The RenewaNation Review 2020 The Collingsworth Family Special Edition | Page 16

WORLDVIEWS
HAVE
CONSEQUENCES
By Jeff Keaton
I
SAT NEXT to a young man on
a four-hour flight from L.A.
to D.C. a few years ago. The first
remark out of his mouth was some-
thing about hoping a naked lady would
sit between us. I knew right then that our
worldviews were probably very different. I kindly told
him that I was happily married and didn’t share his hopes.
He sheepishly said that marriage was a good thing as well.
Over the next four-plus hours, we shared a robust world-
view conversation. It was cordial but intense. This man of
about 30 years informed me that he was agnostic. He told
me that he was into scientific facts and not faith as I was.
Since he was into facts and I was into faith, I decided to ask
him how everything came into existence. He quickly told
me that math and physics had proven how everything came
into existence and that he had even heard a mathematician
explain it all. Unfortunately, he couldn’t remember the name
of the man who had explained it all or what he had said, but
he was confident that it had been explained. I simply looked
at him and said, “You call me a man of faith and yourself a
man of facts and science. And yet, you have all your faith
placed in a man whose name you can’t even remember.” I
kindly told him that it took more faith to believe in his world-
16
view than it did mine. I told him that I believe in a God who
created everything and then gave us a written record of His
work that we can compare against reality.
Perhaps the saddest part of our discussion came when he
told me that his two grandmothers were Southern Baptist
and Mennonite. He even said he had been named after
two men in the Bible. My heart broke as I thought about
his two grandmothers. No doubt they had high hopes their
grandson, Matthew Adam, would grow up to be a man of
Christian faith. Surely they believed he would carry on the
Christian heritage they were passing down to him. Sadly,
they were wrong.
This story has been told over and over again in the last
two American generations. Eighty percent of 20 to 40-year-
olds in America today declare they are not born again.
Ninety-four percent do not believe in one or more of the
cardinal doctrines of Christianity. Seventy-six percent do
not attend church. 1 A strong majority have no problem with
same-sex marriage. 2
However, a slice of the 20 to 40-year-olds are carrying on
the Christian faith in a powerful way. This group is made
up of those young men and women who were given a thor-
oughly biblical worldview through their home, church,
and school.