God--According to Most Americans

A recent study by two researchers (see below) at the University of North Carolina found that American teenagers have the following beliefs about God:

"A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on Earth."

"God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions."

"The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself."

"God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem."

"Good people go to heaven when they die."

The findings were based on interviews of 3,000 teens. My guess is that these teens reflect the beliefs of the majority of Americans. The key question: are these beliefs true? The question is not whether we want them to be true, because they may well be a picture of the God that we would design if we could, a God who reflects an enlarged version of--ourselves.

In coming blogs, I will compare each of these beliefs to the book that Jesus said was God's autobiography: the Bible. As we look at these Scriptures, I ask that you open your heart and see if God speaks through the Bible to you to confirm that the Bible is indeed his autobiography.

Citation on study: Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton, researchers with the National Study of Youth and Religion at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), in the book: Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford University Press).