The Story

The Christian worldview is an over-arching story that binds together all the various facets of life and knowledge. I am realizing that I have not done justice to isolate an aspect of this worldview without reference to the context of the full story. To do so is like analyzing a piece of a puzzle without the box top to guide where it fits into the whole.


To quote Saul Bellow’s 1976 Noble Laureate lecture, “The intelligent public is waiting to hear from art what it does not hear from theology, philosophy, and social theory and what it cannot hear from pure science: a broader, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are, and what this life is for. If writers do not come into the center, it will not be because the center is pre-empted; it is not.”


Bellow invokes the need for artisans and writers to paint the picture of the story that all these things fit into to provide the more coherent, comprehensive picture of who we are and what this life is all about.



For too long we have kept our knowledge separated from the grand story thereby keeping it secular and distinct from anything religious in nature. However, knowledge was never intended to be learned in a vacuum. It is to be gained to tell us more about the story we are living in and not just to fodder our minds with more interesting facts. At the same time, it has been problematic for the Church to siphon off theology and ‘religious knowledge’ and hold it separate from the whole picture as if it is irrelevant to the world’s systems. There needs to be a reemergence of knowledge that interconnects to tell the story that gives meaning to all the systems of this world.


The picture I would like to paint for you is one that starts with the eternally good and relational God who out of His love and glory created the universe and all that is in it with great splendor. He created a habitat for man on earth that is finely tuned for life. He created man in His image and likeness and gave him dominion over the world to cultivate the earth without the sweat of the brow. Man was to live in peace and harmony with the animals caring for them as well as tending the earth. But something happened to interrupt this paradise when man, who had it all, was allured by Satan to have knowledge that was outside the good and he chose to taste that knowledge and took into himself the poison of sin which corrupted not only the line of men, but the nature he was designed to cultivate in the goodness and glory of God.


Man and nature now knew pain, decay, death, darkness, etc. The world became something different from what God created, but God was not without a plan to bring its grand restoration. We still see the glory in the nature, we see it in a sunrise over the ocean or the mountains, we see it in the rainbow, we see it in the stars, and we see it in the birth of a baby or the wings of a butterfly. But we see also the corruption and death and decay and pain in this world. We know intuitively that pain, death, sickness, decay, tragedy are not good things and we desire peace on this earth, and to heal pain and stop decay. We strive at this in our medicine and in our science. We go after these good things because were designed to live in such a world where we are free from all these distresses and vices. We strive for that world through natural means because it is in us to want the restoration of this world.


God also wants the restoration of this world and of humanity and He has put a plan into place that involves our interaction with Him through relationship with Him made possible by Jesus. We can now work with God as He works through us to work out the redemption already made complete with the work of Christ through his death and resurrection. When an event happens there is a change, but that change takes time to become manifest. Transition is that process that works out the change to its fulfillment. When a person gets married they are married upon saying “I do,” but a transition process begins to occur in order to actualize that singleness is being transformed to a marriage relationship. It is something walked out in time.



This is what has been happening in this world. Jesus brought a change into individuals who are collectively the Church who are working out their redemption in life and as a community upon this earth to reveal the glory of God in all spheres of life. Jesus said that he did not come to condemn the world, but to give it life. He came to bring life and restoration to end the perishing of people due to their sin. He came to free us from the bonds of sin and death as well as giving us the power to redeem the world around us to its intended glory.


The miracles of God are there to bring life and restoration and not to tamper with nature for the fun of it. A traditional doctor repairs a broken body to restore it to health, not to play around with the natural makeup of man. God is the Great Physician who is in the restoration business and He along with those who have found life in Him uses supernatural means to mend nature and infuse it with its natural glory. He brings out the life that was lying dormant and unveils it without its corruption to the watching world. He does this in people and He does it in creation and in anything that is submitted to Him to be made whole.


A day will come when this process is complete and the old corruption of the earth will be no more and the earth will be as new; fully redeemed and shining in its full glory with a humanity that is also fully redeemed and fully righteous and holy.

The story of God and His relationship to man cannot be fully revealed by only arguing for His existence. It is a whole picture that includes mans place in the story and our relationship to the Redeemer, Jesus. It is a worldview that is a grand story of which we are very much a part. It is this story that causes my desire to share the reality of God and to point to the way of our entering into the reality of His love.


