The Christian History of the West

Europe has been far removed from her cultural Christian mooring for a long time. To the best of my knowledge, one could not in any sense of the word consider the European culture a Bible culture. The days of the prominence of Christianity have disappeared into her history.

America had Christian prominence in her heritage that does continue to this day. However, while there is a huge presence of Christian churches in America, there is currently little to no affect upon culture at large. Christianity has become a private faith with a few leaders championing public issues from a Christian perspective, but by and large it is not the denominate public worldview of the nation today.

Just the same, both Europe and America have in their history a Christian heritage that did influence much of the progress of the West. In America specifically, our Republic was fashioned by men who had a strong Christian worldview. They built the Constitution upon the principals that man was created to be free and from that freedom we can choose to elect representatives that we permit to govern us. The need for checks and balances of those representatives into an Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branch was because the Founders believed in the fallen nature of man. They believed that people ought not to be permitted to rise up to be long time rulers of the people for the propensity of power to corrupt is in the hearts of man.

Alexis De Tocqueville, a Frenchman, visited America to learn about the strength and prosperity of a post Revolutionary War America. He found that America’s strength was not where he expected to find it, but in her churches, in her citizens who labored to self-govern themselves to protect the freedom of future generations.

There are a myriad of quotes by the Founders of the importance of the people to adhere to Biblical morality in effort to protect the Republic form of government for this government can only work for a people who are intent upon self governing themselves without the need of overbearing laws which restrict citizens due to the numbers of people who do not practice self-governance.

The reason we look at the past today with eyes that cannot see the Christian heritage, is that it so ingrained in our culture without the education of how it came to be that it appears to be common sense rather than a way of life influence by a revelatory book. In fact, Jefferson’s wording of “self-evident” in the Declaration is rather in correct, because these principals were not ones they devised, but ones they accepted from Scripture. The reason for the “self-evident” wording was that the prominent philosophy of the day said that things that were true were self-evidently known, so that word was used to emphasize the truth of the principals rather than how they were derived.

The way to see the stark difference between the principals accepted as “self-evident” in the West and the rest of the world is to observe the non-Western cultures. In India, equality is not self-evident—there is a cast system that does not value equality. In China, the retiring head of state in 2002, Jiang Zemin, was asked what he wanted to see for the future of China. He responded, “I would like for my country to become a Christian nation.” He could see that the West was Christianized and he wanted the results we have.

I, however, think our results, while good as America is the nation of hope to many nations, can be better. I think the Church in America is not very involved in helping her become strong again in a way that is full of love and not full of moralizing rebuke. In a way that provides viable solutions to the problems of this nation rather than just being focused on a few moral issues such as abortion. If we really believe we are in relationship with the living God and have Him living through us we ought to be more relevant to our current economic and national problems than we are. We ought to be able to come up with answers that really make a difference and help stabilize the nation without any hidden agenda—just as a gift—and not as a method of evangelism.

Secularization will not stabilize the Western culture. The Kingdom of God can do this, but there is not much reason to say it if the Church can’t show it and show it in a way that is respectful to the other cultures in this nation and to the government of this nation. We need to come along side the people who are in power and ask how we can help, instead of throwing stones from the safe distance of our homes via our facebooks and blogs. We have to be willing to help at all levels starting with the neighbor next door and working our way up to serve Washington in an honorable and helpful manner.

A shift in this direction is already sweeping through the Church in this post-Christian era that has great potential to become a healing balm to the nations. A Church is mobilization to not just aid the American nation, but to be for all nations to come into the freedom and equality that is available in the Kingdom of God. This won’t be a movement of the “religious right” but one marked by honor and love like never before. What a different world this can be when people express the love and honor of the Father without reservation.

The Christian Claim of Truth

Christians, myself included, often make the statement that we know the truth. In a world of a multiplicity of competing truth claims that statement is incredibly and brazenly bold. However, what is meant by this statement, while still very bold, is not that we are deluded enough to believe we know the truth about every matter under the sun. We do not claim to have mastered such knowledge of the world. Though there are some who may act as if this were true. It is far from true.

