Hey, breakpoint listeners, John Stone Street here from the Colson Center. I want to invite you to join me for an important live stream event, Truth, Love, and Humor, Faith Without Fear. It's July 24th. I'll be joined by Seth Dillon, the CEO of the Babylon Bee, the one and only Christian satire publication, as well as Jim Daly, president of Focus on the Family. We're living in times where to speak the truth can get you canceled, and nobody knows that better than Seth Dillon.
And yet, our responsibility to speak the truth doesn't change. Just a few years ago, USA Today named Admiral Rachel Levine, a biological man who identifies and presents as a woman as their so-called woman of the year. In response, the Babylon Bee named Levine the man of the year. And that led to being canceled on Twitter. But as Seth Dillon says, truth is not hate speech.
and their faithfulness to say the truth, even in a humorous way, An incredible ending. You'll not want to miss this story as well as an exhortation of what it means to speak the truth in this cultural moment. This event is absolutely free. You can either join us in person if you're in the Bay Harbor, Michigan area, or online via live stream. To register, go to colsoncenter.org slash truth.
That's colsoncenter.org slash truth. Again, the date is July 24th, and the event is truth, love, and humor, faith without fear. Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. With the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.
Well, every so often there's a book or worldview published that denounces the idea of worldview for Christians, the claims which Vary from writer to writer are usually a mix of legitimate critique and also odd straw manning.
Some argue that the German rationalist history of the word worldview makes it wrong, misguided, even unbiblical for Christians. Others suggest that worldview reduces authentic faith to something too cerebral, too impersonal, too formulaic. Perhaps the most common critique of worldview is that it just doesn't work anymore in today's cultural environment. And that last critique extends to most Christian intellectual work, especially apologetics. For decades now, last rights have been offered for Christian intellectual pursuits.
But to paraphrase Mark Twain's comment about his own demise, rumors of the death of worldview and apologetics have been greatly exaggerated. After all, in just the last few months, millions witnessed Wesley Hough use apologetics to share the gospel with millions on Joe Rogan's podcast, as well as Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger proclaim a new faith in Christ and attribute it to a long intellectual journey, one which involved a popular Apologetics and Evangelism website. In fact, the long history of Christian intellectual work includes philosophy, science, medicine, art, virtually every area of human understanding. People still have questions. The Bible provides answers.
That means that the life of the mind will always be a non-reducible aspect of the Christian faith. Most often, criticisms of Christian worldview as a concept come from those who doubt objective truth altogether, or objective morality, or Christianity's clear doctrinal stance, and yet who still wish to identify as Christian. In the past, these critiques tended to come from those who embrace more culturally and theologically liberal views. But just recently, however, a critic from the dissident right complained that Christian worldview ideas like the image of God and knowable truth undermine their views about race and nationalism. And he's right, they absolutely do.
There are clear implications of the Bible's truth claims about God, the universe, human dignity, and many other things. And there are those criticisms who come from Christians who found that a formulaic understanding of Christian worldview didn't work the way that they had been told or had been led to think. In their experience, the Christian worldview was presented as obvious, the others as nonsense. And if they just had the right answers, they could defeat the non-Christian worldviews. And perhaps they were taught objectively that certain sins were in fact sins, but Knowing that, understanding that, still didn't keep them from struggling.
And perhaps they had run-ins with obnoxious Christians who liked to use Worldview like a club to badger people into submission. especially on narrow political opinions. Worldview certainly has been done badly, but as a movement it's been largely self corrective. In fact, some of the earliest champions of Christian worldviews, such as Bauvink and Deweyer, pushed worldview thinking away from the confusions of German rationalism. Almost every popular champion of Christian worldview since.
From Jim Sire to Nancy Piercy to Francis Schaefer to Chuck Coulson, all argued against reducing faith to mere cerebral formulas. And more recently, many advocates of Christian worldview have worked quite hard to maintain the clear political ramifications of Christian truth without allowing the faith to just be reduced to political partisanship. In his short book on the importance of creativity in art, Francis Schaefer wrote this, quote, if Christianity is really true, it involves the whole man. including his intellect and creativeness. Christianity is not just dogmatically true or doctrinally true, rather, it is true to what is there.
True in the whole area, the whole man and all of life. End quote. Christian worldview is about this realization that if Christianity is in fact true, it is about everything, and it also changes everything. As Scottish theologian James Orr, among the earliest Christian thinkers to talk about the Christian worldview, wrote: He who with his whole heart believes in Jesus as the Son of God. is thereby committed to much else besides.
He's committed to a view of God, to a view of man, to a view of sin, to a view of redemption. to a view of the purpose of God in creation and history, to a view of human destiny. Found only in Christianity.
Now I agree that the term Christian worldview or biblical worldview is clunky. But every alternative I've heard, especially Christian social imaginary, is far worse.
So perhaps we should just call it biblical wisdom and get on with it. This quest to incarnate Christ's claim on all of reality. As articulated by the theologian Abraham Kuyper, when he said, quote, There's not a single square inch in the whole domain of human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry out, Mine. And our job, as Chuck Colson often said, is to go anywhere and everywhere that God leads us, always crying out, His. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint.
Today's Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Timothy Padgett. Before I go today, I wanted to give a special thanks to Andrew of Raleigh, North Carolina. Thanks for being a Cornerstone Monthly partner with the Colson Center. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, please leave us a review at your favorite podcast app.
And for more resources to live like a Christian today, go to breakpoint.org.
