One of my goals here was to attract a few other authors who were passionate about the whole Christian Worldview question.  I still hope to do that.  If just two others were to join in I think I could hold up my end.  So if you’re reading this blog and find the topic intriguing and have an interesting in contributing, let me know.

While I do not require contributing authors to agree with me down the line, I do require them to be Christians and write from a Christian perspective.  This is not open to the atheist perspective, at least in terms of authors.  Atheists are more than welcome to comment and engage in the discussion.

So without some help this blog will continue to languish for a while.  I don’t have the time to keep it up by myself.  But I will maintain the domain and the site so that when I do have time I can come back to it.  But if I get some help, this blog will pick right up.  So drop me a note if you’re interested in contributing.

The scientific rationalism creation story is that everything that is came from nothing through time and chance.  Starting with this beginning, it is completely logical to reach the conclusion that man is no different from other animals or that morals are nothing more than an illusion, a social convention.  In fact, no other conclusion can be reached.  Ultimately there is no purpose or direction to life or anything.  Man is a machine and free will is an illusion as is love.

The problem with this set of conclusions, as Francis Schaeffer rightly points out, is that no one can live with them.  The scientist who is devoted to this position will proclaim it loudly in books and seminars but when he gets home at night he acts as if it were not true.  He treats his wife and family with love.  He expects people to be responsible and he has no problem with criminals being punished, particularly if the crime was against them!

The Christian and Jewish creation story is much different.  This creation story says that everything that is was created by God.  And not just any god, but a personal God who has a purpose and who is interested in the lives of men.  The Bible says that God created man in His own image, meaning that God created man with personality and a desire for personal relationships.  God created them this way so that they could have a personal relationship with Him because God is personal, having a relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit throughout all eternity.

As far as everyday life is concerned this creation story and the conclusions that result from it are easy to live with.  Morals are easily explained as is love.  One conclusion is that we have a purpose.  It is interesting to observe that every person on earth seeks to find a purpose for their lives.  If they cannot find one outside of themselves they will seek to create one.  One is hard pressed to find the competitive advantage such a desire has if in reality there is no purpose.  If the scientific rationalist creation story is correct, man can never really be fulfilled because his search for purpose will always come up empty.

The Christian creation story has certain inescapable conclusion just as the scientific rationalist creation story does.  For example, if there really is a God who created everything, He is the basis for all moral laws.  Consequently, we, as part of His creation, are responsible to and answerable to Him.  There is no way around the conclusion. 

Such a conclusion is distasteful to some people.  Our natural inclination is be free from moral responsibility.  We don’t really like being under authority.  But why should that be?  Is there some Darwinian competitive advantage for feeling so?  It really is a universal feeling.  The Christian creation story provides an answer.  That is, man is fallen through the sin of Adam.  Scientific rationalism has no answer.

However you view it, everyone lives their lives as if the Biblical account of creation is true, whether they believe that account or not.  All strive for meaning and purpose in life.  All seek out love and relationships.  Everyone acts as if they had free will.  Scientific rationalism cannot explain these phenomena.  It can speculate about how this or that might possible be some sort of advantage in terms of survival of the fittest but their explanations fall flat.  All the theories in the world don’t change the way men live, even the scientists.

A classic example is the abortion debate. People on both sides simply cannot understand why their opponents don’t see what they see, grasp what they grasp. The fundamental problem is differing worldviews.

For the pro-lifer the issue is about the sanctity of human life. It is very clear cut. In a world of absolutes, killing an innocent is absolutely wrong. Nothing can change that. But the typical abortion supporter doesn’t live in a world of absolutes. For them, nothing is ever absolutely wrong. Right and wrong have to be weighed against other consideration, like how having a baby will impact the life of the mother. They are not hindered by absolute considerations of right and wrong. Things just aren’t black and white for them.

The same problem appears over and over throughout life. Perhaps not so dramatically, but it is there. Let’s take the criminal justice system as an example.

For those who believe in absolutes, including an absolute standard of right and wrong, crimes must be punished if justice is to be served. It’s not about payback per se, it’s about justice and it’s about protecting society.

But we’ve all heard arguments about how incarceration isn’t effective or we should be focused on rehabilitation. Now even those who believe in absolutes agree that rehabilitation is a worthy goal but it doesn’t take precedence over punishment. The other side, however, is more interested in how the criminal became the way he is. They look for reasons and, ultimately, for someone else to blame. If only society were different, if only the criminal had a better childhood. But none of that addresses the fundamental wrongness of the criminal’s actions. Their argument says that the criminal isn’t really responsible for his actions.