What we mean when we say “we know the truth,” is that we know the Being of Truth. We mean precisely that we have relationship with Jesus. That He is the ultimate eternal absolute truth, being Himself God. We use the term “know” to mean “have relational experience of” not just “to know” something factually though that is included. You cannot have a relationship with Someone who does not exist. Included in the “know” is the intellectual assertion that this person of Truth does factually exist, but is more than a fact of life, but is Life Himself.

As my very first post to this blog explained, I use the term “Answer Bearer” as a name for my blog, not because I think I know all the answers, but because the one who is Truth dwells within me. And it is that Answer, the Answer of Life, of Truth, that is the one I bear forth. Therefore the title is not an arrogant claim, but a humble one. One that says that His Life is what it is all about.

I am just here to share what I have learned, and to learn what I have not yet learned by engaging in valuable and respectful conversation with people from various worldviews and experiences of life. I am thankful for each and every reader who uses their valuable time to read here and to converse with me here.

Freethinkers and Brights

A common label used by atheists to depict their style of thinking is the term “freethinkers.” I gather that the use of the term bears the meaning of being those who are liberated from the presumed archaic supernatural beliefs of all varieties.

However, at first glace the term connotes the idea of being released from a bound way of thinking to thinking more freely and broadly about the world. It seems to suggest that thinking for the Freethinker flows more freely to consider more possibilities than the limited view of the supernaturalists.

If Freethinking is more accurately described in the first paragraph that simply the old way of looking at the world has been replaced with a new more correct way and thus one is free of the old and embarking on the new, then, while I disagree with the premise, I accept the accuracy of the term. To put it another way, I understand why the term is used in that context even though I disagree that one needs liberating from supernaturalism as I don’t see naturalism as a more true view of the world.

If the second paragraph also contains the meaning of the use of this term in that the atheists believes they can see more broadly about the world than the theists then please consider the following. If, however, I was incorrect and the term is not used in this manner at all then simply ignore the following.

I cannot speak for all theists, nor all Christians, but I am going to speak as I usually do as a Christian and briefly compare and contrast the idea of freethinking between my worldview and that of an atheists/naturalist.

As a Christian I can look at the world and find something true and valid in any worldview, religion, or non-religion. For instance, I see nature as really there just as the naturalist does. But I also agree with the theists and spiritualists out there that a supernatural world also exists. I see a reality to spirituality like the Buddhist does. I see a God who is there and speaks to His people like the Jewish people do. I agree with the witchdoctor that there really is a dark power that he taps into. Thus, I find it difficult to see one who sets themselves apart from all the religions of the world and holds only to naturalism as a free thinker.

I am not advocating pluralism. I do not accept that opposite truth claims are equally true. The world’s religions have many opposite truth claims, however, there are things we have in common and things that I can see as mostly true, or somewhat true, or having a little truth, but a lot of distortion of that truth.

I would imagine though that a worldview that can see truth in more places would be more freethinking than one that only sees truth in naturalism and sets itself apart from the thinking of most of the world. Even the emerging term “Brights” depicts a mentality that naturalist/humanists/atheists are more intelligent than those who are not thinking their way. I’m not convinced that mentality is purposeful, I hope it is not. But I think the use of the terms gives the need for consideration of what exactly is being professed.

I’m not offended by the terms, but I wanted to analyze them a little. Maybe you all can tell me more about the use of these terms and what they mean to you.

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.

Birth of Science

Science, contrary to popular thought, did not arise out of secularism, but out of Christianity. Moreover, Christianity provided the only stable worldview on which science could develop. I know this may be a shocking statement and there will be those who tell me it’s a completely unsubstantiated claim. However, let me expound.

Historically you have the age of the ancient Greeks and Romans followed by the Middle Ages and then the Modern Era. The Middle Ages are often referred to as the Dark Ages. It is said that because the Church was in power in those days that creativity and human reason was stifled. This is not entirely true. Science is often solely attributed to rise of the secular Modern Era. However before the word “scientist” was coined there were parson-naturalist studying nature during the Middle Ages. Additionally, most all the scientist from the 1500’s to the 1800’s were Christians and many of them major contributors of renown.

