88 Sermon Illustrations on Worldview

Anybody familiar with my writings knows that I am passionate about teaching people to see Christianity as a worldview, an explanation of all of life. As Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper put it, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ ... does not cry: ‘Mine!’” That includes politics.

Over the years our Wilberforce Forum has devoted much time to teaching biblical worldview to members of Congress. Through our Capitol Hill lecture series, congressmen hear some of the best Christian minds in the country discussing everything from stem-cell research to economics to business ethics. This teaching pays off richly, as I recently discovered while having coffee with one congressman.

This Christian lawmaker has been profoundly influenced by our teaching. During the Terri Schiavo episode, he championed the cause of keeping Terri alive, drawing much heat in his congressional district.

One day a medical school in his home state invited this congressman to defend his position. The crowd was so hostile that he decided to forego his speech and simply answer questions — a smart tactic.

The congressman allowed the opposition to “vent” about the government “interfering” with medical decisions. And then he responded by saying, “Let me straighten one thing out. Terri Schiavo was not on life support. What was done in her case was simply to remove a feeding tube. Whatever state she was in, she was simply being fed.” He then asked if anyone questioned that. No one did.

The congressman then drew on arguments he had heard from Princeton professor Robert George and University of Texas professor J. Budziszewski, both speakers in our lecture series. He told the angry crowd that nearby there was a nursing home for people who could not feed themselves; for various reasons two hundred people had to be spoon-fed. The congressman then asked if the audience would object if the nursing home decided to stop feeding them. Should the government step in and force it to feed the patients? Absolute silence: Not a single person spoke.

The congressman’s arguments got around, and much of the opposition to his position was diffused.

I was thrilled to hear this story because it is a good example of how a Christian worldview, when understood and argued winsomely, can change the debate. You and I must learn how to do this, because the issues are not going to go away. A few weeks ago, a Colorado woman named Christa Lilly woke up after being in a coma for six years. This case, and others like it, indicates that people who appear to be in a persistent, vegetative state may not be.

There is huge pressure from health-care providers to simply euthanize people like Christa and Terri Schiavo — people whose care is costly. Christians must learn to make rational and accessible arguments that all life must be respected.

Samuel Huntington, a professor at Harvard, has said that the world is divided not so much by geographical boundaries as by differences in ultimate beliefs — in worldviews. He is absolutely right. The task for us is to identify those worldviews and to winsomely demonstrate that the Christian worldview, supported by reason and evidence, is the only one that can be rationally sustained.

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Copyright (c) 2007 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

The paintings are vibrant with color — brilliant slashes of red, yellow, and aqua. The artist’s best work hangs in a gallery at Salisbury University in Maryland. Who created these abstract masterpieces? A dog named Sammy.

Sammy’s trainer, Mary Stadelbacher, taught Sammy to paint — holding a brush in his teeth — to raise funds for her dog-training academy.

An art-lover who spent $350 on a Sammy original told the ASSOCIATED PRESS: “There are people who make a lot of money to make paintings that aren’t as intriguing as what [Sammy has] done.”

Sadly, she’s right. As a BREAKPOINT blogger put it, Sammy’s paintings raise “an interesting question about what constitutes art. There ought to be an objective standard for calling something art, right? Or do you think I am barking up the wrong tree?”

To answer that question, we must understand that art expresses a view of the world, a philosophy.

Imagine we’re touring an imaginary art museum. Beginning in the medieval section, we see figures that are stiff and formal, set against gold backgrounds. This is art expressing an otherworldly philosophy of life.

Next comes the Reformation. Figures begin to look like real individuals instead of symbols. Reformation artists believed God could be represented not just by icons but by paintings of real human beings, who are made in His image.

Next we come to the Enlightenment. Paintings show respectable figures in fashionable dress. Landscapes consist of neat, orderly fields — nature under the dominion of reason.

But in the next room, the plowed fields give way to craggy mountains. Romanticism in art celebrates wild, untamed nature, the Noble Savage, ancient legends.

Finally we approach the room housing modern art, beginning with Impressionism, when art was taken over by subjectivist philosophies. Definitions of art shifted from the subject matter being portrayed to the way light strikes the artist’s eye; from great themes of human drama to daubs of paint on canvas; from objective standards of beauty to the artist’s psyche.

Expressionism and Surrealism probed deeper into subjective experience. Eventually art lost sight of any objective standards of form and beauty. Art became defined as whatever an artist does.

But without objective standards of form and beauty, even unformed, random marks on canvas — not unlike the dabblings of a dog — can be regarded as art.

Art used to be regarded as the expression of a civilization’s highest ideals. Great painters shared a communal vision of the good and beautiful. But today art has become so subjective that many people cannot tell the difference between works that have artistic merit and works that don’t. A museum might exhibit a paper plate next to a Rembrandt — who is to say which is art?

Christians ought to care about art because God calls us to lead the way in renewing our culture. Artistic talent is a gift of God, to be cultivated for the service of God and our neighbor.

So while we may regard the “work” of canine Picassos as amusing, we should spend our money supporting those humans who are called to create, as the Scripture puts it, “for the glory of God and for beauty.”

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Copyright (c) 2007 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

How do you justify art and the humanities?

That is the provocative question asked in a recent New York Times column by Stanley Fish. His answer was simple: You do not have to. “They are,” he wrote, “their own good.” I tend to agree, but I reach my conclusion from an entirely different perspective than he does.

Fish, the famous postmodernist professor, was unhappy about a government report on the state of higher education in New York State, in which “all the emphasis is on science, partnerships with industry, and advances in technology.”

Fish went on to add, “If there is to be a brave new world in New York higher education, it doesn’t look as if the humanities and the arts will be a significant part of it.”

I would say that holds true for schools across the country. Think about it: How often have you heard anyone say that our kids need to do better at math and science? Often. But, when was the last time you heard it said that they need to study more art, or literature, or music?

You get the idea.

But as Fish acknowledges, his line of thinking raises a question: Why do we need to teach the arts in schools? As a secular humanist, he says, it would be easy for him to go along with the traditional humanistic idea that the arts and humanities “ennoble” us by inspiring us to want to be like the great heroes portrayed in art and literature.

But Fish cannot buy into that. “If it were true,” he notes dryly, “the most generous, patient, good-hearted, and honest people on earth would be the members of literature and philosophy departments, who spend every waking hour with great books and great thoughts. And,” Fish continued, “as someone who’s been there (for 45 years), I can tell you it just isn’t so.”

Moreover, Fish believes that that is exactly “how it should be. Teachers of literature and philosophy are competent in a subject, not in a ministry. It is not the business of the humanities to save us.”

