Satan's
use of Scripture in tempting Jesus is clear indication that a merely
cognitive level of biblical literacy does not automatically result in
the formation of a Christian character.
For well over
twenty years now, Christian leaders have been lamenting the loss of
general biblical literacy in America. No doubt you have read some of the
same dire statistics that I have. Study after study demonstrates how
nearly everyone in our land owns a Bible (more than one, in fact) but
few ever take the time to read it, much less study it closely. Indeed,
while the Exploring Religious America Survey of 2002 reports
that over 84 percent of Americans consider the Bible to be "very" or
"somewhat important" in helping them make decisions in life, recent
Gallup polls tell us that only half can name even one of the four
Gospels, only a third are able to identify the individual who delivered
the Sermon on the Mount, and most aren't even able to identify Genesis
as the Bible's opening text.
Upon hearing these figures (and
many more are readily available), some among us may be tempted to seek
odd solace in the recognition that our culture is increasingly
post-Christian. Perhaps these general population studies are misplaced
in holding secular people to Christian standards. Much to our
embarrassment, however, it has become increasingly clear that the
situation is really no better among confessing Christians, even those
who claim to hold the Bible in high regard. Again, numerous studies are
available for those seeking further reason to be depressed. In a 2004
Gallup study of over one thousand American teens, nearly 60 percent of
those who self-identified as evangelical were not able to correctly
identify Cain as the one who said, "Am I my brother's keeper?" and over
half could not identify either "Blessed are the poor in spirit" as a
quote from the Sermon on the Mount or "the road to Damascus" as the
place where Saul/Paul's blinding vision occurred. In each of these
questions, evangelical teens fared only slightly better than their
non-evangelical counterparts. Continue at David R. Nienhuis
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