Many of the contributors to the foundations of science adhered to the Christian worldview such as:

Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543) established mathematically that the planets revolved around the sun.

Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1627) known for establishing the “scientific method”.

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) a brilliant mathematician and scientist. He came close to discovering the universal gravitational pull before Newton ever came on the scene.

Rene Descartes (1596-1650) a mathematician and scientist known as the “father of modern philosophy.”

Isaac Newton (1642-1727) a genius and great contributor to science and chemistry. Also known as a devout Christian.

Robert Boyle (1791-1867) a scientist known for “Boyle’s law” in chemistry. He is also known as a devout Christian and defender of the faith.

Johann Gottlob Frederick von Bohnenberger (1765 – 1831) gave us the electroscope, commencing the development of scientific electrical devices. He was a learned theologian and Priest.

Christianity provided the firm foundation on which to birth such great scientific discoveries. How so? Christians believe that the natural world is real and orderly. Christians believe God has given humanity sufficient cognitive abilities to learn about the real world including the ability to logically reason deductively and inductively. The ancient Greeks did not birth the sciences because they believed that nature was evil and disorderly. The orient countries believed nature to be an illusion and thus nothing of substance to discover. The pagan societies deified nature giving it a place of awe and respect which did not lend itself to scientific intrusion upon it.

Secularism was not rampant in those days and did not develop as a cultural thought until later in the Modern Era. It may have adopted science as an acceptable means of knowing the world, but it did not birth it as such. However, secularism has produced a view of science that disrobes it from its foundation. Secularists teach that nothing exists outside of nature and all that can be known can only be known scientifically. Thus, the logic, reason, and trustworthy cognitive abilities all are unproven scientifically and the rug is pulled out from under meaningful science.

Christians today often take one of two positions with regard to science. Either we dismiss it as secular and appeal to unsubstantiated “faith” alone or we try and fuse modern scientific theories into our Christian worldview. The former choice communicates that Christianity is devoid of evidentiary substance and must be accepted on blind faith. The second communicates that the Bible is in error and in need of scientific revision.

Let me suggest a third more legitimate position. Science is what needs an overhaul. It needs to be returned to its proper foundations in order to produce adequate science. When one works from a faulty worldview all that follows is tainted. There exist scientists who do have the proper worldview foundation and do produce science that does indeed confirm the reliability of Scriptures, but those scientists are often suppressed and discounted because their worldview is simply not accepted in today’s scientific community. The media and the schools only show the world the science that’s congruent with the culturally prevalent secularism. Do not settle for what you have been taught in school or learned through television.

We cannot substitute the infallible authority of Scripture for the fluctuating scientific discoveries. Exciting discoveries that firmly support Scripture are being made all the time; you just have to do a little digging to find them.

Examining Truth

Everyone makes truth claims. Even one who claims there is no truth, makes a truth claim. The one who claims there are a multiplicity of truths, makes a definitive truth claim that truth is pluralistic. Someone who maintains that truth is subjective to the individual or the community also makes a truth claim about truth itself.

Why is it then that the person who posits the existence of ultimate Truth that corresponds accurately with reality is branded intolerant, close minded, or intelectually dishonest? An open mind is good until you find something true to close it around. If you find your lost keys under the couch you don't check under the chair next. This does not mean you don't continue to examine your own belief system, but you have to do that in the confines of the proper foundation of which to know anything at all. If your foundation is faulty you merely are arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Joe Boot adequately expounds, " We must be willing to get to the foundations of our experience. If we remain content to decorate the interior of the house of knowledge and pay no attention to the structure and foundation stones of that house, we will find that the dry rot of absurdity and the rising damp of unexamined assumptions are fatal to the structure." In contrast, if the structural foundation is sound, there is no need to keep it open to unsound additions, but instead to build upon the true foundation.