I agree, but let me illustrate why. You may remember a much acclaimed movie a few years back called The Pianist. The film told how music transformed a Nazi officer into a man willing to feed and shelter a Jewish musician. That was not an accurate picture, however. In real life, the officer who saved the musician did so not because he loved music, but because he was “an ardent Catholic who abhorred Nazism.” Many Nazis loved music, but music itself did not “ennoble” them. It just gave them a welcome respite from murdering Jews and other innocent victims. [see HolwickID #16809]

So what are the arts and humanities good for? Here is where I think the Christian worldview provides an answer that Fish cannot grasp. They teach that God made humans creative beings, like Himself. The works of art we create — sculpture, literature, drama — reflect the glory and beauty of the Creator of life. This is what gives the arts their intrinsic value. Any beneficial effect that they might have on human thinking — and usually they do have such effects — is a good thing, but it is not why we create, and it does not add or detract from the value of art.

No, the humanities cannot save us, but because their mere existence speaks of and glorifies our Creator, they are more than justified.

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Copyright (c) 2008 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

Worldviews are constantly in motion. New issues arise and new questions present themselves. In one sense, worldviews operate as idea factories, as primary ideas work themselves out into related ideas. The basic framework of convictions that lies at the heart of a worldview always works outward toward implications of those key convictions.

Keep that in mind when you read of developments in Switzerland. As previously reported, Switzerland amended its constitution to require that “the dignity of creation” must be taken into account “when handling animals, plants, and other organisms.” In order to meet this constitutional provision, the Swiss government commissioned the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology and asked that body to produce guidelines. The result was a report that is among the most radical ever adopted by any government. “The Dignity of Living Beings with Regard to Plants” is nothing less than clear evidence of what happens when the Christian worldview is completely eclipsed by secular thought.

At the onset, the Swiss committee admitted that it was operating on the basis of moral intuition. In essence, intuition is all the members had to go on -- which should have been sufficient warning in itself.

In the most important part of the report, the committee identified four alternative worldviews that would lead to very different conclusions. These are:

• THEOCENTRISM -- “The basis for this position is the idea of a God who is creator, and therefore the creative ground of all living organisms. What counts for its own sake is God. All organisms count because of their relationship to God.”

• RATIOCENTRISM -- “In this position the issue of whether beings count for their own sake depends on their (potential) capacity for reason and their capacity for abstract speech.”

• PATHOCENTRISM -- This position is based in the sentience of living organisms. They count morally for their own sake if they are sentient and are therefore able to experience something, in some way, as good or bad.”

• BIOCENTRISM -- “Living organisms should be considered morally for their own sake because they are alive.”

While these four alternative worldviews do not exhaust the possibilities, this outline is very helpful. Even more helpful is the fact that the committee reported on its own mixed commitments. Tellingly, not one member of the committee accepted the Theocentric worldview. The majority chose the biocentric worldview. That fact, taken alone, is sufficient to explain the report. The extension of “rights” to plants, confusing plants with personhood, is the direct implication of the biocentric worldview. If life, defined merely as biosis, is at the center of the worldview, then biosis must be the good that trumps all other goods.

Now, The Wall Street Journal reports that the guidelines set down by the committee are complicating life for scientists. “Unfortunately, we have to take it seriously,” said Beat Keller of the University of Zurich. He was referring to the mandate that scientists take account of a plant’s “dignity” before conducting any experiment.

As the paper reports:

Several years ago, when Christof Sautter, a botanist at

Switzerland’s Federal Institute of Technology, failed to get

permission to do a local field trial on transgenic wheat, he

moved the experiment to the U.S. He’s too embarrassed to mention

the new dignity rule to his American colleagues. “They’ll think

Swiss people are crazy,” he says.

Defenders of the law argue that it reflects a broader,

progressive effort to protect the sanctity of living things.

Last month, Switzerland granted new rights to all “social

animals.” Prospective dog owners must take a four-hour course on

pet care before they can buy a canine companion, while anglers

must learn to catch fish humanely. Fish can’t be kept in

aquariums that are transparent on all sides. The fish need some

shelter. Nor can goldfish be flushed down a toilet to an

inglorious end; they must first be anesthetized with special

chemicals, and then killed.

Respect for creation is, for Christians, based in the worship of the Creator. Despoilers of nature are unfaithful stewards of creation. We are to treat all creation -- and all creatures -- with respect and thankfulness. But, we are not to confuse plants and animals with humans. Humans have rights because human beings are made in the image of God. Plants do not have rights.

The Swiss committee holds that plants have the right to reproduce, and that this is essential to a plant’s dignity. They also held that a plant cannot be “arbitrarily” deprived of its life. Arbitrariness is, as might be guessed, in the eye of the beholder.

Professor Keller of the University of Zurich is embarrassed by this weak-headed thinking. So is Yves Poirier, a molecular biologist at the University of Lausanne. “Where does it stop?,” he asked. “Should we now defend the dignity of microbes and viruses?”

Gautam Naik, the paper’s reporter, asks an obvious question: “For a carrot, is there a more mortifying fate than being peeled, chopped and dropped into boiling water?”

The complications for biological research are real and important enough, but the consequences of this kind of radical thinking will reach far beyond biology.

When the Christian worldview is abandoned, there is no adequate replacement -- nothing that can ground human dignity in anything other than philosophical quicksand. When plants are said to have rights, human rights are automatically undermined. A biocentric worldview is a recipe for disaster, but it is a logical alternative once the Christian worldview is rejected.

Just ask the Swiss what happens when a theocentric worldview is abandoned. Better yet, ask a plant.

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Breakpoint commentary by Charles Colson, Nov. 12, 2008

"The Silence of the Yams -- The Dignity of Plants?"

In the recent movie THE HAPPENING, plants, threatened by the growing human population, release a toxin into the air that causes people to kill themselves. A nursery owner tells the hero that plants can not only “target specific threats,” they can also communicate with each other and coordinate their “defense.”

While THE HAPPENING was panned by audiences and critics, one country appears to have taken the threat from plants seriously enough to sue for peace with the plant kingdom. That’s Switzerland.

How? By enshrining the “dignity” — their word, not mine — of plants in their constitution.

A molecular biologist at the University of Zürich recently sought permission to field test wheat that had been genetically modified to resist a particular kind of fungus. He not only had to prove that the test wouldn’t have unintended environmental consequences, he also had to “debate the finer points of plant dignity with university ethicists.” Then, he had to satisfy government officials that the trial “wouldn’t ‘disturb the vital functions or lifestyle’ of the plants.”

Dignity? Lifestyle? Of plants? Like many a farcical road, this one was paved with good intentions. In the 1990s, Switzerland amended its constitution to require that “account to be taken of the dignity of creation” — Switzerland’s word, not mine — ”when handling animals, plants and other organisms.”

Then, last spring, the parliament asked a panel of “philosophers, lawyers, geneticists and theologians” to determine how this requirement applies to plants. The panel’s report concluded that people do not have “absolute ownership” over plants and that “individual plants have an inherent worth.” Therefore, they concluded, “we may not use them just as we please, even if the plant community is not in danger.”

