Latest / Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo / Dr. Adam Rasmussen: The Church And America’s Rejection Of Absolute Truth

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Dr. Adam Rasmussen: The Church And America’s Rejection Of Absolute Truth · Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo

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  Hello friends, family and Christ. Thank you so much for watching, for listening.
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  Very important topic today. We are going to talk about the title of our show and how
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  World View Matters, the foundations of Western civilization are being attacked.
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  America is abandoning the values upon which it was founded.
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  In the time span of a single generation, the vast majority of American young men and women
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  are no longer being introduced to a biblical worldview and the consequences are evident
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  in the media and throughout society every day. Now a new report from the Cultural Resource
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  or the Research Center, Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University has come out
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  directed by Dr. George Barna. It reveals that most adults in the US do not believe in moral
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  absolutes and they live accordingly. That's a problem. We've got Dr. Adam Rasmussen here to talk
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  about that next. Welcome to World View Matters, discussing controversial issues, discerning current
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  events, defending biblical Christianity, no topic off limits. And now, here's your host,
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  David Fierrazo.
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  Hi, friends. As a fellow at the Cultural Research Center and the Dean of the College of Arts and
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  Humanities at Arizona Christian University, Dr. Adam Rasmussen draws upon 25 years plus of experience
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  in Christian education. He specializes in biblical literacy, educational ministries,
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  and Christian apologetics. He's been on the podcast before. Adam, welcome back. Good to see
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  you, brother. David, thanks for having me. It's good to be with you. Yeah, important work that you do.
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  My goodness, let me just ask you before we dive into this and the research we're going to focus on
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  first and the first half of the podcast is the insights into America's rejection of absolute moral truth.
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  As you do the research, you and Dr. George Barna, and you get some of the results in, at any
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  point, are you surprised? Are you shocked? Are you disappointed? Tell us from a personal level,
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  just how that goes when you're accumulating this research.
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  Yeah, we've done many of these studies and we release a lot of these reports. And there's always
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  something surprising, David. There's always something interesting to me. And my greatest
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  ballast in my heart is the gospel, our crucified and risen Lord Jesus. We know he's on the throne.
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  So through all the ups and downs of things that we might get excited about, but mostly a lot of it
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  can be really quite sobering. I hold on to the gospel. And yeah, today we're going to talk about
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  the way Americans are looking at moral truth. And I think when we say that every moral claim is
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  exactly the same or has the same value, that's foolishness. It's digging a deep pit for ourselves
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  in chaos, confusion, helplessness. And we just see all of that in the air. We see it in the news.
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  People need a basis for truth. And because they've rejected God and the Bible, we're reaping the
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  results of that. And that's kind of alarming. Yeah, you just mentioned chaos, helplessness. But
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  the other thing it leads to oftentimes is hopelessness. Because if this life is all there is, if there's
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  no truth, nothing that you can have a solid foundation and just stand on, that's sad. And we know
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  the truth. We know there is God exists. And the truth is Jesus. So one of the things that came out
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  of this study, 74% of adults trust feelings over facts to discern moral truth. And two-thirds
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  reject absolute truth. And nine and ten embrace syncretism will get to that. Well, let's just start
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  start Adam with feelings. Feelings. How I mean, what could go wrong? Trusting feelings over truth
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  or feelings over fact. Yeah, I love it. Keep singing. That's great. And I think about every Disney
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  movie they say to the princess, oh, trust your heart. What's in your heart? Right? You know,
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  we're going to make light of it. But gosh, when we look inside, the Bible tells us that the heart
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  is deceptive. And we're not going to find the fan answers here. My feelings are up and down
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  all over the place. And yes, emotions are an important part of life. But it's no way to, as you
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  mentioned, mark what eternity is or mark what good and bad are. Because those things are they
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  change so much. And I think part of it has to do with rugged individualism we have in the US,
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  which is a good thing. But when it becomes the most important thing, it becomes a bad thing,
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  right? It becomes subjectivism. Or, you know, this moralistic pluralism that's in the air. And,
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  you know, people say foolish things like that's true for me. And that might be true for you.