Some advocate a both/and type of reasoning to avoid exclusivity of truth. Whereas logic dictates an either/or reasoning (the law of non-contradiction). Truth by its very nature is exclusive of all non-truth. If it is true that God exist, then it cannot be equally true that He does not exist. This is impossible. If the Christian God exists, then it cannot be equally true that all world religions are also true for they are contradictory to the former. Just take the three main world theistic beliefs of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and you see major differences. No honest follower of either of these beliefs would posit that the other belief system can co-exist logically (the same person cannot believe all three belief-systems at the same time without living a contradiction).

The both/and advocate says truth must be “both/and” or nothing else. It cannot be either/or. Even the both/and proponent cannot get free from the “either/or” logic.

The problem of knowing truth isn’t one of the truth, but one of what the knower does with the truth. If the knower forces it upon those who don’t know or don’t believe by violence or manipulation then they have created an injustice. Jesus said that if a person says he loves God, but hates his brother, the truth is not in him. Jesus also said that if you know the Truth the truth will set you free, therefore it does not create oppression, but freedom.

Moreover, in Christianity knowing the one who is the Truth enables one to live a life of truth and love.

We must understand that the existence of one truth is not an outlandish idea. However, what one does with the truth they profess is of enormous importance. Truth is more than a philosophical construct. It is also an experiential reality.

Don’t be fearful of looking for one coherent worldview. Truth is knowable and He wants to be known.

The Validity of the Moral "Ought"

Are there moral absolutes? Or does morality change over time? I’ve been contemplating these questions and how best to articulate my thoughts concerning them. If morality changes over time and something becomes wrong that was not wrong in the past, then we give up the right to judge the past. For instance, when slavery was a normal part of society in Europe and the Americas for many years was it right then and now wrong because we have evolved to know it is inhumane? If it was not wrong then, but became wrong we diminish the injustice done to the African people by our philosophy. It either has always been wrong, or slavery is only wrong subjectively in the communities and individuals who believe it to be wrong. Hence one community has no right to impose it’s morality on another. Essentially in this line of reasoning our hands are tied when it comes to present day Sudanese slavery we have no voice to proclaim slavery in their community as wrong. Unless, of course, morality is the same for all people, places, and times.

I enjoy history and minored in history in college. I sat through many a discussion concerning Christopher Columbus. I have read documents where he called Native American’s “savage” and spoke derogatorily of this “uncivilized” people group so foreign to him and his culture. The cultural mindset he carried saw them as less than human and often took advantage of them as our history so sadly reports. Professors like to use Columbus as a good example of how he ought not to be declared a hero of American history, but ought to be despised for his contempt of the Indian people. However, if his ethics concerning them were culturally based and right in his day by all cultural standards, we have no reason to sit in judgment that he ought to have treated them as equal human beings. However, we do know that despite his ignorance of the truth, the Native Americans ought not to have been treated thusly and we have apologized to them as a nation and have rendered financial retribution for our horrific treatment of them. Therefore we see the past actions as not those of a changing morality, but of an injustice done to them in that day. We see it was wrong then as much as it is wrong today to mistreat a fellow human being.

Either we confine morality to each community and time period or even to each family or individual and have no right to tell anyone what “ought” to be, or there is an objective morality to which we appeal throughout the generations cross cultures. However, believing the latter creates a necessity for a giver of that objective morality. If morality is not a product of our own invention and is instead objective and true to all people, then we enter into the Christian worldview. Now, I know here is where people are beginning to object and say that I am inferring connections between objective morality and God that cannot exist and cannot be proven. Maybe I cannot scientifically prove God’s existence. However, if we want to continue to dispense with the idea of God we must dispense with the idea of an objective morality for all people irrespective of community, culture, and time. If it was wrong for the European colonies to participate in slavery and to mistreat the Native Americans even though most of them thought it acceptable and right behavior, then right and wrong exist objectively outside of human construct. If instead, one wants to believe that morality changes, and slavery became wrong then they can only say it is wrong for them or their culture, if their culture agrees, and not for those cultures of old or modern ones still practicing slavery. One cannot have it both ways. And if there is an objective moral standard not created by humanity then where would it have come from?