As I’ve said, it’s not about mere intellectual assent to a set of beliefs. It’s about a real life encounter with the essence and being of truth. It’s a truth that heals hearts and restores what is lost or damaged to its full health and glory. It’s a story you can find your place in that also has chapters yet to be written by your contribution by entering it as a royal child of God through Jesus.

The Limits of Science

Why is there so much faith put into science? Why the certainty of factuality when it comes to what is considered scientific? Science does not tell us how life originated. It doesn’t tell us why life originated or give us insight into our purpose. Science can tell us that if I put strychnine in a well the water will kill those who drink it. But it doesn’t tell us if it is wrong to kill.

G. K. Chesterton quips “Nobody can imagine how nothing turned into something. Nobody can get an inch nearer to it by explaining how something could turn into something else.”

I do appreciate science. I think we are motivated by God given curiosity and desire for knowledge to search out the hidden things with our microscopes, telescopes and other instrumentation. We want to know. We need to know. But why? Science cannot answer that. Notwithstanding, so many have such an unwavering faith in science when it tells us so little about who we are and why we are. Science can give us a complete composite of our biological make up and that is outstanding progress. It can get into the molecular level and tell us so much and give us ways to repair bodies. It can help us explore the oceans, plants, animals, and universe. The scientific advances are astounding wonders of exploration.

When I was watching Dawkins and Lennox debate, Dawkins said that the beauty of creation compels us to want to worship something greater and he said that science can show us how things came to be this way dismantling the desire for worship. Science can break down things and show how they work, but it fails to explain why nature should be so picturesque. It doesn’t explain why our hearts fill with wonder at a sun rise over the ocean or a rainbow over a field of flowers. It doesn’t explain what happens in our soul when we take in this grandeur of the universe. Can it be that it is precisely this wonder that so captures our soul that launched the sciences in the first place? Why now does science in some schools of thought destroy the need for wonder?

Science is an awesome tool for exploring life, but it isn’t THE tool to knowing about life. It falls short in many areas of answering the great questions most of us think about. Some say there is no meaning to life and yet they thought about the meaning of life enough to write about it acknowledging a need for meaning that prompted the negative answer to the question. The great thinkers like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Kant, and Kierkegaard, etc. explored these questions of life. What drove their exploration? There is something in us that cries for answers and accepting defeat to our questions does not make logical sense. If that desire is in us then there is a reason for it. If we haven’t found the reason we can’t give up by denying the question.

Reason, Nature, and God

To continue on the theme of our cognitive ability to reason let us consider how it is impossible for nature to have produced reason. We use our reason in tandem with acquiring knowledge. Knowing something is distinct from what is known. Or as C.S. Lewis argues, “The knowledge of a thing is not one of the thing’s parts. In this sense something beyond Nature operates whenever we reason.” We can subdue natural emotions and physical responses by reason. A natural stimulus ought to cause a certain affect, but if we reason not to allow that affect the stimulus response can be subverted. While being a part of nature, we can still reason about nature and affect nature by reason, but nature cannot reason about itself. Nature is not rational. It has no intelligence. How can un-rational nature produce something rational like reason?

Either we accept that reason is not really reason at all and merely an instinctual non-rational response to stimulus of our environment of which we have no control or we realize that something outside of the natural world exist which is Rational and Reasonable who endowed us with the ability to reason. Hence, if you deny God’s existence, you also deny your ability to reason about the world in a rational way. You then lose your ability to rightly communicate knowledge for reason is not based on anything rational and is therefore irrational.

C. S. Lewis explains that, “It is only when you are asked to believe in Reason coming from non-reason that you must cry Halt, for, if you don’t, all thought is discredited. It is therefore obvious that sooner or later you must admit a Reason which exists absolutely on its own.”

Indubitably, the atheist will assert their reason and proclaim that since we have already come to the conclusion that it is impossible to argue against our ability to reason that some how evolution has transcended all logic and created in us the ability to reason about nature for it is unreasonable to believe otherwise. To that I would say that this would be a great miracle being attributed to a process of chance without being or rationality to bring it about. I think this would bring the skeptic to the unsupportable faith they accuse Christians of maintaining.

Maybe God’s existence is not so unreasonable after all. It would seem that without the Christian worldview the world lacks a standard on which to know anything for certain.