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  And we're really, really sloppy in our definitions. And that cuts across even denominations and
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  all throughout the US. So I remember a response to that when someone says, that's my truth or
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  that's true for me, but not for you. My answer is, well, how do you know that's true? Yeah,
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  that's a great point. Exactly. That's true for me, but not for you. Are you sure? Are you
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  absolutely sure? That's true. But talk about, there's a term here, integrated disciples,
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  integrated disciples. And then the fact that beyond half of the theologically identified born
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  again, Christians in America, adults considered spiritually conservative. That's a cornerstone of
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  evangelical Christianity. Half admit to rejecting absolute moral truth. Our churches are not doing
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  a great job. Are they Adam? No. And it seems that we're very caught up again in how we feel in
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  the day to day, but we're not wrestling with eternal matters, things that are unchanging wisdom,
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  those kind of things. And so you, you threw out some terms there, theologically identified
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  born again, Christians or integrated disciples. Those are different. You know, not to throw a ton of
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  numbers out there, but in America, 66% of adults would say that they're Christian, okay, nominal
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  Christian. That's what they identify as. But you mentioned the idea of an integrated disciple.
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  Someone who understands Genesis to Revelation, okay, they understand the Bible is the word of God
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  that Jesus is the only way of salvation. These are some basic ideas. And only 4% of Americans hold
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  to that biblical standard. So there's a huge difference between cultural Christianity and then
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  biblical Christianity. And so in between, we're having all these ideas about what truth is.
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  I mean, that's what leads to syncretism. And that's where that comes into, because people
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  maybe under the guise of misplaced tolerance, they want to give, I get the benefit of the doubt
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  to other religions or cults or other things, other beliefs, whether it's new age or whether it's
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  a Buddhism or something that's not going to exactly line up with biblical Christianity, but maybe
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  it's cafeteria Christianity. Would that describe, well, that wouldn't describe syncretism,
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  but can you help us before we move on, Adam? Help us define some of these terms. We've talked
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  about syncretism before, but we do have a lot of newer viewers and listeners who maybe don't
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  understand how that plays into the research. Yeah, well syncretism, cafeteria is a great way to
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  describe it. It's a picking choose type of religion. You could look at it as a playlist, right?
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  So a lot of people are using Spotify or whatever on their phones and they'll say, I want this song
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  from that album and this song from that album, so on and so forth. So instead of seeing all of life
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  is all integrated into the whole the wholeness of Christ, right? As scripture tells us that there's
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  integrated worldview, they'll say, yeah, I'll accept Jesus when he talks about love, but when he
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  talks about judgment, I reject that. I'll take something from let's say Hinduism or from Buddhism
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  or from atheism and so they create their own playlist or they go through the cafeteria and they
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  take a little bit of here and there, that's syncretism and it doesn't work. There are contradictory
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  statements that really don't work in life and that's what makes people so confused and helpless
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  and seeking identity and purpose that can only be found in Christ and David, this is what's so
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  alarming. 92% of Americans are syncretists. They claim that all of these things can be true for them
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  somehow, but like we mentioned, it doesn't lead to anything. Well, how much of a problem
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  is the fact that I think I read in this, the research that about being open-minded and accepting,
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  they look at that as almost a virtue and they place that higher than truth. Being open-minded
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  intolerant and accepting and boy, that's a way to screw up your theology isn't it, your worldview?
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  It is and unfortunately a lot of these ideas of being open-minded is just a thin veil for being
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  a coward or being sloppy in your thinking and I can listen to people, I can empathize with people,
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  I can understand them better as a Christian than anyone else because I have the love of God in
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  my heart, but that doesn't mean I agree with them, it doesn't mean that I accept their claims.
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  So we shouldn't be mushbrains, I always told my students, I was a junior high pastor, don't be a
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  mushbrain, love the Lord your God with all your mind. Whoa, I forgot that was in there, your heart,
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  soul, uh oh, mind. That's an excellent point, we kind of poopoo that we overlooked that because
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  we think about the heart a lot, but that's right with our mind too, our thoughts, our intentions,
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  our focus, our energy. Briefly, Adam, what's the difference between pluralism and syncretism?