You see, with absolutes comes responsibility. If a thing is wrong, I am responsible if I do that thing. The price may be great or small but I am responsible. But if nothing is absolutely and always wrong, there is no responsibility. I can make an excuse for anything and everything.

We see this happening all around us every day. We’ve gone from a society built largely on personal responsibility to a society resting on entitlements. But as they say in psychology, that is only the presenting problem, not the root issue. An entitlement mentality is certainly a problem but where did it come from? Those of us who believe in absolutes don’t understand the thinking that leads to it and when we debate those who think that way, we don’t get very far because we aren’t even in the same book, much less on the same page.

So don’t be surprised when you, as a Christian, have trouble communicating with someone who holds a worldview different from your own. Make sure you are careful about defining terms. When the other person uses a term that you are familiar with but in a way that seems inconsistent to you, clarify that term. Make sure you are talking about the same thing. And don’t be surprised when, after all that, you are still unable to get through. They are operating from a completely different set of assumptions about the world and how it operates than you are.

I hope this system will encourage comments and discussion.  In addition to commenting on specific posts, you can also create new threads to expand on the whole worldview discussion.  So give it a try and see what you think.

I was simply wondering how the founding fathers came to the conclusion that God gave human beings inalienable rights. Is this a Biblical concept? In my reading of the Bible I have never come across this notion (not to say that I have been looking for it within the text). My impression (and it is only a personal impression) is that we have the choice to obey God and the choice to disobey. We have the right to die for our sins. We have the duty to submit to our Earthly authorities, even English kings that we may or may not care for. (Rom 13). By the way, how did the fathers get around that bit of text? We will be blessed when we?re persecuted, by Muslims and liberals alike. (Matt 5). But as far as inalienable human rights, handed down by God? that seems to me like people were either reading into the text a little too deeply, or they just wanted to live as they wish, far away from any lifestyle or governing system ever presented in the Bible, and still be able to sleep at night.

Brad brings up an interesting question.  Is there a biblical case for inalienable rights and is revolution ever justified?  Brad wasn’t impressed with my quick response.  I said that Romans 13 does not only talk about our responsibility to obey earthly authorities.  It also defines the responsibility of those authorities.  While the passage doesn’t spell out consequences of bad government, it seems to me that it at least implies that we have some kind of rights of civil authority is not just.

Well, since that exchange with Brad I’ve been continuing my reading of Francis Schaeffer.  Specifically, I’ve been reading A Christian Manifesto and interestingly, Schaeffer addresses this very topic.  Schaeffer asks, “What is the final relationship to the state on the part of anyone whose base is the existence of God?”  Schaeffer rightly points out that for the anti-religious, for the atheist, there is no reason to obey the state other than the threat of force.  “The Christian, the God-fearing person, is not like that.  The Bible tells us that God has commanded us to obey the state.”  Schaeffer goes on to say:

But now a second question follows very quickly.  Has God set up an authority in the state that is autonomous from Himself?  Are we to obey the state no matter what?  Are we?  In this one area is indeed Man the measure of all things?  And I would answer, not at all, not at all.

When Jesus says in Matthew 22:21: “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s,” is is not:

GOD and CAESAR

It was, is, and it will always be:

GOD
and
CAESAR

The civil government, as all of life, stands under the Law of God.  In this fallen world God has given us certain office to protect us from the chaos which is the natural result of that fallenness.  But when any office commands that which is contrary to the Word of God, those who hold that office abrogate their authority and they are not to be obeyed.  And that includes the state.

That’s pretty much the argument I made with Brad.  Schaeffer points out, rightly in my view, based on the text of Romans 13, that:

God has ordained the state as a delegated authority; it is not autonomous.  The state is to be an agent of justice, to restrain evil by punishing the wrongdoer, and to protect the good in society.  When it does the reverse, it has no proper authority.  It is then a usurped authority and as such it becomes lawless and is tyranny.

Schaeffer then goes on to 1 Peter 2:13-17 which parallels Paul’s word is Romans 13 and supports the same conclusions.  Those who would argue that we as Christians are bound to always obey the state would surely concede that when the state demands actions contrary to scripture we have the right, indeed the duty, to disobey.  This seems to me inarguable.  That is precisely what Daniel did in the Old Testament and God protected him.  His three Hebrew companions did the same and were thrown into the furnace where God rescued them.  So clearly we are on safe ground in disobeying the state when it demands action contrary to God’s law.

But what about revolution?  What about the concept of inalienable rights?  Schaeffer says that “in almost every place where the Reformation had success there was some form of civil disobedience or armed rebellion.”  He gives specific examples in the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland and Geneva.  Each case involved at least armed resistance if not outright rebellion.