Plant community?

As ethicist Wesley J. Smith has pointed out, phrases like “plant community” and the “dignity” of plants is evidence that our rejection of the biblical worldview “is driving us crazy.” Having rejected the “unique dignity and moral worth of human beings,” it was logical that “we would come to see fauna and flora as entitled to rights.”

More than that, this shift in worldview, Smith writes, regards “treating people differently from animals simply because they are human beings” as “invidious discrimination.”

Unfortunately, the damage from this worldview isn’t limited to making Alpine countries look silly or creating more paperwork for researchers. While some of the sought-after parity between man and the rest of creation is achieved by raising the status of animals and plants, most of it comes through lowering our status as humans.

That’s where the real danger lies. Research that could help feed countless millions is made more difficult and even impossible because of concerns over plant “dignity.” Even worse, carrying the logic to its conclusion, the sanctity of human life becomes a matter of what you can do, not who you are — that is, someone created in the image of God.

By the end of THE HAPPENING, the threat from the plants creates a renewed appreciation for human life. For once, I wish that life would imitate the movies.

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Copyright (c) 2008 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

From the outside looking in, an intelligent observer can see the signs of a once-great civilization in decline: rising corruption, sexual licentiousness, and the abandonment of once-cherished moral principles.

The once-great civilization is Western Christendom. And the outside observer is Indian scholar Vishal Mangalwadi. His new book, TRUTH AND TRANSFORMATION: A MANIFESTO FOR AILING NATIONS shows how dearly the West is paying for abandoning the Christian worldview — the very worldview that made its greatness and prosperity possible.

It is no coincidence, Mangalwadi argues, that reason, science, and advanced technology developed and thrived in the West. That’s because Western man believed that God created an orderly universe that could be explored and understood — and whose resources could be harnessed to benefit mankind.

And because they believed that man was created in the image of God, the American founders could write that all men “are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.” Such thinking would have been preposterous in Hindu India or Confucianist China.

Mangalwadi, who has spent years in rural India trying to help the poor escape poverty, knows firsthand the practical consequences of a false worldview.

He relates how a village of poor farmers has been unable to overcome the repeated catastrophic flooding of their fields. Why not? Because they worship the river that destroys their livelihood. They never would have thought to create channels to divert the water. Instead of establishing dominion over the river, they have let the river — a god in their eyes — establish dominion over them.

Many of Mangalwadi’s efforts to help India’s “untouchables” develop a sustainable livelihood have been thwarted by upper-caste Brahmins — who feel they have a religious right to steal the fruits of the lower caste’s labor. No wonder India, the world’s largest democracy, still struggles with corruption and catastrophic poverty.

Thus Mangalwadi wonders why the West, rich in material and political blessings, would turn away from the source of its success — the Christian worldview anchored in the Scriptures.

And turn away it has. We see the fruits of this rejection in the economy (where debt is embraced and “thou shalt not steal” is ignored). We see it in our courts. Mangalwadi actually predicts the collapse of the American judicial system within a generation. “As Americans cease fearing God,” he writes, “they no longer keep their vows and promises.” The result is “a costly litigious society ... of godless people ... unworthy of trust.”

And every day we see the rejection of the Christian worldview in the media and in our universities — where Mangalwadi notes, the totalitarian philosophy of naturalism demonizes anyone who dares to believe in God or the supernatural.

Mangalwadi says the West has a choice: “either to seek the knowledge of God once again, or to slide into an abyss of pagan ignorance, corruption, and slavery.”

What makes this book so important is that Mangalwadi views us from outside, looking in as an Indian. He sees what the Church must do to help the West make the right choice.

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Copyright (c) 2009 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

Francis Schaeffer described how ideas escape the ivory towers of universities and think tanks eventually to shape how ordinary people think, speak, and view their world. In 2020, one idea made that journey in record time was Critical Race Theory. Not that long ago, conversations involving Critical Race Theory (CRT) were largely relegated to academic papers, classroom discussions, and scholarly journal articles. Today, dialogues about CRT can be found across social media, in corporate boardrooms, and even in the Church.

As a theory, CRT descends from European and North American philosophical traditions, particularly Marxism and Postmodernism. Like these worldviews of its intellectual ancestry, CRT sees the world in terms of power dynamics. In this way of thinking, social evils such as poverty, crime, or oppression result not from universal human frailties but from Euro-Americans intent on securing and increasing their economic and social power. Based on this metanarrative, equality and justice demand privileging the stories of those kept out of power. CRT sees members of the oppressed group as morally right, and members of the oppressor group as morally wrong.

CRT, like any worldview framework, should be evaluated. That, however, is easier said than done, even in the Church. Advocates often point to common ground between Critical Race Theory and the Christian worldview (for example, the commitment to justice and human dignity), and label any critiques of CRT as convenient ways to avoid confronting injustice and racism (which may not be true, but often is).

Many Christian critics, myself included, are specifically concerned with how CRT conflicts with a Christian worldview, particularly in areas of identity and morality. Not everyone agrees. Recently on Twitter, a defender of CRT boldly tweeted, “Whoever told you CRT is a worldview was either lying to you or didn’t know what they were talking about.” Of course, assuming malice or greed is a way of dodging the question rather than making an argument.

Another Twitterer offered a different response, “If CRT is bad because it’s a ‘secular worldview’ and we must only derive our worldviews ‘biblically’ then I better not see a TRACE of Aristotle or Plato in your worldview either, brother.” This one is a slightly more clever way of missing the point or, specifically misunderstanding what it means for a worldview to be “biblical.” To have a Christian worldview is to hold views that are consistent with the Bible, not to only have views that are in the Bible. The problem with Critical Race Theory is not that it isn’t found in the Bible; it’s that it offers a very different explanation of humanity, sin, and redemption than the Bible does.

Like the postmodernism that birthed it, Critical Race Theory can be considered a worldview. It does more than just offer a handful of specific ideas about race and society; CRT offers a complete framework of beliefs, a universalizing story of the world. CRT describes who we are, what’s wrong with the world, and prescribes how to fix it and what “better” would be. In other words, like Christianity, CRT answers the basic questions any worldview does. Except, the answers CRT provides are very different than those Christianity offers, even if both worldviews recognize the world is broken by evils such as racism and injustice.

Critical Race Theory has critical errors. By simplistically reducing evil to power dynamics and external social realities, CRT denies moral agency and the redemptive potential of entire groups of people because of their racial identity.

At the same time, those who oppose Critical Theory must do more than simply write off all its concerns. Like Marxism, Critical Theory is something of a Christian heresy, taking the Christian themes of human dignity and justice and a world remade, and re-orienting these causes under new management. Most pertinently, CRT is slipping into the space where the Church belongs but is too often absent.

