Oct. 23, 2022, column from the Amarillo Globe-News:
Some things just shouldn't be customized
It’s easier than ever for people to customize things, and we’re spoiled to an extent when we expect so much in life to be created just for us.
A “Pearls Before Swine” cartoon strip the other day showed a man ordering at a coffee shop. “Gimme a grande, half-caf, caramel macchiato, non-fat, soy, at 110 degrees, no whip,” he told Rat, the barista, whose reply was, “Somewhere in that order is everything that’s wrong with this country.”
We can buy water bottles, phone cases, pillows and magnets with our kids’ photos printed right on them and our schools’ football jerseys with our names on the back instead of Patrick Mahomes’. A college football team whose colors are red and white might wear black or gray uniforms or different helmet logos every week.
About the only thing I remember
customizing as I grew up was plastic models of race cars. I could paint them
the colors I wanted and decide which racing stripe decals to stick on.
There isn’t anything inherently
wrong with personalizing products or tailoring clothes to your tastes. When it
comes to beliefs, though, maybe we have a problem.
George Barna, who has been
polling people on the connections between faith and culture since the 1980s, said
last month that too many Americans mix and match their beliefs to create “a
customized worldview” that has led the country into a spiritual crisis.
Barna, now head of the Cultural
Research Center at Arizona Christian University, spoke at a Family Research
Council event in Atlanta, according to The Christian Post. He said research by the
CRC shows that Americans are influenced by seven major worldviews: Eastern
mysticism, Marxism, moralistic therapeutic deism, nihilism, postmodernism,
secular humanism and, last but not least, biblical theism.
Christianity, of course, falls
into that last category.
“As we
look at America today, we know that there are a number of worldviews competing
for the heart and the soul of the nation,” Barna said. “Each has a
different understanding of everything that takes place in the world, a
different explanation for why things are happening, a different concept of how
you might best live your life.”
Some understanding
of Christianity dominated U.S. culture for most of the nation’s history, but he
said no one worldview is No. 1 now. “We take bits and pieces from each one,”
Barna said. “And we blend that together into a customized worldview that describes
what we feel, what we think, what we want, where we want to go, how we want to
live.”
The
researcher defined that approach as syncretism, or the combination of different
religions, cultures or schools of thought. Some will think there’s nothing
wrong with that. Others look at the state of the country today and see a need
for a common moral code. And for Christians who believe part of their mission
is to evangelize, the task isn’t easy.
“When you
have a nation of 255 million adults and another 80 million children who are
choosing bits and pieces from many different worldviews, and they come up with
their own personalized, customized way of thinking and living, that's much more
difficult to combat because every person, in essence, requires a different
strategy,” Barna said.
He said only
6 percent of Americans have a biblical worldview, about half the percentage in
the 1980s, and that the decline has been faster in recent years.
“It’s interesting that we have a nation where almost
seven out of 10 adults call themselves Christian, but only six out of every 100
try to think like Jesus so that they can live like Jesus. So there's a big gap
there,” he said.
CRC statistics also show another
stiff challenge. Barna said only 2 percent of American parents who have
children under age 13 have a biblical worldview. That’s mostly younger parents.
“Why does that matter?” he asked.
“Because you can’t give what you don’t have. And here we have 98 out of every
100 parents in America who cannot give their children a biblical worldview
because they don't have one.”
To hold a true Christian worldview,
Barna said, a person must have the experience of Romans 12:2: “Do not conform to the pattern of this
world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will
be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and
perfect will.”
Traditional Christianity says there is one truth, not a different truth for each person. It’s OK to pick and choose the kind of drink you want. When it comes to how you think and act, though, it might be wise to listen to the one who called himself “the Way, the Truth and the Life.”
