Low-information believers

This morning I was getting my "Pastor to Pastor" e-mail from Prison Fellowship, and the quote that was used today, used a term that I hadn't heard since the time I was a very young kid (before I came to know Jesus as my Savior) at St. Dominic's Catholic Church:

“We should instruct [those who are teachable but ignorant] by means of a catechism. A catechism is a brief explanation of the foundational teaching of the Christian faith given in the form of questions and answers. This helps both the understanding and the memory. The content of a catechism, therefore, should be the fundamentals of the Christian faith.”-William Perkins (1558-1602)

The reason this caught my interest is that lately on Facebook, I have been using a term that I had heard and liked "Low Information Voter" (LIV for short). What this is is a person who watches more "entertainment" than anything else, just believes what they are told in the media (without bothering to check whether it is true or not), and doesn't keep up on the issues that are facing society today. 

But this morning a thought hit me...what about us as believers? Are we LIBs (Low Information Believers)? 

I looks at the definition given for catechism "A brief explanation of the foundational teaching of the Christian faith given in the form of questions and answers". Like I said, I usually have associated this term with the Catholic Church, but what about churches in general? 

When we have people come to the Lord, do they get a time of explanation of the even the basics of the faith? I mean for them to understand about Jesus, the Father, the Holy Spirit, the Word, what it means to be a believer?  Do we equip them in such a way that they are rooted and ground in the faith in such a way that when something happens to them, that their faith remains strong? Do we equip them to be able to share the faith? Do we equip them to be as Paul put it, "be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you.". Do we teach them about things like apologetics (defense of the faith)?  

The late Chuck Colson had a quote that has burned itself into my brain and is something that has stuck with me: "The role of the church is not to make men happy; it is to make them holy". And how do make people holy? The first step is to make sure that they know what they believe in. I know of people who have abandoned the faith; one has become an atheist and the other might as well be. Her quote was basically that everything other than salvation was "up for grabs". My opinion is that had these people been rooted and truly educated about what they believe and what the Word believes, then they would not have drifted from the Word. 

But these are probably two of many that have done so, merely for the reason that they were brought to salvation, but then abandoned there to flounder on their own without any thought to how they were going to survive in a world that has abandoned all pretense and despises anything that has to do with the Lord. Or that they have gone to congregations that don't teach the Word or are given weak "be happy" sermons based on philosophies of the world and not on the bedrock of the Scriptures?  I mean we have "leaders" in the Body of Messiah and are "media darlings", but what do they teach? Is it based on the Word?  Have we abandoned the Berean mindset in the church-Acts 17:11
These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.  

Or are we even teaching our congregations to be Bereans? Do people come to our congregations to be taught or to be entertained, just believe what they are told and don't keep up on what is going on in the world? 

This could go on for a long time, but to sum up, What kind of believers are we? Are we LIBs, being as Paul writes in Ephesians 4, being children: "tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting," or have we been taught how to like what he write in 2 Timothy 2:15-"Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." ?