If we don’t want unbiblical explanations of life and justice sweeping through the Church or culture, we’d better make sure we communicate and embrace the full ramifications of Christian truth for society, and then act justly and love mercy. If we rob our Faith of its social implications, we are no longer talking about Christianity. Such a personalized, privatized moral system may make us feel better, but it will never stand up to the rival worldviews of our day.

The best antidote for the failings of Critical Theory and its inadequate worldview is for the Church to understand and live consistently with the Bible.

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Resources

“Critical Theory, Cultural Marxism, and our Cultural Ferment,” Shane Morris, Breakpoint, July 17, 2020.

”Critical Race Theory,” Britannica, 2021.

”Critical Race Theory (1970s-present),” Purdue OWL, 2021.

”Charles Colson & Nancy Pearcey: How Now shall we live?” Alison Morgan, October 2001.

”Is Critical Theory Compatible with Christianity?” John Stonestreet, Breakpoint, April 30, 2020.

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Copyright (c) 2021 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

One of the hallmarks of the postmodern age is, as one of its main theorists has explained, “incredulity toward metanarratives.” This reflects the postmodern suspicion of any master explanation of world reality and human experience. But, from beginning to end, biblical Christianity is a master narrative. Biblical Christianity is not only a faith that involves essential truths; it is the story of God’s purpose to redeem humanity and to bring glory to himself. This narrative is revealed to us as a comprehensive master story that is as vast as the cosmos and so detailed as to include every atom and molecule of creation.

Even as the postmodern age has rejected the metanarrative, most postmodern thinkers accept the fact that human existence is essentially narrative in terms of our consciousness. This is an important insight, for it is impossible to give an account of our individual lives without using the structure of a story. The postmodern resistance to a master narrative is the fear that such a story would be inherently repressive. But the Christian gospel is the most liberating narrative ever heard and the Bible presents the story, not merely as one account of reality to be put alongside others, but as the one definitive account of God’s purposes.

Indeed, the Christian gospel is the story to which all other narratives are accountable. The Scripture narrates the story in the unfolding of God’s plan and purposes. The very God who reveals himself as sovereign and holy — the only true God — is the God who has generously shared the knowledge of himself and his purposes with his sinful creatures.

Creation — The Beginning of the Story

Every worldview and metanarrative has a beginning. Without exception, every worldview must give an account of how the cosmos came into being and must answer the question of its meaning. The very existence of the cosmos requires an answer to this question, and this answer determines so much of what follows in the narrative.

The Bible begins with the declaration that “in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). The doctrine of creation forms the starting point for our understanding of the cosmos and our place within it. The Bible’s straightforward explanation for the existence of all things is traced to God’s own intention to create the cosmos as the theater of his own glory. The Bible rejects all forms of dualism or polytheism, leaving the God of the Bible as the sole explanatory principle of the universe. Nothing that exists does so outside of his sovereignty and intention. The God of the Bible creates ex nihilo (out of nothing) and is not dependent upon any preexistent matter or conditioned by any external force.

As Creator, God takes responsibility for his creation. Furthermore, the Creator remains directly involved with his creation, ruling over all times, places, and authorities. He exercises his rule through a scrupulous providence that includes, as Jesus made clear, even the birds of the air and the lilies of the field (Matt. 6:26, 28).

The Bible also makes clear that the Creator is pleased with his creation. Having created all that exists, he declared his creation to be good. This verdict on creation is a refutation of any worldview that denies the goodness of creation or slanders the material world as unholy. At the same time, the Bible condemns any worship of nature as an end in itself.

The creation of human beings is the climax of the creation narrative. Having created everything else that exists, God crowned his creation when he created human beings as the singular creature made in his own image (Gen. 1:26-27). The Bible clearly and unambiguously reveals that human beings are special creatures — the only creatures made in the image of God. Even as we face contemporary efforts to dethrone humanity from a position of privilege within creation, the Bible makes clear that human beings are made in God’s image precisely so that we, alone within all creation, may consciously know and glorify God. Therefore the human creature is given the ability to fabricate and to manipulate the material world. God gave human beings the ability to till the soil, reap a harvest, and bring the earth under dominion. At the same time, God invested human beings with a crucial stewardship in our responsibility to use, enjoy, and care for creation as a matter of essential stewardship.

The Bible also reveals that gender is a part of the goodness of God’s creation. God made his human creatures as male and female and invested these creatures with responsibility to enjoy his guests and to reproduce within the context of marriage (Gen. 1:27-28). Marriage, too, is part of the goodness of God’s creation. While other creatures merely mate, humans are called to enter into a covenant of marriage whereby one man and one woman come together to form a union that is pleasing to God.

The biblical portrait of the creating God demonstrates a God of love whose character issues naturally in his creation. The loving character of God is woven into the warp and woof of his creation and the creatures within it. The substance of the biblical teaching focuses on God’s creation of the universe and all within it by the power of his word. The product of God’s creative activity is a universe of seemingly infinite variety, complexity, and mystery.

Thus, creation is not a brute fact without meaning. It derives its meaning from the divine character and will. As the theater of God’s redemptive activity, creation is not static, but is moving toward that goal established by decree before the foundation of the universe. Without the knowledge of divine creation, we would be left to ourselves in terms of discerning or discovering the very purpose for the existence of the material world and the means by which it came to exist.

All worldviews start with this great question and must give some account of beginnings. The naturalistic worldview insists that this account of beginnings must be comprehensively limited to natural and material causes and effects. Such a worldview runs into direct collision with the worldview of the Bible, for the Bible does not flinch from claiming and explaining that all that exists owes its existence ultimately to God himself (e.g., John 1:3).

One interesting aspect of worldview analysis is the recognition that, for the most part, everything that follows is contained within the account of origins. Once we know that God is the solitary explanation at the beginning, we can be confident that he will be the one who brings this story to a close in a way that brings him no less glory.

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For background reading, see:

R. Albert Mohler, Jr., “The Glory of God and the Life of the Mind,” Friday, November 11, 2010.

R. Albert Mohler, Jr. “The Knowledge of the Self-Revealing God: Starting Point for the Christian Worldview,” Friday, December 3, 2010.

There’s a difference between philanthropy and charity. One seeks social change; the other seeks love. And which one we choose reflects our worldview.

When we hear about institutions like the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations or the Carnegie Endowment, it makes us think of things such as libraries, schools, and shows on NPR and PBS.

Americans think of major philanthropic institutions as forces for good, and for the most part, they are.

Yet many of these institutions have a dark past. It’s a past that can be traced to what one writer calls “philanthropy’s original sin,” the rejection of the Christian idea of charity.

