Meet your son’s physics college professor. He is a postmodern naturalist atheist who excels in deconstructing Christian worldviews.

Geroge Barna concludes the following from his extensive research here:

“The firm’s studies have also pointed out that a person’s worldview is primarily shaped and is firmly in place by the time someone reaches the age of 13; it is refined through experience during the teen and early adult years; and then it is passed on to others during their adult life . . . children are not provided with the basic ability to think in ways that correspond to foundational biblical teachings.”

His research in 2018 concluded that a shocking 4% of Gen Z have a Biblical worldview (see here.) As he says, “Today’s teens are less Christian and more confused about moral and spiritual truth than ever.”

While there are many churches that are currently doing a great job embedding their young people into a Christian worldview, there are unfortunately more that are not—where ministry time for teenagers is focused on social activities rather than grappling with truth, and where difficult issues are ignored. Most teenagers today in the church do not view Christianity as total truth that applies to every area life. Francis Schaeffer made this point in 1981:

“Christianity is not a series of truths in the plural, but rather truth spelled with a capital “T.” Truth about total reality, not just about religious things. Biblical Christianity is Truth concerning total reality—and the intellectual holding of that total Truth and then living in the light of that Truth.” FRANCIS SCHAEFFER, Address at the University of Notre Dame April 1981

Once young people embrace Truth as being about all of reality and everything in life, that becomes life-changing. What Does It Mean That Christianity Is Total Truth? As Nancy Pearcey so eloquently argues,

“Christianity is not just religious truth, it is total truth—covering all of reality. It is not only religious truth. Christianity functions as a unified, overarching system of truth that applies to social issues, history, politics, anthropology, and all the other subject areas. We must not restrict our faith to the religious sphere while adopting what-ever views are current in our professional or social circles.”

Introduce your teenagers to apologetics before they leave home. Let them learn to defend Christianity as objective knowledge, not as personal values.