A book review by SWRC Staff Evangelist Josh Davis for the Prophecy in the News Magazine
Christian parents have a God-given responsibility to disciple their children with a biblical worldview. Today’s digital world of smartphones, apps and social media makes that job more challenging. The demonic agenda of this present darkness threatens the future stability of the youngest generation. The current prevalent postmodern worldview attempts to make truth irrelevant as it proclaims that everyone can make up whatever truth they want to live. The Christian parent has a difficult job, but not an impossible one.
There is a way to raise Christian kids so that they can take a biblical stand in a postmodern world, so says Christian author Andrea Crum in her new book, Christ Over Culture. This hardback, 160-page volume is a great go-to resource for parents.
How Busy Parents Make Disciples
Parenting can feel like running an ultra-marathon while juggling 10 tennis balls. How can a busy family cram biblical discipleship into a schedule filled with meal prep, chores, errands, activities and the endless laundry, laundry, laundry? How can parents stop the onslaught of evil seemingly creeping into their kids’ lives from every direction?
Here is the beautiful truth: Discipleship is not something you do; it flows from who you are. It is not a task you schedule to accomplish. It is who you are pouring through what you do. Certainly, a family can schedule a time to open God’s Word and pray together, but Christian parents must realize that the way they live their lives in front of their kids impacts biblical discipleship. Christian parents who live consistently with what they proclaim will have a tremendous impact on their children.
Be Transformed
Andrea Crum makes it clear that parents cannot give what they do not have. It is impossible for a parent to raise Christian kids to stand against a postmodern world if the parent is not standing against it first. A parent cannot pass on a biblical worldview to their kids if they do not first have a biblical worldview.
This does not mean that parents are to blame for their kids’ choices. Some wonderful Christian parents have children who decide to turn away from a biblical worldview. Other ungodly parents have children who do not want the life their parents lived, so they discover the Gospel and a biblical worldview through the grace of God. In both cases, the children chose to be influenced by people other than their parents.
The opposite ditch that some Christian parents fall into is shirking their responsibility to intentionally disciple their kids. This world expects people to turn to experts for everything. Busted plumbing? Turn to the experts. Broken tooth? Turn to the experts. Hungry? Turn to the experts. This mindset has trained many people to outsource Christian discipleship and biblical worldview training to the local church.
The local church should reinforce the biblical worldview training the kids receive from their Christian parents. It should supplement but cannot be the sole avenue of biblical discipleship in a child’s life. Deuteronomy 6 makes it clear that the parents shoulder the spiritual responsibility to teach their kids about the Lord and His truth.
Christian parents must be transformed by the renewing of their mind so that they can influence their kids with a biblical worldview (Romans 12:1-2). Christians are called to love God with all their hearts, souls and minds (Matt. 23:37; Mark 12:30; Luke 10:37; cf. Deut. 6:5). Loving God with our minds involves thinking deeply about His Word. A biblical worldview seeks to answer questions of life, origin, identity, meaning, purpose and destiny from the Scripture. Thus, Christian parents must first think and act biblically so that they can disciple their kids to do the same.
The Shocking Statistics
Sadly, the percentage of Americans with a biblical worldview continues to decline. The Barna Research Group said that only 4 percent of Americans have a biblical worldview, down from 6 percent in less than five years, according to a study released by Arizona Christian University in February 2023. Shockingly, an August 2022 study by the same group revealed only 37 percent of American pastors had a biblical worldview. This survey was very broad in its denominational reach, yet the numbers are revealing. What is more horrifying is that among children’s and youth pastors, that number dropped to 12 percent.
The sad fact is that the very people some American Christian parents are trusting to train their kids in the ways of the Lord may not even have a biblical worldview. The American church continues to slide away from the Scriptures and into greater apostasy. These apostate churches are hurting the cause of Christ and diminishing the power of the Gospel. Thank God for churches that are standing firmly upon God’s Truth amid these dark days!
That is why Christ Over Culture is such a needed book for Christian parents. As postmodernism causes the apostate church to go woke, this is the time for those who believe the Bible is God’s Word to understand what they believe and why they believe it.
Christian apologetics is not relegated to armchair academic discussions or useful only to one-up an atheist on social media. Rather, it settles and establishes the Christian in their faith so that they can articulate the hope found in Christ to those who need to be saved (1 Peter 3:15). Crum helps Christian parents see how apologetics can be a helpful tool in raising godly children as she exposes the unbiblical worldviews influencing younger generations today and provides principles Christian parents can pass on to their kids.
Worldviews Impact Everything
Discussing worldviews might appear to be an abstract discussion on the surface. However, worldviews create real-world decisions and consequences. A worldview influences how we answer questions like “Who am I?” Postmodernism answers, “You are whoever you want to be. You get to define you.” A biblical worldview, by contrast, answers, “You are created by the Creator King of the universe who loves you and made you in His beautiful image with meaning and purpose.”
The author spends several chapters outlining the cultural outworking of the postmodern worldview from concepts like feminism’s role in postmodernism to our culture’s sexual obsession to the explosive growth of LGBTQ+ ideology. Christian parents need to know how to guide their kids through these cultural landmines and teach them to navigate their lives with God’s Truth.
What would happen to the statistics if Christian parents took this responsibility seriously? Christ Over Culture ends with this charge:
“What if raising Christian kids in this culture was the greatest honor that God could have ever given us? To steward our kids and this next generation into the next great move of God. Raising pillars of faith who will stand when the ground is shaky, the pressure is heavy and the world is taking a proverbial nosedive – the faithful who will rise, who will stand, who will profess our Lord Jesus, who will love their neighbor, and will stand firmly on God’s Word, and who will then raise their kids to do the same. Maybe we will be the generation of parents who turned it all around – who saw where things were heading, made the sacrifice, and answered the call to raise a different kind of Christian, ones who wouldn’t back down and who would never give up until they accomplished all that God had called them to. Ones who we raised to stand.”
Order your copy of Christ Over Culture today.