This history was the subject of a recent article in the New Atlantis by William Schambra of the Hudson Institute. As he tells readers, the Carnegie and Rockefeller foundations were deeply involved in the eugenics movement that swept across the United States in the first third of the twentieth century.

As regular BreakPoint listeners know, eugenics is the attempt to “better” the human race through controlling fertility, selecting certain traits in offspring, and today, various levels of genetic engineering. It was the driving idea behind some of the worst violations of human rights in American history. As Schambra tells us, the big foundations helped make it possible, funding key programs not only in the United States but also “research institutions in Germany behind the Nazi programs of sterilization and euthanasia.”

Even after eugenics was discredited in the wake of World War II, the impulse to better the human race re-emerged, and those philanthropic foundations were there again, this time expressed in their support for the often-coercive population-control programs. The goal, as one Rockefeller Foundation official put it, was to make “the control of births” an “accepted responsibility of governments.”

Not surprisingly or unreasonably, the foundations insist that these troubling episodes in their history must be weighed against the good that they have done.

But they’re still left with what Schambra calls philanthropy’s “original sin”: the attempt to substitute charity, the love of neighbor, with the application of scientific expertise to human problems.

In the minds of would-be philanthropists, “Alexis de Tocqueville’s idea that America was ennobled by everyday, charitable citizens stepping forward to solve their own problems became less attractive than a new view of social change.”

Instead, they envisioned “centralized control” of philanthropy “in the hands of social technicians” that would “circumvent and diminish local ethnic, fraternal, and neighborhood groups and charities, which still took their bearings from benighted moral and religious orthodoxies rather than the new sciences of society.”

Not only was charity inefficient, it was pernicious: Margaret Sanger, a Rockefeller grantee, called old-fashioned charities the “surest sign that our civilization has bred, and is breeding ... increasing numbers of defectives, delinquents and dependents.”

If philanthropy trampled human dignity in the process of social engineering, well, as Justice Holmes said in Buck V. Bell, “better for all the world.”

In contrast, charity, which comes from the Latin equivalent to agape, caritas, requires not only seeing the other person but identifying with his suffering. Philanthropy would never motivate someone to run towards plague victims while others ran away, but caritas often has.

Now don’t get me wrong: We should be grateful for the good libraries, schools, PBS shows, Car Talk and other positive causes funded by philanthropy. But, we must still extend to our brothers and sisters “that loving personal concern [which] is at the heart of charity traditionally understood.” And, as Schambra reminds us, “It can only be practiced immediately and concretely, within the small, face-to-face communities that Tocqueville understood to be essential to American self-government.” Not by some grand scientific intervention..

________

Copyright (c) 2014 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

As the father of a twelve-year-old girl, I find that opportunities to teach worldview lessons pop up at the most unexpected times.

A few weeks ago, my daughter came home from school and announced that her class was attending an exhibit called “Body Worlds.” If you’ve never heard of this, “Body Worlds” is an exhibit of human corpses.

Unfortunately, I’m not kidding. There’s a cadaver of a pregnant woman, her belly sliced open to reveal the corpse of a fetus. One cadaver is riding a horse — a horse cadaver, that is. Several cadavers appear to be dancing together — a true dance macabre. Frankly, they look like something out of a horror film.

The corpse choreographer is a German doctor, Gunther von Hagens. And his traveling cadaver circus has stirred up an international debate about the sanctity of the human body.

Dr. von Hagens preserved the cadavers using a technique he invented called plastination. He says his exhibit is meant to help lay people understand the workings of the human body. But thoughtful people around the world are repelled and disgusted by what he’s doing. Some countries and U.S. states have passed laws in an effort to ban the exhibit. Three years ago, a judge in France ruled that putting dead people on display for profit is “a violation of the respect owed them.” A German prime minister called the exhibit “degrading to human dignity.” Religious leaders, including Catholics and Jews, have condemned what von Hagens is doing — including, three years ago, putting on display a dead male and female which, were they alive, would be engaging in sex.

Von Hagens claims that all the cadavers came from people who volunteered to have their remains used this way. That may not be the case: He has been accused of buying the corpses of executed Chinese prisoners and purchasing cadavers from prisons and psychiatric hospitals without the families being notified. That would make the for-profit exhibit even more horrifying.

It probably won’t surprise you that von Hagens is an atheist. As Chuck Colson noted a few years ago when he learned of this exhibit, “Dr. von Hagens’s grotesque work is a product of his materialist worldview. His public comments suggest that he views the human body as nothing more than a complex mechanism, a complicated network of cells. So he sees nothing wrong with putting corpses on display like so many stuffed owls or racks of deer.”

By contrast, Scripture teaches that the human body, even one that is deceased, has great value. It’s a belief that comes from the Incarnation — God taking on human form. And of course, we as Christians believe that these bodies of ours will be resurrected as was Jesus’ body.

Sadly, even the faithful sometimes forget the Christian teaching that the body deserves great respect — which is why my daughter’s Christian school thought nothing of taking children to see this ghoulish exhibit of cadavers. But when I explained why such exhibits were wrong, I’m happy to report that they canceled the field trip.

Situations like this demonstrate why it’s so important that we have a thorough understanding of the Christian worldview. Once we do, we all ought to speak up — respectfully, of course — when we run into this type of thing.

And we ought to teach our children why it’s wrong to turn human bodies into a display for the entertainment of others: Because God Himself took on human form.

________

Copyright (c) 2012 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

There really is such a thing as right and wrong. And denying that fact has real consequences for society.

During a recent visit to Swarthmore College, political scientist Robert Putman of Harvard asked everyone in the room whose parents had graduated from college to raise their hands. Not surprisingly, nearly everyone raised their hands.

As it turns out, the ability to get into elite colleges isn’t the only thing that separates the children of the college-educated from kids whose parents didn’t graduate from college.

This separation was the subject of a recent New York Times column by David Brooks. In it, Brooks discussed the findings of Putnam’s new book, “Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis,” and, just as importantly, he discussed how we got to this point.

As Brooks writes, “In the 1960s or 1970s, college-educated and noncollege-educated families behaved roughly the same.” Well, not anymore. For instance, college-educated families are more likely to stay together. Brooks writes, only “10 percent of the children born to college grads grow up in single-parent households” while “nearly 70 percent of children born to high school grads do.” That is staggering.

The divergence in norms between the college-educated and the rest has become so pronounced that, as Brooks puts it, many of Putnam’s graphs “look like open scissors.”

More eye-opening than any graph are the stories Putnam tells. One young man named “David” told Putnam, “I never really got to see my mom that much.” David’s father “dropped out of school ... and is now in prison.” As for David himself, he attended “seven different elementary schools ... ended up under house arrest, [and] got a girl pregnant before she left him for a drug addict.”

Brooks is correct when he says that sympathy for these kids, however vital, is not enough. Brooks could have been channeling Chuck Colson when he added that “It’s not only money and better policy that are missing in these circles; it’s norms.”