Don't Exercise Only One Arm

In M. Night Shyamalan’s film “The Lady In The Water,” one of the characters exercises only one arm. Naturally, the one arm grows in strength while the other hangs limp in comparison. Often times as Christians we only, metaphorically speaking, exercise one arm. We either exercise our mental strength thereby feeding our intellectual desires or we exercise our spiritual strength feeding our supernatural hunger. Rarely is there a modern example of balance in this area. One is usually overtly strong in one area and sadly weak in the other. We need to remember that we need to exercise both aspects of our faith. The Apostle Paul was resolute in ability to share the Gospel engaging the culture of his time while at the same time being enabled by the Spirit of God to preach with power. He had to sow into intellectual knowledge and spiritual empowerment through God's enabling power in order to reap the ability to have such a dynamic ministry.

I often sow more into intellectual studies with my desire to be equipped in apologetics. However, if I neglect my spiritual needs in the process by not seeking after the fullness of the Kingdom of God by spending time with Him and nurturing my heart as well as my head, I will not have anything to offer. To truly give an answer to those who ask the reason for the hope that I have in Christ Jesus, I must rest on Christ and not on intellect. It is by Christ that I can know anything at all and if I forsake that relationship I have no hope to offer. All wisdom comes from Him and without Him all is foolishness.

Conversely, we cannot ignore our minds as Jesus said that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength (Mark 12:30).

Knowing the Author of Life

My last blog was entitled “Being Proceeds Knowing” and was philosophical and rather abstract in nature. Now I will expound with greater specificity.

The first verse of the Bible declares, “In the beginning God. . .” God has always existed. He refers to himself as the I AM for He is existing eternally never having a past or a future for He is not measurable by time. He is the eternal I AM. Genesis 1:1 goes on to declare that God created the heavens and the earth. All of life is created from Him who was uncreated.

How can we know this? We know it because; He has revealed it to us. “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they [men] are without excuse.” (Romans 1:20).

Therefore the only way finite man can know anything is because “an understanding God made it understood” (James Sire).

Proverbs 1:7 proclaims, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Again in Proverbs 9:10 we read, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”

Knowing comes from the fear of the Lord, meaning that through awe of Him we can gain knowledge: the greatest knowledge being knowledge of Him, the Holy One. For it is by Him we gain wisdom, knowledge, and understanding.

“Isaiah 33:5-7 “ The LORD is exalted, for he dwells on high;
he will fill Zion with justice and righteousness.

He will be the sure foundation for your times,
a rich store of salvation and wisdom and knowledge;
the fear of the LORD is the key to this treasure.”

God is the sure foundation of our wisdom and knowledge. It is from Him that all knowledge flows.

God has not only revealed His existence to us, He has made it possible to know not only about Him, but to experientially know Him. The Spanish language actually has two words for “know” one is used when referring to knowing about someone or knowing who someone is without any relationship knowledge of that person. The other is used when someone claims to know a person personally like a friend, brother, or father. God allows us to know Him both ways, but knowing Him personally allows for much greater knowledge about Him.

Paul wrote in Galatians 1:11 “I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.”

The message of Christ has been revealed to man. It is not something that is man made. It is not a religion developed by man to find spirituality. This revelation has been continuous from before the beginning of time. It’s one big story that is never ending. And we are invited to partake of that story and live life within it.

Proverbs 8:22-35 reads “I was appointed from eternity, from the beginning, before the world began. When there were no oceans, I was given birth, when there were no springs abounding with water; before the mountains were settled in place . . . I was there when he set the heavens in place. . . Then I was the craftsman at his side. I was filled with delight day after to day, rejoicing in his presence, rejoicing in his whole world and delighting in mankind. . . . Blessed is the man who listens to me, watching daily at my doors, waiting at my doorway. For whoever finds me finds life and receives favor from the Lord.”

What a spectacular passage of Scripture! This is Jesus talking for in John 1:1-3 it reads “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men.”

Jesus is God and has been eternally with God creating with God the Father all that has been created. He delighted in His creation just as God says in Genesis 1 that “it was good.” In fact, it says specifically that Jesus delighted in mankind. He also says that life is found in Himself. He says if you find me, you find life and you receive God’s favor. The passage in Proverbs was written hundreds of years before the passage in John which is after the incarnation of Christ. Jesus says of Himself, “I am the way, the truth and the life . . .” (John 14:6).

Knowledge is not the way. Christ is the way. He is the Truth and He is the giver of life. From Him we gain knowledge, wisdom, and understanding in greater measure than we could ever possess without knowing Him experientially. God is the author of this story and He is the only One who makes it understandable. We need to get to know the Author in order to understand the story of life.