marketing psychology and less to do with your confidence in your apologetics arguments.

All of us, as youth pastors and ministers, can learn something from programs like Summit.

And it can all be learned and profited from in ways that don't require one to rent cars and motels, and incur travel expenses.  Except that you don't believe the bible, alone, to be sufficient for faith and practice, apparently.  Nobody will have the proper "forensic faith" unless they purchase your materials.