“David” is the victim of the fact that “In many parts of America there are no minimally agreed upon standards for what it means to be a father.”

Most intriguing is Brooks’ explanation for the absence of those norms and standards: “They were destroyed by a plague of nonjudgmentalism, which refused to assert that one way of behaving was better than another. People got out of the habit of setting standards or understanding how they were set.”

And the results are all around us.

Nowhere is “the cost of relativism” more clearly seen than in crime. Putnam’s “David” is hardly unique. That’s why Chuck said that he saw his “work for Christian worldview to be the natural consequence of [his] work among prisoners.”

Chuck explained it this way: “During the first ten years of Prison Fellowship, I focused on evangelizing prisoners, building discipleship programs, and training volunteers. But I became perplexed that our growing ministry couldn’t keep pace with the nation’s skyrocketing prison populations.”

Then, after some reading and reflection, Chuck realized that “The surging moral relativism in our culture was eroding our value system.” The denial of right and wrong was being reflected in court dockets.

That’s why Christian worldview is vital to Prison Fellowship’s efforts to this day. As Brooks said, what we need is a “moral revival.” And that, as Chuck told us, requires “[helping] people begin to see the world through God’s eyes, to see Christian truth in all of life.”

For “David’s” sake as well as our own.

________

Copyright (c) 2015 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

If we hope to see our culture take Christianity seriously, we’ve got to take it seriously ourselves. In other words, our faith has to be more than just a pastime.

Maybe you’ve seen that recent viral video from internet news and humor site Buzzfeed. In it, a half a dozen young actors take up the mantra, “I’m a Christian, but I’m not...”

“... I’m not homophobic,” says one. "... I’m not judgmental,” and “... I don’t place myself on a pedestal,” boast others. Most self-identified as gay, queer, feminist, or some other trendy label. Most striking to me in all these videos was how free their version of Christianity seemed to be from any external authority. There was nothing revealed in Scripture or history that seemed to matter in their understanding of Christianity. They made up a version of Christianity in which they were in charge. They felt fully up to determining the beliefs and behaviors they could accommodate to their faith. And they alone were the authority of their lives and loves.

In other words, their Christianity isn’t so much a worldview as it is a hobby — something fun and meaningful to practice in the privacy of their lives and churches, to bring meaning and purpose to themselves. But in public, their Christianity must be subject to the prevailing winds on sexual orientation and gender identity.

And it’s not just those Buzzfeed voices who treat comprehensive faith as a diversion rather than a worldview. In a recent “Question Everything” issue of TIME magazine, editors asked dozens of celebrities, activists, and writers for their thoughts on 21 questions people today are asking. Among the questions? “Is monogamy over?” “Do robots have rights?” and “What would you change if you could travel back in time?”

Now most of the questions touched on important worldview issues, like human identity, moral priorities, and individual morality. But as Ed Stetzer and I discussed recently on BreakPoint This Week, it’s strange that it didn’t occur to TIME to ask for a theologian’s perspective. Christians were hardly even at the table to discuss what TIME considered our culture’s most pressing questions. Why? Because faith is seen as a private hobby, not as a public source of truth.

Way back in 1987, Yale law professor Stephen Carter saw this “hobbyfication” of faith unfolding. Secular educators had, Carter said, essentially told those with religious beliefs, “Yes, we cherish you — now go away and leave us alone.” And 28 years ago, Carter foresaw a time when “religion, far from being cherished, will be diminished, and ... religious belief will ultimately become a kind of hobby: something so private that it is as irrelevant to public life as the building of model airplanes.”

And in 2015, it’s obvious his prediction has come true. But most alarming is how often Christians self-segregate their own faith, treating it like a hobby instead of an all-encompassing worldview. During Pope Francis’s recent visit to the United States, for example, one conservative journalist asked why the pope couldn’t stick with spiritual issues instead of talking about economics, the environment, and social justice.

“The Gospel isn’t directly aimed at helping the poor or averting supposed environmental disasters,” she wrote, but “is centrally about saving our eternal souls, about addressing spiritual — not material — poverty.”

No! No! A thousand times no! Now whatever you think of Pope Francis’s policy stances, I can hardly think of a less Christian way of looking at our culture than what this journalist described. We believe that Jesus took on humanity, lived, died, and rose again to save us from our sins — yes. But Jesus described His own mission in Matthew as “Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven,” and in Revelation as “making all things new.”

Christ is over all. His rule affects and informs everything — not just the spiritual, the personal, and moral. There’s no divide between the secular and the sacred. It’s all His.

If we want the Buzzfeeds and TIME magazines of our culture to start taking our faith seriously, we need to put away the modeling glue and start taking it seriously ourselves.

________

RESOURCES

Evolutionism, Creationism, and Treating Religion as a Hobby

Stephen Carter | Yale Law School | January 1, 1987

Question Everything

Time Magazine | 2015

5 Most Cringeworthy Problems With BuzzFeed’s Viral ‘I’m Christian, But I’m Not’ Video

Mollie Hemingway | The Federalist | September 8, 2015

TIME, Burning Man, and The Right Questions

John Stonestreet, Ed Stetzer | BreakPoint.org | September 18, 2015

________

Copyright (c) 2015 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

As Christians, we know that the world as we see it contains vestiges of the glory of God that shine through the corruption of the universe blighted by sin. Nevertheless, we are constantly reminded that the entire universe is groaning under the burden of human sinfulness.

________

Our experience of the world requires us to perceive that things are not as they should be. We do not experience the world of unblemished blessedness that is revealed in the first two chapters of the book of Genesis. To the contrary, we experience a world filled with mosquitoes, viruses, earthquakes, and malevolence in the animal world. We are surrounded by the evidence of death and decay, and we see it in our own bodies.

Furthermore, we see the violence and sin that human beings cause and commit. We are not only those who experience the violence of nature, but we also know ourselves to be creatures whose own nature is often violent. To observe humanity is to see the undeniable reality that something has gone horribly wrong.

Even as the Bible begins the story with creation, it immediately moves to an explanation of what has gone wrong. Again, such an account is required of every worldview, and every philosophy of life must provide some explanation for why human beings are as we are and why we act as we act.

The Bible directs those who asked this question to the Garden of Eden and to the event we know as the Fall. When Adam and Eve sinned, they brought corruption and rebellion into the very heart of God’s perfect creation. The only creature made in God’s own image rebelled against him and sought to rob him of his own glory. The nature of sin is just this — we would deny the Creator his rightful glory and would seek this for ourselves.

The consequences of the Fall were immediate and catastrophic. Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden and cut off from the tree of life (Gen. 3:23-24). The earth, which had freely given of its fruit and crops, will now turn hostile, and human beings will have to work with the sweat of the brow to gain a hard-earned harvest (Gen. 3:17-19). Human reproduction will now be accompanied by pain and labor. Most importantly, the Fall explains why human beings are no longer at peace with our Creator. God’s verdict on Adam’s sin was immediate. As Genesis reveals and the New Testament affirms, when sin came, death came.