One of the nest examples Schaeffer gives is that of John Knox whom he calls a radical reformer.  But he also points out that Knox always called for “moderation and compromise whenever truly fundamental issues were not at stake.”  Knox developed a theology of resistance to tyranny.  Schaeffer says:

Whereas Reformers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin had reserved the right to rebellion to the civil rulers alone, Knox went further.  He maintained that the common people had the right and the duty to disobedience and rebellion if state officials ruled contrary to the Bible.  To do otherwise would be rebellion against God.

Schaeffer gives numerous examples where the Reformation was not accompanied by any threat of force and in each case it was snuffed.  His list includes Hungary where the Catholic Church stopped the Reformation by killing the protestants, France where the Huguenots suffered “the mass assassination of most of its leadership” and Spain where the small Reformation movement among the monks of Seville ended with the martyrdom of most of them.  It seems clear that the Reformation flourished only where there was some protection.

Next Schaeffer turns his attention to Samuel Rutherford who write Lex Rex.  Lex Rex means the law is king.  This was absolutely contrary to all thinking of the day where it would have been Rex Lex or the king is law.  The difference is quite astounding.  Under Rex Lex, the king is the source of all law and is, therefore, above the law.  But with Lex Rex, the source of law is above the king and the king is subject to the law.  According to Schaeffer:

In his classic work, Lex Rex, Rutherford set forth the proper Christian response to nonbiblical acts by the state. 

Rutherford presents several arguments to establish the right and duty of resistance to unlawful government.  First, since tyranny is satanic, not to resist it is to resist God - to resist tyranny is to honor God.  Second, since the ruler is granted power conditionally, it follows that the people have the power to withdraw their sanction if the proper conditions are not fulfilled.  The civil magistrate is a “fiduciary figure” - that is, he holds his authority in trust for the people.  Violation of the trust gives the people a legitimate base for resistance.

It follows from Rutherford’s thesis that citizens have a moral obligation to resist unjust and tyrannical government.  While we must always be subject to the office of magistrate, we are not to be subject to the man in that office who commands that which is contrary to the Bible.

Now, I don’t imagine that many will be convinced by the above who aren’t already sympathetic to this position.  Certainly groups like the Quakers will not be convinced.  They will die to the last man rather than offer any resistance at all.  While I admire their courage and conviction, I do not agree with them.  I think Schaeffer has it right.  And by extension, I think the founding fathers of the United States had it right in the Declaration of Independence.  They followed every possible option to avoid a revolution but the King of England was having none of it.  They eventually resorted to the only option left to them, open rebellion and revolution.  They also got it right, in my view, when they listed certain inalienable rights including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 

I’m pretty sure Brad will disagree but there is sound reasoning on my side.  I understand that those who disagree also have sound reasoning and I respect their opinions.  But I respectfully disagree with them.

Since the war in Iraq began I haven’t really questioned its primary purpose, bringing democracy to Iraq. The notion of a stable democracy in the Middle East is compelling. If it could be achieved it would change the political landscape in the region and around the world. The question of whether Iraq was ready for democracy was, of course, another question. Many felt, and still feel, that the culture of Iraq and the Middle East in general is not conducive to democracy. They cite decades or centuries of oppression and authoritarian rule to support their position.

Others believe that all people would naturally prefer a democracy to any other form of government. It is believed by many that democracy is simply the natural state of man. Since human nature is the same the world over, why wouldn’t people in Iraq or anywhere else prefer democracy and be willing to work toward it?

The answer isn’t so difficult to reach but it doesn’t seem to be obvious. One need look only to our own founding fathers for the answer.

Many today debate over whether our founding fathers were Christian or not. Some point out that many of the founding fathers were deists, not Christians. A deist believes in a God who created everything and then stepped back and let it run however it would. Unlike the Christian God, the God of deism is not involved in the daily affairs of man.

Deist or not, many of our founding fathers recognized the importance of the Christian faith in the success of this country and the form of government they created. One blogger, Jenn Sierra, has written a good deal about this in her blog at www.jennsierra.com. A selection of quotes from some of our founding fathers will demonstrate the point.