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  Well, syncretism would be the idea that I can take a lot of different ideas, concepts, practices,
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  moral beliefs into my own frame, okay. Pluralism would be the idea that every religion out there,
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  every claim is equally valid. So we wouldn't want to say satanism is any worse than Christianity.
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  So those are slightly different terms. Okay, one more thing that is from this research,
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  and then we're going to get to a chart on the demographic segments, which I find very fascinating,
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  but roughly six out of ten adults from this research assert that there can be multiple
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  conflicting views of moral truth, and yet those conflicting views can be completely accurate.
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  This, I'm reading this, I'm going, this is impossible though, right? They cannot all agree.
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  Yeah, it's extremely easy to debunk that, and what we found in our research is that a lot of
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  times when we are given a chance to probe a little bit, people will back off of their first answers.
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  So sometimes when we think that people are sloppy and they're thinking,
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  maybe just a careful reminder or question might open things up, just like you were teasing earlier,
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  when somebody says something like, that's true for you, and it's not true for me, then you ask,
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  oh, how can that be true? And all of a sudden things open up. So it is untenable. You can't keep
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  that viewpoint that all viewpoints are equal. It's just really sloppy thinking, and people may
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  answer that in a survey, but I think when you actually engage them thoughtfully lovingly, they'll
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  say, yeah, that's true, that doesn't work. Okay, so Adam, I may put you in a little uncomfortable
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  situation here, maybe not, I think you're a truth proclamer and defender, but I don't want to
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  pick on any particular religion or denomination. However, in the research, Catholics are the religion
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  most likely that 75% of them adhere to this kind of moral open-mindedness. So they're the furthest
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  way it seems out of the denomination's Protestant Christian Catholic. Why is that? They have a
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  Bible, they mean they go to, maybe they're not encouraged to read it as much as evangelicals
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  explain that for us. Yeah, and I'm not uncomfortable at all at talking about that. In fact,
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  I talk on some Catholic radio stations about this, and one of the hosts said, yeah, Catholics
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  lead in a lot of things, and I guess we're leading in this one too, and it's not a good one. But,
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  you know what, just tongue in cheek, I'll say this, they're at 69%, but mainline Protestants are at
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  61%, so we're not far behind, you know, if you're a Baptist general conference or something like that,
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  and then, theologically identified Boarding in Christians are at about 50%. So we've got a lot of
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  room to improve. And back to the Catholic question, though, I mean, if we were going to guess what's
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  going on there, it might have something to do with their definition of truth, and where they're
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  going to land on that. I know Maya bringing, and what we teach at Arizona Christian University,
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  is that truth starts with God in his character, and in his revealed word, John 17, 17 sanctified
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  them in truth, thy word is truth, and we are not going to stray from that. And then from there,
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  we can extrapolate other truths that relate to all of life, to science, to history, to all of that,
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  and perhaps these other pockets, these denominations aren't emphasizing truth.
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  You know, I'm a student of Francis Schaefer who talked about T truth, capital T truth,
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  total truth, like the Bible is really true, it's truly true, and history and archeology and
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  all of that support that fact. Love Francis Schaefer. I know I liked you for many reasons, Adam,
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  so we got to take a brief pause. We're with Dr. Adam Rasmussen, Arizona Christian University,
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  the Cultural Research Center, the website culturalresearchcenter.com. We'll be right back.
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  Today's show is brought to you by Harbinger's Daily. World news biblically understood. Stay
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  informed at harbingerstaley.com.
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  Okay, Adam, let's open up this chart on absolute moral truth views of adults by demographics.
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  And there are some interesting statements here. One of them being in the second category,
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  there can be multiple conflicting moral truths in any given situation without anyone being wrong.
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  Oh my goodness, that's just one. Let's just start there.
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  Well, yes, again, I think this has to do with not just the teaching of the church, but perhaps
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  the teaching of our public education system and the fact that in our higher educational system,
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  since probably the 70s, definitely the 80s, with the introduction of secular humanism.