Our understanding of the Fall and of the sinfulness of humanity is absolutely necessary for any adequate understanding of the human condition. We cannot possibly understand human existence without reference to sin. The Bible steadfastly refuses to allow us to find the cause and substance of the human problem outside of ourselves. Instead, the Bible points directly to our individual culpability, even as it affirms that every single human being inherits Adam’s sin and guilt. The complex of human sinfulness is so vast that it encompasses every individual human sin and the totality of human depravity as demonstrated in the rise and fall of nations and the course of human history.

The Bible’s account of the human problem goes far beyond a mere explanation of human foibles and failures. In essence, the Bible turns directly to the human creature and offers an indictment of our rebellion against God. Even as Adam and Eve sought to create aprons in order to hide their own nakedness (Gen. 3:7), human beings will attempt any number of creative and desperately-asserted explanations for what is wrong with us.

In other words, the Christian account of humanity and human behavior runs into direct collision with all other worldviews. This is particularly evident when we compare the Bible’s account of human sin with contemporary attempts to explain the brokenness of humanity by means of economic, sociological, political, or psychotherapeutic explanations. The Bible affirms the inherent goodness of humanity in terms of the pristine goodness of God’s creation as it was in the beginning. But the Bible also explains that, after the Fall, every single human being is, in his or her own way, a rebel and insurrectionist who is attempting to dethrone God and take his glory as our own.

Thus, when we look at humanity, read the newspapers, watch the news reports, or tend to our own children, Christians must be constantly aware that what we witness is the working out of sin and a demonstration of the fallenness of humanity. Yet, our most direct evidence for this fallenness is what we see when we look at the reflection in our mirror.

Every worldview must give an account of what is wrong with humanity and why the cosmos demonstrates so much death, decay, and apparent meaninglessness. As Christians, we know that the world as we see it contains vestiges of the glory of God that shine through the corruption of the universe blighted by sin. Nevertheless, we are constantly reminded that the entire universe is groaning under the burden of human sinfulness. We are unsurprised by human sin and the awful consequences of that sin. We are able to endure this knowledge because we are confident that this is not the end of the story.

It's not often that film graphically illustrates the utter impossibility and bankruptcy of a secular, self-centered worldview. It may not be what the makers of the new film HARDBALL intended, but that's what they've achieved.

HARDBALL is about a compulsive Chicago gambler named Conor O'Neill, played by Keanu Reeves. O'Neill has placed one too many bets he can't pay, and the local bookies are after him with baseball bats. O'Neill turns to a childhood friend -- now an investment banker -- and begs him to bail him out. Instead, his friend offers him a deal: If O'Neill will coach an inner-city baseball team, he'll pay him $500 a week.

O'Neill reluctantly agrees. He begins coaching a half-dozen kids who live in the infamous Cabrini-Green housing project. At first, O'Neill spends most of his time breaking up fights and trying to keep enough kids on the team to prevent them from being expelled from the league. But slowly, his efforts pay off -- and the team begins winning games.

Sadly, what could be an inspiring film ends up with tragedy; neither the coach nor the kids can overcome the consequences of bad decisions made many years in the past -- but this is what gives Christians a window for worldview witnessing.

In all too many movies, you see, the filmmaker subtly promotes a worldview contrary to Christianity -- not only promotes it, but portrays it as workable. For instance, fornication is often depicted as a normal part of life. But how often does the filmmaker show the long-term cost of violating God's command to save sex for marriage? Hardly ever. Celluloid characters routinely violate God's laws with impunity -- giving the impression that moviegoers can do the same.

But not in HARDBALL. In this film, the consequences of sin form a backdrop to every scene. We see what happens when people feed dangerous desires like gambling: These desires become compulsions that rule their lives. We see what happens when couples engage in sex outside of marriage: Their children live in poverty, danger, and despair. We see what happens when too many kids grow up without fathers: They form gangs that prey on the innocent.

Christians often view popular culture as the enemy -- and with good reason: Much of it promotes and celebrates a licentious lifestyle. But the answer is not to hide films and music from our kids. Instead, we need to use them to help our kids think critically about the world.

Parents can use films like HARDBALL, if you choose to see it, as teaching aids to the truth -- to remind our kids that God's commands are for our good, and that the costs of violating them are both real and ugly.

HARDBALL is rated PG-13 for a good deal of foul language and some violence. I don't recommend it. But if your teens or their friends -- or your neighbors -- decide to view HARDBALL, use it as a chance to teach some worldview lessons. Once your kids understand that someone's worldview makes its way into every film, they'll learn to look for it themselves.

For better or for worse, movies are part of our culture. But if we have the proper tools, we can use them to be discerning to see the truth of a biblical worldview when it's portrayed, rarely though that is, and the false ideas generally promoted in secular culture.

_________________________

Copyright © 2001 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. 'BreakPoint with Chuck Colson' is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

As the father of a twelve-year-old girl, I find that opportunities to teach worldview lessons pop up at the most unexpected times.

A few weeks ago, my daughter came home from school and announced that her class was attending an exhibit called “Body Worlds.” If you’ve never heard of this, “Body Worlds” is an exhibit of human corpses.

Unfortunately, I’m not kidding. There’s a cadaver of a pregnant woman, her belly sliced open to reveal the corpse of a fetus. One cadaver is riding a horse — a horse cadaver, that is. Several cadavers appear to be dancing together — a true dance macabre. Frankly, they look like something out of a horror film.

The corpse choreographer is a German doctor, Gunther von Hagens. And his traveling cadaver circus has stirred up an international debate about the sanctity of the human body.

Dr. von Hagens preserved the cadavers using a technique he invented called plastination. He says his exhibit is meant to help lay people understand the workings of the human body. But thoughtful people around the world are repelled and disgusted by what he’s doing. Some countries and U.S. states have passed laws in an effort to ban the exhibit. Three years ago, a judge in France ruled that putting dead people on display for profit is “a violation of the respect owed them.” A German prime minister called the exhibit “degrading to human dignity.” Religious leaders, including Catholics and Jews, have condemned what von Hagens is doing — including, three years ago, putting on display a dead male and female which, were they alive, would be engaging in sex.

Von Hagens claims that all the cadavers came from people who volunteered to have their remains used this way. That may not be the case: He has been accused of buying the corpses of executed Chinese prisoners and purchasing cadavers from prisons and psychiatric hospitals without the families being notified. That would make the for-profit exhibit even more horrifying.