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. –John Adams, October 11, 1798

Let divines and philosophers, statesmen and patriots, unite their endeavors to renovate the ajge by impressing the minds of men with the importance of educating their little boys and girls, inculcating in the minds of youth the fear and love of the Deity… and leading them in the study and practice of the exalted virtues of the Christian system. –Samuel Adams, October 4, 1790

Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion, whose morality is so sublime and pure…are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments. – Charles Carroll, signer of the Declaration of Independence

God governs in the affairs of man. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We have been assured in the Sacred Writings that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. I firmly believe this. I also believe that, without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel. – Benjamin Franklin, Constitutional Convention of 1787

God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift from God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, and that His justice cannot sleep forever. – Thomas Jefferson

We’ve staked our future on our ability to follow the Ten Commandments with all of our heart. – James Madison

We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We’ve staked the future of all our political institutions upon our capacity…to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God. – James Madison

Public utility pleads most forcibly for the general distribution of the Holy Scriptures. The doctrine they preach, the obligations they impose, the punishment they threaten, the rewards they promise, the stamp and image of divinity they bear, which produces a conviction of their truths, can alone secure to society, order and peace, and to our courts of justice and constitutions of government, purity, stability and usefulness. In vain, without the Bible, we increase penal laws and draw entrenchments around our institutions. Bibles are strong entrenchments. Where they abound, men cannot pursue wicked courses, and at the same time enjoy quiet conscience. – James McHenry, Signer of the Constitution

I verily believe Christianity necessary to the support of civil society. One of the beautiful boasts of our municipal jurisprudence is that Christianity is a part of the Common Law. . . There never has been a period in which the Common Law did not recognize Christianity as lying its foundations. – Justice Joseph Story

The list goes on and on. It is clear that our founders believed, not just that Christianity was true, but that without the belief in Christianity and the morality that follows from that belief, the American form of government could not prevail. Even our Declaration of Independence states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…” These unalienable rights are given by God, not by government or men and they cannot be taken away. This, of course, presupposes a benevolent God who is concerned with the affairs of men. (Note also that both Franklin and Jefferson made distinctly Christian statements in spite of claims that they were deists.)

I stand in agreement with the founders quoted above and the Declaration of Independence. So what does all that have to do with the stated goal of the war in Iraq? Simply this, if a representative republic requires the Christian religion to prosper and survive, how can Iraq possible achieve it? The proposition is this: A representative republic, a system whereby the government governs by the consent of the governed, requires that those being governed must themselves be self governing by virtue of the morality that only Christianity instills. Without the tenets of Christianity, a democratic form of government will always degenerate into tyranny.

The lessons of history certainly seem to bear this out. In the grand scheme of history most governments have been tyrannies and those that started out as something else always degenerated into tyrannies without a Christian foundation.

The secular humanist worldview claims that government can govern fairly and maintain morality and the consent of the governed through some means other than Christian morality, thought both the Humanist Manifesto and Humanist Manifesto II admit that without Christian morality it is a challenge to come up with a sound foundation. Well known humanist Will Durant recognized the problem when he wrote in The Lessons of History, “There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.” It simply does not happen. The empirical evidence seems to indicate that morality requires religion, specifically, the Christian religion and successful civil government requires morality. This can be stated as a syllogism thus:

A moral society requires Christianity
A successful civil government requires a moral society
Therefore, a successful civil government requires Christianity

I conclude that any form of democracy in Iraq is doomed to failure so long as Iraq remains a predominately Muslim country. They simply do not have the requisite worldview and religion to make it work. Unless the effort to convert Muslims to Christianity is at least as large and sustained as the effort to import democracy, we are wasting our time. It would be better to set up a dictator managed by the US so that basic human rights could be ensured and the stability of the government can be maintained.

Certainly some will say that I am just an American imperialist who wants to run other countries. I can understand how you might think that but you would be far from the truth. I am simply following the logic of history to its logical conclusion. We could, of course, simply pull out of Iraq as some have proposed but I am convinced that doing that would be a far larger disservice to the people of Iraq, to the Middle East and to the world because the resulting instability and inevitable supremacy of Iran in the region would be far worse

This example demonstrates, I think, the difficulties facing serious students of worldviews. It is simple enough to adopt one of the other worldview and say that is your worldview. It is quite another thing to really think through the logical consequences of the worldview you claim and arrive at conclusions and positions consistent with that worldview.

My contention in this blog is that the Christian worldview is the only worldview that encompasses all of reality, explaining satisfactorily all that we see and experience. The major competing worldviews are humanism and Islam, both of which I believe fall far short of explaining all of reality.

Do you ever wonder why intelligent, rational people reach such radically different conclusions about the world around us based on the same evidence? Worldview is the answer. How you interpret the world, the conclusions you reach about what goes on around you, is dependent on your worldview. If your worldview is different from mine, you will see the world differently from me. If your worldview is radically different from mine, your conclusions about the world will be radically different from mine.

The importance of worldview can’t be over stated. The problem is, most people have, at best, an incoherent worldview. That is, it is self contradictory. They pick up a little here, a little there and end up with a hodge podge of ideas and filters. Instead of a well thought out, reasoned worldview, they have a series of emotional reactions based on things they’ve picked up here and there.