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  Okay, it used to be that people were taught the 10 commandments. They understood the Greco-Roman
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  Judeo-Christian ethic. Okay, and we used to spend a lot of time on the liberal arts,
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  but now it seems that people don't want to look at those absolutes. We do a lot of, you know,
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  situational type of ethics. We talk a lot about different religions and cultures, and we want to
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  be embracing of all these things, but we don't give people the ability to think sharply.
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  So what I want for students and for anyone who's listening, of course, in worldview matters,
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  is that we would have a robust moral philosophy that we would say one of the most important things
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  to flourishing as a human being is to know the difference between virtue and vice, to know the
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  difference between good and bad, and to have our hearts trained in that way. So when somebody can
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  say there can be multiple conflicting moral views in any given situation without anyone being
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  wrong, that is the result of our secular education system, and the claims are right there. That is
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  what you get. That's the result. And there are better answers than that. We can wrestle with morals
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  in a lot better ways than that. Thank you. And thanks for the plug for homeschooling and online
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  Judeo-Christian education, including Freedom Project Academy that we've been plugging recently.
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  So go back to the first one there. Now we're talking again about demographic segments,
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  absolute moral truth views of adults. I didn't want to pass this one up because it says,
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  a mature human, here's the view, the truth view, a mature human accepts different truth views
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  to be just as valid as their own views. So the numbers seem pretty high. Upper 60s, Gen X is 70.
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  Would you care to mention anything about that, Adam?
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  Well, I think it's actually a ridiculous statement. And I really don't think anybody
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  care would ever feel that way. If you went to your employer and you said, I worked these many
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  hours, we agreed to this. This is what my paycheck should be. But your employer said, yes,
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  but I have a different moral compass. And for me, you need to be paid this. And nobody would say
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  that that is equally valid. No one, you cannot live that way. But yet, this is the stuff that has
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  been talked to people, hook line and sinker everywhere. It's in the Hollywood, it's everywhere in
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  itself. And it's just, it doesn't make sense. So we have to peel that back and we have to see,
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  like if we look at those who have no faith in the integrated disciples and things like that,
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  it just, that statement is really clear at what it's getting at or the question is. And we failed
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  the test. So what about perceptions? This, this third one here, perceptions of moral truth change
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  over time and across cultures. Okay, yeah, perceptions of anything changes across cultures over time.
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  But then it says, this proves that there is no absolute moral truth. No, it doesn't. But yet so
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  many people believe that. Adam, just, I shake my, scratch my head, shake my head. I don't know.
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  So what are your thoughts on that? Well, I think that the human heart wants to be its own God,
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  right? We want, we're idolaters, we're inward focused and it's kind of at the end of judges,
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  where it says there was no king. And so everybody did what was right in his own eyes. And so we're,
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  we've got confirmation bias. So we're, we're trying to grab every little thing that will tell me
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  I can do whatever I want. So perceptions of moral truth change over time. And then I make the false
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  conclusion that that proves that there is no absolute moral truth when actually what it does is
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  it proves that there is absolute moral truth because what you stumble upon here is what's known as
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  the reformer's paradox. So if you say like there is no absolute moral truth, then when we made a change,
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  like MLK made a change or Abraham Lincoln made a change in the way blacks are treated in America,
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  there was actually no good because this claim here is that there is no absolute moral truth judging
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  both of those things. But we all know that there is. And we, you know, it's enshrined in our
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  declaration of independence and then the constitution builds that that people should be treated
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  as being made in the image of God with freedom, with dignity. And if we don't accept that,
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  boy, we're going to have some problems. I don't think we can continue to talk about being
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  Americans if we're going to get rid of absolute moral truth. That's right. And there's, and there
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  you bring up the ignorance when it comes to the what people are educated about. And that means
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  America's founding and our Judeo-Christian principles. But I do want to touch on the other
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  survey briefly. But before we do that, I want to mention one more stat out of here. One out of
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  every three adults contends that the very idea of moral truth is a social creation. And there's
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  just so many of the things that go on and on. But I want to ask you one of the questions here
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  about truth views and this research. What are the long-term implications, Adam, for America and
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  or the church in America? I'm hoping that I'll talk about America first. I'm hoping that our
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  moral heart, the core values of America, that the pendulum will move back to what really matters
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  to people. And they will have to talk about moral absolutes that are based on the freedom of the
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  individual, but also within boundaries that are compassionate and proven. Okay. And then I don't
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  think it's impossible, really, to talk about those things that we treasure as Americans is honesty
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  and integrity and hard work and responsibility and trustworthiness and service. It's impossible to
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  talk about those things apart from absolute moral truth. And then if the culture is going to change
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  by God's hand, okay, as we've seen in revival, so you've seen in the Bible and through history,
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  God changes the culture by changing the church. So David, you and I have seen that the church is
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  following culture, but it needs to be the other way around. And it has happened. You know, you and I
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  cannot make revival happen. We can't bring the fire, but we can cut the firewood. We can continue
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  to build and to bring in the kindling and say, oh, Lord, use me and use this broadcast and send the
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  fire. And then the church, you know, can really impact the culture. Oh my goodness. I love that.
