The Secret Battle Of Ideas About GodSample

Stopping Idea Viruses

Thinking of bad ideas as viruses can help us see how ideas work. It also can help us stop bad ideas from attacking us and those we love. Let’s see if the four steps that stop viruses can help stop bad ideas from doing their miserable work.

Step 1: Identify

Doctors can identify viruses by the symptoms they cause: aches and pains, fever, and so forth. Among Christians, for example, a terrible “virus” is striking the young. They are walking away from their faith. One measure of the virus’s reach is how many drop out of church. Up to 75 percent of students who were significantly involved in church in high school are no longer even attending church at twenty-somethings, and only 35 percent return and attend regularly (defined as at least twice a month). Many think higher education is the problem. It’s not. Those who don’t attend college after high school are even more likely than college-goers to stop attending church.

What kinds of bad ideas produce such casualties? Having worked with hundreds of thousands of young adults, I’ve come to believe they fall prey to one of five worldviews:

- Secularism. Life is about control. We can use our intelligence to harness evolution and make life turn out the way we want. I’ll call this worldview secularism, from a Latin word meaning “life span.” Secularists don’t ask what God wants or what history requires of us, but instead what we think best serves us during our lifetimes.

- Marxism. Life is about capital. As we saw earlier, Karl Marx in the mid-1800's proposed that the working class’s wretched condition was due to exploitation by the rich. Whereas the Bible directs believers to work hard and share with those in need, Marxism demands a forcible overthrow of all existing social structures: government, the economy, religion, and family.

- Postmodernism. Life is about context. According to this worldview, “Capital-T” truth cannot be known to exist; there are only “lowercase-t” truths that we create for ourselves. We need to be “post”-modern, this worldview argues, investing our time uncovering the ways religious and scientific people try to trick us into thinking they’re right. This is postmodernism.

- New spirituality. Life is about consciousness. With new spirituality, at the core of reality is a higher consciousness, a force some people call “god.” Spirituality isn’t just a thing; it is the only thing. Whereas King David in Psalm 119:48 wrote about meditating on God’s words, new spirituality recommends spiritual practices that make people feel at one with the universe.

- Islam. Life is about conquering. A sixth-century nomad named Muhammad claimed that an angel revealed humanity’s need to unite around sincere worship of one God: Allah, in Arabic. Considering itself to be the one true religion, Islam teaches that we all are born Muslim (“those who submit”). Disbelief must be conquered through jihad.