My answer from the Christian perspective is that God is the giver of this knowledge and the standard of goodness by which all things are measured. And with all things being equal, morality is absolute. If humans are to treat other humans with value simply because they are created as valuable then any action that demeans the value of a person whether it be slavery, murder, abuse, rape, etc. is wrong for all people in all times regardless of culture.

Something is less than good when it fails to keep with God’s good nature. Sin literally means “missing the mark” thus not lining up with the standard. The Bible says that all have sinned. We have all missed the mark, because none of us can be holy without God by His grace and mercy making us righteous through Jesus Christ. If we persist in moral relativity we ignore the standard and make ourselves the giver of morality and I think we all know that we are not good and we do things that break our own standards so how can we be a standard giver? The only one qualified to give a standard is one who doesn’t break it, one who is perfect in goodness. The only one who can sacrifice himself for those who break the standard is one who is perfect and without blemish being sinless himself. The only way we find mercy is through the cross of Christ because He breaks us free from the law of sin and death cleansing us from our unrighteousness and empowering us to live righteously.

For the Christian, doing “good” is not means to earn favor with God. It is because of the favor of God that we love to do what is right. Even Christians forget this and sometimes get into a pattern of trying to earn favor with God and to impose this idea on others that their actions gain them favor or take away God’s favor. In actuality, our actions do not merit us salvation for we cannot save ourselves. We strive in Christ to live lives pleasing to God because we love God and not because we are working for something from God.

Worldview Challenge Question

Let's put worldviews to the test. How does a human life gain value? If we are simply evolved animals, is a human life worth no more than the life of a cow? Or do our cognitive abilities rank us as more valuable? If so, is a dolphin then more valuable than a lamb? How about an insect, it’s a living thing. Does it have rights to life? How is it that squashing an insect does not invoke the same moral outrage as ending the life of a human? If the life of a human is priceless and valuable above all other living things, then how did this come about?

The Declaration of Independence declared that all men were created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. The United Nations manifesto grants that mankind has certain intrinsic rights, but omits any reference to them being God given.

If one rejects the Christian worldview that man is created in the image of God and is thus valuable and ought to be treated with dignity and respect then on what principal and standard do we maintain that humans have value?

Please think about this question and comment as to how your worldview answers the question of human value and rights.

Goodness Derives From God

I would like to address the matter of humanities knowledge of good and evil from the Christian worldview. At this point, I am going to deal with the topic in a foundational philosophical manner that would be agreed upon by all theists. While theism is broader than Christianity, Christianity has the foundational adherence to the position I am herein presenting. Therefore I am not delving into Scripture nor Christian doctrine to address this topic at this point. In future posts, I will develop it out and provide a more detailed response as prompted by questions this post will undoubtedly produce.

As far as I have deduced, my audience accepts that there are good actions and behaviors as well as bad ones and that humans for the most part know the difference between the two. Further, I think all cultures no matter how remote have a system of right and wrong even if their standard of moral judgment is different than the next culture. So where does that idea come from? How did we gain a moral construct of right and wrong? Is it mere social conditioning? Is it merely instinctual impulses of survival? Is something wrong because society says it’s wrong? Can one culture condemn the actions of another as wrong? If so, by what standard?

Theists maintain that we have knowledge of the difference between good and evil (even if we disagree sometimes on specifics) because there is a standard of good outside of nature because a good God exists. When we break from that standard we have the conscious to know something doesn’t line up with the way we are created to live. We know when something is foreign to goodness.

From what has been presented to me thus far, atheists maintain that because they know right from wrong without believing in or fearing God that is proof that moral knowledge is not something related to knowing God. However, Christians maintain that we have a moral compass even if we are not brought up in Christianity or in religion. A person in the most remote village of Africa with no contact to the outside world would have a moral compass even if some of his actions were barbaric to the civilized world. His village would still have a system of right and wrong because they are humans living in reality. Thus, atheists will have just as much knowledge of the existence of good and evil and the desire to be moral people as anyone else.