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  You can't bring the, we can't bring the fire, but we can cut the firewood. Quote, Dr. Adam Rasmussen,
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  okay, briefly, we've got less than four minutes, just to touch on this chart over in part two,
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  the one that we wanted to talk about. I did, anyway, get your take on the slowly shrinking of
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  Christianity in the US and that benefits other faith systems. And basically, the research shows
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  roughly 15 million Americans have joined the no faith segment. And that's in five years since
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  the COVID pandemic. And bring up the chart, Jeff and Adam can touch on whatever he would like to.
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  We just got a couple minutes here, Adam, with the Christianity declining while other faiths and no
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  faith, they're growing, not surprisingly, right? Yeah, yeah. And I mean, we, as you pointed out,
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  we're down 8% and 8% loss in just, well, it says 7% there in five years. And then the smaller
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  faiths that are mentioned here, Judaism, Islam, Mormonism, things like that, they're up 39%
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  when you add them all up. And those of no faith, there's a gain of about 3%. And for me, David,
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  it's all time on task. If we're in the Word of God, it says faith comes from hearing and hearing
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  by the Word of Christ. We need to shepherd our hearts towards the Bible and our children and
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  our spouses and our friends and the people in our congregation. Christianity is this wonderful
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  C.S. Lewis called it the good contagion. And it's a social disease, if you will. But it's a good one.
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  And love and service to others and thinking well and living well, that flows from the Bible.
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  So as we've moved away from the Bible, we see these stats. Unfortunately,
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  the only thing you have to do to be conformed to the pattern of this world is nothing.
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  We will be conformed to the pattern of this world. We have to renew our minds and scripture.
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  So that's how I interpret that. It's time on task. And the numbers show it.
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  Yeah, briefly, I just want to mention there's another chart in this same research on
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  adult who draw from various truth sources. And the number one and number two spots are astounding
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  where it says source of moral truth. Number one at 74% is feelings. There it is. Feelings and
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  personal emotions. Number two is the Bible. That's a pretty big gap there, Adam, isn't it? One
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  minute to share your thoughts. Well, pastors have to stop talking to their congregation,
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  telling them that they have the answers in themselves or bringing messages that are directed towards
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  the individual per se. We need to get back to enjoying a transcendent God who's all good,
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  powerful, true, loving, and have him speak to us. And people really think that their feelings
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  are more important than the Bible. And pastors and parents have to correct that.
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  Yeah, a big amen. Thank you for bringing it back to the pulpit, the church, which should be
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  impacting culture and not the other way around. I think I read something about salt and light
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  in those concepts in scripture. Dr. Adam Rasmussen, thank you so much for your time and the research
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  and the work that you do. Culturalresearchcenter.com. We appreciate all the things that you do,
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  Dr. Barnett, and just thank you again. Thank you, David. My pleasure. You're most welcome.
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  Friends, God bless you, and as always, keep speaking the truth about things that matter.