What People Believe

The stats are alarming. After 35,000 adult Americans were polled regarding their religious beliefs, it is evident that their religious convictions are softening. They are victims of ecumenism, pluralism, lack of discernment and murky teachings. D. Michael Lindsay of Rice University said, "The survey shows religion in America is, indeed, 3,000 miles wide and only three inches deep."

America is still a bastion of belief if belief is defined outside strict Biblical theology. Ninety-two percent believe in Go, 74 % believe in the afterlife, and 63% declare their particular Scriptures to be God’s words. However, fully 70% of Americans with some religious affiliation hold the view that there are multiple ways to Heaven. Most troubling is that that 57% of evangelicals said that many religions can lead to eternal life.

The decline of commitment in the "culture wars" is seen in a softening of younger evangelicals’ commitment to social causes such as anti-abortion and anti-gay rights. One analyst said, "Americans don’t believe in anything yet believe in everything," enhancing the warning of Peter Marshall years ago when he prayed, "Help us to stand for something lest we fall for anything."

A faltering doctrinal emphasis is probably to blame as some have espoused the wretched dictum I heard many years ago that, "doctrine divides, but Jesus unites." America is wallowing in the quicksands of theological mush. Some younger evangelicals have been drawn into the Emergent Church movement. That is defined as a post-modern position where spiritual seeking has replaced Biblical standing, and their highest calling is doctrinal tolerance fueled by a deliberate retreat from the objective truth of the Bible. One leader of the movement called for a five-year moratorium on determining whether homosexuality is Scripturally out of bounds.

Let it be clear: There is one way to salvation and Heaven. It is linked to a Person and anchored to a personal belief. Christ said in John 14:6, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me."

John 3 is abundantly clear, not just as a proof text but a whole dialoging context between Jesus and Nicodemas, a Jewish Supreme Court justice. If anyone could make heaven by good works, national heritage and human attainment, it would have been he.

"Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.’ Nicodemus said to Him, ‘How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?’ Jesus answered, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, "You must be born again." The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit’" (John 3:3-8).

The first disciples clearly understood it and said so under pain of punishment and death. "Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved" (Acts 4:12).

The popular path has never been the correct one. Matthew 7:13-14 says, "Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it."

The misty-eyed evangelical respondents to the survey either don’t know, don’t care or don’t like what the Bible says. Shame on pastors and teachers who ignore or distort it, and shame on hearers who revise or reject it. Evidently the road to hell is paved with revisionist theology and affirmed by faulty surveys.

Dave Virkler