More than 100 million American adults claim to have a biblical worldview, but actually a much smaller percentage of adults do. That is one of the striking conclusions of George Barna’s survey with the American Culture & Faith Institute.

It is important to know how many people have a biblical worldview because belief drives behavior. And it was important for George Barna to get an accurate baseline to use in future comparisons.

His survey asked 20 questions about core spiritual beliefs and 20 questions assessing behavior. You were considered to have strong biblical beliefs if you got at least 80 percent of the questions correct. Based on that, they concluded that 10 percent of American adults have a biblical worldview. This pales in comparison to the 46 percent of adults who claim to have a biblical worldview.

When you look at the 20 questions assessing biblical behavior, you see similar trends. You were considered to have strong biblical behavior if you got 80 percent of the behavior questions correct. Based on that, they concluded that 18 percent of American adults have strong biblical behavior.

The survey also identified what it called an “Integrated Disciple.” They are Christians who have the intention of being an imitator of Christ. They blend their belief and behaviors into a Christ-like lifestyle. About 10 percent have strong biblical beliefs and behavior. That means they correctly answered more than 80 percent in each category in the survey.

One of the trends that match other studies was the realization that the “younger an adult is, the less likely they are to have a biblical worldview.” Just 4 percent were Integrated Disciples, while much older adults were in the 16 percent range.

This survey of core beliefs and behavior is one more reminder about the need for good Bible teaching and biblical discipleship. Obviously, we have more work to do.

Let me give you some advice. The next time you hear a media report of a hate crime by a conservative or Trump supporter, wait a day and see if it is a hoax.

John Hawkins lists “10 Examples of Hate Crimes that Turned Out to be Scams.” Elizabeth Nolan Brown documents in Reason that “There Is No Violent Hate-Crime Wave in Trump’s America.” Kevin Williamson, writing in National Review, talks about both “Fake Hate Crimes” and “Fake Hate.” There is even the fakehatecrimes.org website that documents these fake crimes in the hundreds.

Juan Thompson, a left-wing journalist who was fired from his position at The Intercept, was in the news again for making a string of threats to Jewish community centers. Apparently, he was trying to frame his ex-girlfriend as a “racist white girl.”

Three black coeds at the University of Albany said they were attacked on a city bus by a group of white men using racial slurs. Hundreds came to a campus rally against racism based on their false report. Surveillance videos contradicted their account, as did statements by fellow passengers. Actually, they were the aggressors who hit a 19-year-old white woman on the bus.

Muslim women at the University of Louisiana, the University of Michigan, and the University of New Mexico made false claims they were attacked and had their head coverings pulled off. In a number of cases, we don’t know the names of some of these hijab hoaxers. Frankly, I don’t think we should be protecting the identities of people who file false police reports.

A student at Beloit College reported anti-Muslim graffiti on his door and outside his dorm room. After police investigated, they found he perpetrated the fraud himself.

The news media will continue to report each of these incidents, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to wonder if many of them are frauds and nothing more than fake hate crimes.

An interesting aspect of the immigration debate is how forgiving many Americans can be toward illegal aliens, while never extending that same measure of grace to American citizens. One example can be found in the use of the term “false documents.”

The discussion started with a Wall Street Journal editorial that expressed concern that the Department of Homeland Security policy might be “so sweeping that it could capture law-abiding immigrants whose only crime is using false documents to work.” Victor Davis Hanson couldn’t let that statement stand and decided to write a quick response.

He explains that rarely is this just a one-time, minor transgression by an immigrant in order to create a false document in order to go to work. He says it usually involves “the deliberate creation of a false identity, sometimes at the expense of a real person, and often with accompanying fraudulent Social Security numbers and photo identifications.” These are crimes that foul up the bureaucracy for law-abiding citizens and even facilitate other crimes.

While it may be true that an illegal immigrant might need to create a false document in order to find a job in the US, it is not merely an end game or minor infraction. Other possible infractions follow from the first crime of entering this country illegally.

And let’s at least acknowledge that if a law-abiding citizen engaged in creating false documents they would face some form of punishment. They would probably be fired from their job. The government would at least fine them if not imprison them for creating false documents.

Sure, there are law-abiding immigrants whose only infraction may indeed be the fact they created a false identity in order to get work. But the many examples Victor Davis Hanson uses in his column are a reminder that false documents are often not the only infraction. Frequently, false documents make it easier to commit other crimes.

Christian young people are not spiritually thriving. That is the conclusion by Stephen Cable in his book, Cultural Captives: The Beliefs and Behavior of American Young Adults. Stephen Cable serves as Senior Vice-President of Probe Ministries.

His book not only analyzes the survey Probe Ministries did with the Barna Group of emerging adults but also analyzes all of the other major surveys (National Study of Youth and Religion, Baylor Religion Survey, General Social Survey). He discovered that even though commentators sometimes cite these other surveys to prove that young people are doing well, all of the surveys are actually quite consistent. When you dig deeper into the data, you find they all paint a bleak picture.

The percentage of people generally who check “none of the above” for religious preference is increasing. That is especially true of young people. In fact, the percentage of emerging adults who do not claim any affiliation with Christianity rose from 20% in 1990 to over 37% of the population today.

Stephen Cable found that only 14 percent of born-again, emerging adults combine a biblical worldview with biblical practices, such as reading the Bible or attending church. He also found that less than 2 percent of born-again, emerging adults apply a biblical worldview to life choices. In other words, only this small percentage has biblical beliefs on topics ranging from abortion to sex outside marriage to science and faith.

This is a major reason why Probe Ministries has developed an integrated strategy known as Periscope aimed at reversing these trends. The learning experience involves an entire church congregation over a seven-week period and includes sermons, videos, original music, and additional material for individuals and small groups.

