May 18, 2010
A few years ago, a teenager named Chris attended a worldview training program run by Summit Ministries. He learned a great deal and had a great time. But by the end of the intensive, two-week program, he was exhausted.
As Chris wrote to John Stonestreet, executive director of Summit, "I had never had to think so hard...before in my life! So I decided I was just going to veg out for the next few days."
When some friends invited Chris to a movie, he thought it would be a good way to relax and recover from all that hard thinking. They went to see the latest version of War of the Worlds.
But the film wasn't the mental vacation Chris expected it to be. As he explained in his letter, "Mr. Stonestreet, I tried to veg out during the movie, but I just couldn't. I am watching it and thinking, ‘Wait a minute, that's secular humanism, and wait a minute, that's not true. And, what do they mean by that, and how do they know that's true!'"
Chris then joked, "I just wanted you to know that you ruined my movie!"
After the film ended, Chris and his friends went out for food and talked about the themes in the movie. His friends were astonished at how much Chris had gotten out of the film. As he told Stonestreet, "They kept asking me, ‘How did you see that? How do you know all that stuff?' It was a great conversation. And I [learned] I can't just turn this worldview thing off!"
Good! What a wonderful testimony to the power of worldview training. It's the kind of training all young people need to undergo, but so often don't.
That's why you ought to consider sending your older teenager or college student to a Summit Ministries worldview conference this summer. Summit gives high school and college students a two-week crash course in worldview analysis. They'll learn about the major worldviews battling Christianity for the hearts and minds of people—worldviews like secular humanism, Marxism, postmodernism, and Islam.
Students will learn how Christianity differs from these false philosophies. They will also study the big cultural questions—like God's design for marriage, abortion—and how to respond from a biblical worldview. The idea is to teach kids to place these battles in the larger context of the war of worldviews rather than thinking about them on an issue-by-issue basis.
Now if they can't get to Summit this summer, go to ColsonCenter.org and we'll list you some materials that you can get to teach your own kids. They need to be able to know how to walk into a college classroom and know how to defend their faith, no matter what the professor throws at them. They will know how to make the case that only the biblical worldview fits the structure of reality and enables them to live in harmony with that reality.
And if kids don't get this? The statistics tell a chilling story. Up to 80 percent of young adult Christians disengage from their faith after high school.
So come to BreakPoint.org, and we'll show you how you can get more information on Summit Ministries or other materials we have. When these kids study, they will discover, as Chris did, that they just can't turn this worldview thing off.
Chuck Colson's daily BreakPoint commentary airs each weekday on more than one thousand outlets with an estimated listening audience of one million people. BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today's news and trends via radio, interactive media, and print.
