Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. History, Henry Ford famously said, is just one darn thing after another. He meant that human history is no more than a random flow of events with no cause, no purpose, no destination. Similarly, philosopher Thomas Nagel described history as the story between two oblivions, where everything starts with a bang and ends with a bigger bang.
The worldview behind this understanding of human history is the dominant one of our age, not just in the academy and among philosophers, but Really, at the level of popular culture, it's behind the pervasive sense of meaninglessness that more and more people feel, but are not quite sure where it came from. The only meaning to be found is whatever we can imagine and impose on the world around us, then that puts the weight of the world on our shoulders, and we're just unable to bear that kind of weight. And this points to the fundamental confusion at the heart of this cultural moment. What kind of world do we live in? Is it created?
And inherent to that question is whether or not there are any givens to reality or if everything is merely socially constructed. Think about, for example, the difference between gravity and speed limits. A speed limit is a social construct. When a road is built, a group of people get together, they look at the road conditions and determine a safe number. But if the conditions of the road change, well, then so can the speed limit.
A world that rejects a creator, whether on purpose or just by osmosis, tends to treat everything, what it means to be male and female, marriage, government, law, human dignity, as if it's a speed limit. And that's why our definitions of morality and identity seem to be constantly changing. Gravity's not a social construct. For example, we could get together a group of people right now and democratically decide that we think gravity should make things go up instead of down. But it's not going to change anything.
To paraphrase Dallas Willard, the next time we step off a roof, we're still going to hit the ground. That's the way reality works. And that's how the Bible describes reality in that way. It offers us more than just a set of disconnected moral principles or spiritually encouraging insights. What it describes is reality as it actually is.
Of course, the Bible contains a number of individual truth claims. But when Christians say that the Bible is true, what we mean is that it tells the truth about history, the truth about reality, the truth about the human condition. The new truth-rising study summarizes God's game plan for Christians in this cultural moment. The game plan is summarized in four lessons: hope, truth, identity, and calling. As we say in the study, the Bible tells the truth about reality and does so in four chapters, creation, fall, redemption, and restoration.
These chapters form the biblical timeline from the creation of the heavens and earth to the new heavens and new earth. As Truth Rising the study makes clear, these four chapters are not only the best way to understand the story that the Bible tells, But because they are the story the Bible tells, these four chapters are the only way that we can rightly understand reality. The creation chapter establishes the givens that are in the universe, like the moral structures, the created order, the reality that human beings are made in God's image, male and female. And God pronounced that creation very good. That's the very first chapter of reality, grounds human dignity and value in something that's permanent.
not constantly changing. The fall chapter answers perhaps the most profound question that any worldview answers: What went wrong with the world? If we miss this one, We're going to either deny human brokenness or we're going to rely on the wrong solution to fix it. At the center of the redemption chapter is, of course, Jesus Christ, who died for the sins of the world. Every other story of the world has humans rescuing themselves.
But in the true story of the world, it's the Creator that is the Redeemer. And the biblical account of reality culminates in the restoration of all things. Jesus declared, He's making all things new. God's good creation will not be abandoned nor ultimately destroyed. It will be renewed because of what Christ has accomplished.
Now, if Christians are going to be faithful in such a complicated and confusing civilizational moment that we're in, we have to know what's true about reality. The biblical story can't just be something we think about. It has to become the lens by which we think about everything else. History is not just one darn thing after another. It has a beginning, a direction, a new beginning.
It has a storyteller, a design, a destination. For a deeper look at the truth of reality, as well as hope, identity, and calling, join Truth Rising the study. It's a four-part study designed for families, churches, and small groups. And it will move Christians from feeling powerless in the face of civilizational decline to embracing and living their God-given calling in this time and in this place. You can learn more and download the study for free at colsoncenter.org slash study.
That's colsoncenter.org/slash study. For breakpoint, I'm I'm John Stone Street. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave us a review wherever you download your podcast. And for more resources or to share this commentary with others, go to breakpoint.org.
