What Teens Believe

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Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton in their recent book, Soul Searching discuss the results of an extensive survey of the religious beliefs of American teenagers. Smith and Denton summarize what they discovered through the following five-point creed:

  1. A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.
  2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
  3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
  4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
  5. Good people go to heaven when they die.

I have one question for you to ponder after reading this:

How/from whom/where did these teens develop these beliefs?

If you said "their parents", then we agree!

We have our work cut out for us, church.