Atheists, from my rudimentary observations, maintain that Christians believe morality is connected to a system of punishment and rewards of a demanding judgmental invisible God. They believe, therefore, that Christianity is a manmade system of controlling people into an outdated conservative system of morality by manipulation and the promulgation of the fear of hell.

I can understand why it may look like this is a fair description of Christianity. If the only Christians I had ever met were the ones I encountered this summer at the beach holding signs listing sins God was going to judge people for and shouting about hell into a crowd of teenagers--I would run the other way too and declare it a barbaric brainless religion. I cannot say strongly enough that people like that are not representing true Christianity and are decidedly giving Jesus a bad name by their shameful actions. My husband, a pastor, spoke with these people when we came across them and asked that they cease antagonizing the crowd of angry youth. We emphatically urged the crowd to disperse, to no avail. They were having too much fun heckling the beach preachers. I don’t blame the young people for their responses. My husband and I were greatly disturbed by this misrepresentation of the heart of God towards people.

I would asks that people look past the extremist and religious nut cases to the real nature of truth and examine the truth claims themselves despite some of the misleading representations often depicted in the media and sometimes observed in real life. Please don’t let the attitude and actions of some keep you away from really examining the truth claims of the Christian worldview.

To touch briefly on a more specific Christian view of morality: it isn’t about adhering to rules out of fear of divine retribution or hope of divine rewards. For some, granted, it is thus. However, for many others it is simply this: that man is separated from God because of our sinful nature and consequently fails to live up to even his own standard of right and wrong perfectly. However, because Jesus paid the price of sin in our place we are freed from the bondage of sin and empowered by Christ to love and know God and love and live with our fellow humans the way we were created to do so.

What God asks from man, is not blind obedience, but a real tangible relationship that starts with accepting the free gift of salvation from sin and death offered through Jesus. Thus we become reconciled back to God, ensconced in His love, and we begin life anew learning from God how to be all he created us to be. The work Jesus did on the cross is not simply to redeem mankind, but to redeem all of creation back to its full glory.

Evolution of Reason????

I have just read an essay by an atheist giving argument for the evolution of humanities ability to know truth without appealing to the existence of God. The writer puts forth that only those traits and thoughts that lend toward survival will continue and those thoughts which are harmful to survival and fail to line up with reality will not survive. Therefore, as the argument goes, we are evolving into something more true to our environment and our thoughts likewise will line up with truth.

So as to not misstate the author the following is two excerpts of his argument:

A creature that could not respond correctly to its environment, or that did so only imperfectly, would be at a significant survival disadvantage compared to one that could perceive more accurately. Therefore, it should be obvious that, all else being equal, evolution will always favor greater accuracy of sensory perception - both the ability to sense the environment with greater fidelity and the disposition to respond correctly to those sensory impressions.

Though it is not perfect, it is more than obvious that evolution will produce at least generally reliable mental tools for environmental perception, pattern recognition and abstract reasoning in any intelligent being. In light of this, the burden of proof is now on the presuppositionalists to explain why an evolutionary naturalist should not consider their own beliefs reliable.

If evolution is generating minds that think more and more truly then why do billions of people ascribe to religion and spiritual worship that atheists claim are illogical practices? If evolution is producing reasonable truth thinkers why are there so few atheists in this world? Are atheists claiming to be superior to the rest of the world? Atheism, despite the few popular books in the end caps at Barnes and Noble is not the wave of the future. Postmodernism is actually the current ebb and flow of the today’s world which does not ascribe to the knowablity of truth nor the supremacy of science and reason. Why is one more popular than the other if atheists are the more evolved humans? Most postmodern thinkers are very much into spiritualist thinking versus dogmatic reason. I’m not advocating postmodernism. I am only pointing out that it is fast becoming a cultural norm as modernism is quickly being transformed to postmodern thinking. Atheists are still behind the curve if we are truly looking at what is new and surviving as the most reliable human thought. So if evolution is producing true thinking as time marches on, why is culture moving away from science and reason to experience and spirituality?