The most basic example is the question of truth. The church teaches there is something called truth that is universal. It is true for everyone, everywhere, at all times. The common position in the world, however, is that truth is relative. What is true for you may not be true for me. Many people find themselves saying they believe in absolute truth but when presented with specific situations begin to back away from that position. For example, the Bible teaches that stealing is wrong and most Christians would readily agree that it is wrong. But ask them if it is okay for a parent who is destitute to steal food to feed her children and many will quickly say yes. In their minds the need of the child overrides the wrongness of stealing. But how can that be the case if it is true that stealing is wrong? The answer is, it can’t. If the question, is stealing wrong, has a conditional answer then that answer isn’t absolute truth and you don’t really believe it is even though you say you do.

This same situation occurs with thousands of different questions every day in our lives. Most of the time it is not nearly so stark as the hypothetical above but it is no less real. Most of us hold these incoherent views that cannot be reconciled without changing something in our belief system.

It is common today for people to believe in relativism. In fact, the question of stealing above stems from relativism. Whether stealing is wrong or not is relative. That is, it all depends. But most of us would consistently say that stealing is wrong when the thief is stealing from us! So not only do conflicting beliefs enter the picture, how it affects us personally is also an issue.

In college a I took Introduction to Philosophy. The professor started off telling us that most of us had an incoherent philosophy. His primary goal for the class was to push us to recognize what our philosophy was and how it was self contradictory so that we could arrive at a coherent philosophy. He was really talking about worldview and my goal here is similar to his. I want to explore our various worldviews and how they affect our interpretation of the world. But I want to go farther and see how our worldviews are incoherent, how that affects how we interpret events around us and how we can arrive at a consistent, coherent worldview that actually takes all of reality into account.

If your worldview doesn’t give you the tools to interpret and deal with what we actually experience in our lives it is, at best, incomplete. For most of it is both incoherent and incomplete. I propose that a complete, coherent worldview will improve your life because it will allow you to make sense of the world around you. Surely that is worth pursuing.

A couple of times I tried to change the focus of the blog altogether but I somehow managed to always revert to politics. Then I went to a conference that changed everything.

Nancy Pearcey spoke for three or four nights at my church. If you aren’t familiar with Nancy Pearcey, she was the primary author of Chuck Colson’s book, How Now Shall We Live? and she’s recently written Total Truth. Her book is about worldviews, specifically the Christian worldview and how no other worldview actually encompasses all of the reality we face each day.

The conference I attended spoke to the dilemma I was experiencing with my existing blog. It also brought into focus some of the difficulty I’d been having trying to figure out how a Christian viewpoint was supposed to be realized in everyday life. In politics, for example, how does one have a Christian worldview? What does it look like? How is it realized?

If one is to live a complete and full Christian life, every aspect of that life must come under the control of the Holy Spirit. Most Christians go through life attending church on Sunday, maybe being involved in weekly church activities, but when they go home or to work, what they do is no different from what any non-Christian does.

Pearcey tells the story of a young attorney who was a “solid” Christian. He was very involved in his church. He had a family and he tried to live a moral life. But his job required him to do things that were, at best, unethical. It never really occurred to this young attorney that there was a problem. He had compartmentalized his life into home, church and work and work never touched home and church. What he did at work was what everyone did. It had never occurred to him that there was a Christian view of his job. When it finally did occur to him he was devastated.

It seems to me that most Christians go through life like this young attorney. We try to live good lives but we have no idea what that looks like. We don’t know how to apply a Christian worldview to our whole life. It’s pretty easy at church. We attend, we join, we volunteer, we work, we do things. But what about the rest of our lives? What is we’re in a profession where we;re asked to do things or behave in ways that are contrary to biblical teaching? How do we handle that?

Then there are larger issues. Things we can’t directly change or affect. How do we proceed on political issues? What about conservation or energy or dozens of other issues? How do we arrive at a consistently Christian position? Is it even possible to arrive at a Christian position that most other Christians would agree with.

Then there’s science. The prevailing view today is that the only truth is empirical. If you can’t test it, experiment on it, falsify it, it can’t be considered to be in the realm of truth. Or worse, there is no such thing as truth. What about Christians who are scientists? How do they reconcile their Christian beliefs with the teachings of their professions? How do they deal with the question of truth? What counts for knowledge?

There is a lot of ground to cover. This blog could easily go on every day for years and never change subjects. I don’t know where this will lead. I have some things to say at the start but not nearly enough. I have some ideas but they are, at best, incomplete. This is a journey. I hope you’ll take it with me.