Please read Proverbs 23:22–25 again today.
Please don’t get lost in all of following statistics. Sincerely meditate upon them. May God help us to see the truth about our nation and community!
In America, only 6% of the Population claims to live life with a biblical worldview.
A biblical worldview means that we see and understand the world through biblical lenses. Only 2% of Millennials (typically defined as being born between 1981-1996) have a Biblical worldview.
Now, that sounds bad enough, but it sounds even worse when we bring those numbers closer to home and state that this national figure is representative of local communities.
Let’s extrapolate this data. First, however, did you know that 47% of Chattooga County’s population (11,661) claims affiliation with some religious persuasion. Did you also know that this means that 52% (13,598) of our population claims no religious identification / affiliation at all. These are very revealing, troubling, (and problematic) statistics.
What if I said, only 6% of Chattooga county has a biblical worldview? That would mean that 1488 people out 24,812 have a biblical worldview! Do you realize the impact that this one statistic means to our community? This means that 23,324 people in our town live their lives outside of a biblical worldview. What if I told you that only 2% of Millennials in Chattooga County had a biblical worldview? According to the charts I am looking at, Millennials make up about 26% of the population of Chattooga county. That is about 6459 people. If only 2% of that population has a biblical worldview, that means that only 129 people of this key demographic in Chattooga county have a biblical world-view. Again, this means that 6330 Millennials in Chattooga County live their lives outside of a biblical worldview.
Now that you understand a bit more about some of the statistical probabilities of the population of the county, the next question is “why are things this way?” Here are a few thoughts. Did you know that by the time a child is 18 years of age they have consumed, on average, 15,000 hours of social media,
8000 hours of television,
5000 hours of movies,
and 4000 hours of music.
32,000 hours of media before the age of 18, and most of it is opposed to a biblical worldview. All of this, while most of the churches in Chattooga County sit nearly empty and most have very few young people.
Did you realize that if the 47% of the population of Chattooga County that claims affiliation and identification with a religious persuasion were to actually go to church that this would mean that 11,661 people would be in church? That would mean that each of the 70 (or so) churches in our area would have an average attendance / membership of about 166. Instead, there has been a statistical decline in churches as well as adherents since at least 1980.
Add to this statistic the fact that most children spend 14,688 hours in public schools over their lifetime, where genuine biblical faith is undermined and minimized (and evolution and humanism are maximized), and I think you can see that the Church and the Bible have very little opportunity to influence the children of this generation (including in Chattooga county).
What this community, including our children, needs to see are Christians that are genuinely living out their faith in the home, in the schools, in the churches, and in the public square! In other words, we need to be experiencing and living out the truth of the Bible everywhere! Many times, this is the exact opposite of what we are seeing! Check in next week and we will probe this hypocrisy and truth problem a bit deeper….