If this explanation of evolutionary truth development were true then atheists would be the most ascribed to worldview instead of one of the least believed worldviews. It would appear that the argument for evolutionary establishment of truth in the human mind is actually self-defeating for atheists.

Author's Note: Please see comment exchanges to see that I was not understanding the nature of the argument I was addressing before I made this post. I am in dialog with those of the atheist worldview in the comments to learn more about what their position truly is so that I do not falsely represent it. I would delete this blog, but I would lose the comments and the lessons learned attached. So I invite my readers to read the comments for more on this topic.

A Worldview Challenge

Christians, myself included, have often argued that no one can know that God does not exist for one cannot prove a negative without knowing all things and being an omniscient being oneself. However, atheists’ counter that they believe in nothing and Christians believe in something, therefore the Christian has the burden of proof of proving God’s existence. They also counter that it is lame to assert that just because you can’t prove God doesn’t exist ought to follow in accepting that He must exist.

Of first importance, I never intend for anyone to believe God exist simply because there is no evidence to prove He does not exist. The argument often presented, that one cannot prove a negative, is simply meant to show that maybe there is reason to at least consider His existence based on a multiplicity of supporting evidence. It is not the end all argument that closes the debate and expects the atheist to all of the sudden accept the existence of the Christian God.

However, this business about atheist having nothing to support because they believe in nothing and therefore the Christian, asserting something supernatural, must be the only one who defends that proposition is not completely fair.

I agree that I hold the greater burden of proof as one who claims to know, not only that God exists, but to know Him personally. I do not profess to know all that He is, for I am not omniscient. But I do profess to have a tangible relationship with Him. Therefore, I carry a great deal of the burden of showing unbelievers whether atheists or otherwise.

That being said, it is still important for the atheist to assert a reasonable defense for the application of their worldview to reality. How does it answer the problem of evil in the world? How does it give credence to the existence of good in the world? How does it answer our need for justice and moral judgment? How does it answer our ability to reason?

I challenge people from any worldview and any stream of worldviews to answer these questions and check their worldview with reality. Does it work practically? Does it line up with what is real? I’ve been answering these questions on my blog from the Christian worldview. I challenge others to do the same from their worldview to add to the exchange of ideas and to sharpen our thinking.

The Christian Worldview

It has come to my attention that I have failed to properly define what I mean when I use the term “Christian Worldview.” Let me try and see if I can unpack that term. First of all a worldview is a simple to complex system of belief by which we see the world. Everybody thinks with their worldview. A worldview builds from the general foundational to the particularities which rest upon the foundation. For example for the Christian it starts with the existence of God. In this sense I am not talking about presuppositions, but merely a general framework regardless of how that framework first developed. Likewise, the atheist worldview is tied closely to the idea that there is no God and it builds from there. The Christian the worldview then encompasses that there is a Triune God who created the world and reveled himself to the world through Jesus Christ who lived, died, and rose again providing the way for man to know God. For the atheist it goes into the uncreated evolutionary development of the world and from there it can go into a humanist or postmodernist view of truth or other various options.

Both Christians and Atheists have different respective specifics to their worldviews. Neither group develops cookie cutter specifics with regard to various views about the world. Therefore, typically I try to stay to the general foundation worldview matters instead of the specific details of life views because if the foundational isn’t established then it’s putting the cart before the horse to establish specifics. However, I will answer questions about specifics when asked to the best of my knowledge.

Thus, when I use the word “standard” in context of the Christian worldview, I mean the foundational self-existent standard of God on which the existence and knowability of truth rest. I am not referring to specific details of what that truth looks like. I am not saying that the Christian church’s historical or modern teaching is the truth about all matters. I am saying that the very construct of truth must rest in the self-existing God for if there is no self-existing constant on which to know factual or moral truth then there is no truth to be known. However, I have never met or read of anyone who can live out the idea that there is no truth.