Stephen Cable’s book is a wake-up call to the church. We need to reverse these ominous trends and do it quickly before the trends become even worse.

The debate about the federal budget centers on whether the government is too big and too inefficient. Most Republicans argue that government is too big. Many Democrats ask, Where is your evidence that government has grown too big? There are about the same number of federal employees today as in the past.

George Will in a column writes about how “Big Government Sneakily Get Bigger.” He quotes from John DiIulio and his book and recent paper at the Brookings Institution.

Government grows larger by using three types of “administrative proxies.” The first are state and local governments. The EPA, for example, has fewer than 20,000 employees. But 90 percent of EPA programs are completely administered by thousands of state government employees, largely funded by Washington.

Second, there are for-profit businesses and contractors that also mask the large size of the government. In the Defense Department, for example, the hundreds of thousands of civilian workers have been supplemented by hundreds of thousands of for-profit contract employees. Today, the government spends more on defense contracts ($350 billion) than it does on all official federal bureaucrats ($250 billion).

Third, there are the various tax-exempt or independent sectors, which have more than doubled in the last thirty years. Many of them owe their jobs to federal or intergovernmental grant, contract, or fee funding.

These facts will be important to remember when Congress and the public debate the federal budget. Although the number of federal employees look about the same as in previous decades, the federal budget is more than three times larger. The federal workload has been dispersed and makes the government look much smaller than it really is. We do have a big government and should not fall for this federal shell game that tries to hide from taxpayers the real size and scope of government.

One of the many dividing lines between progressives and conservatives is their belief in the efficiency and effectiveness of government bureaucracies. Liberals may have some misgivings about how they are treated at the Department of Motor Vehicles or by the TSA at airports. Nevertheless, they tend to believe that government is the solution to most social and political problems.

Conservatives are usually more skeptical about government and support the private sector over the public sector. But their reactions seem tempered by the fact that they generally have high respect for people in the military and law enforcement.

This difference in perspective concerning federal bureaucracies shows up in many debates, including the current one about vetting refugees and other immigrants. In a recent column, Kevin Williamson asks “who seriously thinks that our public institutions are up to the job of properly investigating tens of thousands (or more) refugees, asylum-seekers, and ordinary immigrants every year? If Donald Trump’s temporary order seems to you unreasonable, ask yourself what the next-best option is and how much confidence we should have in it.”

When I read or hear someone assure us that the government screening of refugees and immigrants is very effective, I want to ask them some questions. Have you been to the DMV or the VA recently? Have you visited an immigration office recently? Sometimes you find a well-run organization, but far too often you probably walked out of a government building shaking your head because it is hardly run efficiently and effectively.

Add to this the reality that the information from some of the countries for these refugees and immigrants is sketchy at best. That is why I think some are more trusting of the federal bureaucracy than is warranted.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali begins her commentary with these words: “I was a Muslim refugee once. I know what it’s like.” She was en route to Canada to consummate a marriage arranged against her will by her father. At the Frankfurt Airport, she fled to the Netherlands. There she learned Dutch and received a master’s degree in political science before coming to America.

She has worked as an interpreter for abused Muslim women and understands the Muslim refugee experience. In the course of working with Muslim communities, she has found four different types of Muslim immigrant: adapters, menaces, coasters, and fanatics.

“Many Muslim immigrants have adapted over time by adopting the core values of Western democracies.” These Muslims have become great US citizens and are the type of people we want to welcome to our country.

The second group are mostly young men, who she says are menaces in their homes and outside in public. They have been subjected to domestic violence and go on to commit it themselves.

Coasters are a third group of Muslim immigrants. They usually have little or no formal education and thankfully accept welfare and live off it. They also invite their families from abroad to join them on the welfare rolls.

“Finally, there are the fanatics—those use the freedom of the countries that gave them sanctuary to spread an uncompromising practice of Islam.” These immigrants are certainly the group we want to keep out of America.

Her analysis of Muslim immigrants is necessary for our discussion of immigration. We just cannot assume that all Muslim immigrants will perfectly adapt to the American culture and adopt western values. Nor should we assume that all Muslims are fanatics. We need to find a way to welcome adapters but also exclude those who won’t contribute to this country.

Will robots destroy jobs and put all of us in the unemployment lines? Some futurists seem to be predicting this scenario. Jay Richards disagrees. He says it is an old argument that is new again. He is the author of the book, The Human Advantage: The Future of American Work in an Age of Smart Machines.

One report predicts that “The future of robots appears to be a dystopian march to rising inequality, falling wages, and higher unemployment.” A number of books warn of the “rise of robots” and even suggest this new technology will lead to the death of capitalism.

Jay Richards acknowledges that we have a coming disruption that could be as abrupt as the Industrial Revolution. But looking back, we can see that previous revolutions didn’t lead to the end of employment. They often provided new jobs without the boredom and danger of the past. At the founding of this country, nearly 95 percent of Americans got by on farming. Today, the American population is ten times larger while only 1 percent of the US population works on farms.

If it is true that technology leads to permanent unemployment of the masses, the history of the last few centuries would be a history of joblessness. That is not true. But some politicians accept the faulty premise that jobs will be scarce, and therefore have proposed the idea of a universal basic income that would essentially put millions more on welfare.

One obvious problem would be money. The government is going broke right now with various entitlement programs. Expanding that is economically unrealistic. And do we really want to pay millions more in this country to not work?

The lesson to government and education is to stop training kids to do jobs that robots will be doing in a few years. The lesson for parents and their children is to focus on developing skills a robot could never take away from you.