It probably won’t surprise you that von Hagens is an atheist. As Chuck Colson noted a few years ago when he learned of this exhibit, “Dr. von Hagens’s grotesque work is a product of his materialist worldview. His public comments suggest that he views the human body as nothing more than a complex mechanism, a complicated network of cells. So he sees nothing wrong with putting corpses on display like so many stuffed owls or racks of deer.”

By contrast, Scripture teaches that the human body, even one that is deceased, has great value. It’s a belief that comes from the Incarnation — God taking on human form. And of course, we as Christians believe that these bodies of ours will be resurrected as was Jesus’ body.

Sadly, even the faithful sometimes forget the Christian teaching that the body deserves great respect — which is why my daughter’s Christian school thought nothing of taking children to see this ghoulish exhibit of cadavers. But when I explained why such exhibits were wrong, I’m happy to report that they canceled the field trip.

Situations like this demonstrate why it’s so important that we have a thorough understanding of the Christian worldview. Once we do, we all ought to speak up — respectfully, of course — when we run into this type of thing.

And we ought to teach our children why it’s wrong to turn human bodies into a display for the entertainment of others: Because God Himself took on human form.

________

Copyright (c) 2012 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

It's not often that film graphically illustrates the utter impossibility and bankruptcy of a secular, self-centered worldview. It may not be what the makers of the new film HARDBALL intended, but that's what they've achieved.

HARDBALL is about a compulsive Chicago gambler named Conor O'Neill, played by Keanu Reeves. O'Neill has placed one too many bets he can't pay, and the local bookies are after him with baseball bats. O'Neill turns to a childhood friend -- now an investment banker -- and begs him to bail him out. Instead, his friend offers him a deal: If O'Neill will coach an inner-city baseball team, he'll pay him $500 a week.

O'Neill reluctantly agrees. He begins coaching a half-dozen kids who live in the infamous Cabrini-Green housing project. At first, O'Neill spends most of his time breaking up fights and trying to keep enough kids on the team to prevent them from being expelled from the league. But slowly, his efforts pay off -- and the team begins winning games.

Sadly, what could be an inspiring film ends up with tragedy; neither the coach nor the kids can overcome the consequences of bad decisions made many years in the past -- but this is what gives Christians a window for worldview witnessing.

In all too many movies, you see, the filmmaker subtly promotes a worldview contrary to Christianity -- not only promotes it, but portrays it as workable. For instance, fornication is often depicted as a normal part of life. But how often does the filmmaker show the long-term cost of violating God's command to save sex for marriage? Hardly ever. Celluloid characters routinely violate God's laws with impunity -- giving the impression that moviegoers can do the same.

But not in HARDBALL. In this film, the consequences of sin form a backdrop to every scene. We see what happens when people feed dangerous desires like gambling: These desires become compulsions that rule their lives. We see what happens when couples engage in sex outside of marriage: Their children live in poverty, danger, and despair. We see what happens when too many kids grow up without fathers: They form gangs that prey on the innocent.

Christians often view popular culture as the enemy -- and with good reason: Much of it promotes and celebrates a licentious lifestyle. But the answer is not to hide films and music from our kids. Instead, we need to use them to help our kids think critically about the world.

Parents can use films like HARDBALL, if you choose to see it, as teaching aids to the truth -- to remind our kids that God's commands are for our good, and that the costs of violating them are both real and ugly.

HARDBALL is rated PG-13 for a good deal of foul language and some violence. I don't recommend it. But if your teens or their friends -- or your neighbors -- decide to view HARDBALL, use it as a chance to teach some worldview lessons. Once your kids understand that someone's worldview makes its way into every film, they'll learn to look for it themselves.

For better or for worse, movies are part of our culture. But if we have the proper tools, we can use them to be discerning to see the truth of a biblical worldview when it's portrayed, rarely though that is, and the false ideas generally promoted in secular culture.

_________________________

Copyright © 2001 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. 'BreakPoint with Chuck Colson' is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

If we hope to see our culture take Christianity seriously, we’ve got to take it seriously ourselves. In other words, our faith has to be more than just a pastime.

Maybe you’ve seen that recent viral video from internet news and humor site Buzzfeed. In it, a half a dozen young actors take up the mantra, “I’m a Christian, but I’m not...”

“... I’m not homophobic,” says one. "... I’m not judgmental,” and “... I don’t place myself on a pedestal,” boast others. Most self-identified as gay, queer, feminist, or some other trendy label. Most striking to me in all these videos was how free their version of Christianity seemed to be from any external authority. There was nothing revealed in Scripture or history that seemed to matter in their understanding of Christianity. They made up a version of Christianity in which they were in charge. They felt fully up to determining the beliefs and behaviors they could accommodate to their faith. And they alone were the authority of their lives and loves.

In other words, their Christianity isn’t so much a worldview as it is a hobby — something fun and meaningful to practice in the privacy of their lives and churches, to bring meaning and purpose to themselves. But in public, their Christianity must be subject to the prevailing winds on sexual orientation and gender identity.

And it’s not just those Buzzfeed voices who treat comprehensive faith as a diversion rather than a worldview. In a recent “Question Everything” issue of TIME magazine, editors asked dozens of celebrities, activists, and writers for their thoughts on 21 questions people today are asking. Among the questions? “Is monogamy over?” “Do robots have rights?” and “What would you change if you could travel back in time?”

Now most of the questions touched on important worldview issues, like human identity, moral priorities, and individual morality. But as Ed Stetzer and I discussed recently on BreakPoint This Week, it’s strange that it didn’t occur to TIME to ask for a theologian’s perspective. Christians were hardly even at the table to discuss what TIME considered our culture’s most pressing questions. Why? Because faith is seen as a private hobby, not as a public source of truth.

Way back in 1987, Yale law professor Stephen Carter saw this “hobbyfication” of faith unfolding. Secular educators had, Carter said, essentially told those with religious beliefs, “Yes, we cherish you — now go away and leave us alone.” And 28 years ago, Carter foresaw a time when “religion, far from being cherished, will be diminished, and ... religious belief will ultimately become a kind of hobby: something so private that it is as irrelevant to public life as the building of model airplanes.”

And in 2015, it’s obvious his prediction has come true. But most alarming is how often Christians self-segregate their own faith, treating it like a hobby instead of an all-encompassing worldview. During Pope Francis’s recent visit to the United States, for example, one conservative journalist asked why the pope couldn’t stick with spiritual issues instead of talking about economics, the environment, and social justice.

“The Gospel isn’t directly aimed at helping the poor or averting supposed environmental disasters,” she wrote, but “is centrally about saving our eternal souls, about addressing spiritual — not material — poverty.”

No! No! A thousand times no! Now whatever you think of Pope Francis’s policy stances, I can hardly think of a less Christian way of looking at our culture than what this journalist described. We believe that Jesus took on humanity, lived, died, and rose again to save us from our sins — yes. But Jesus described His own mission in Matthew as “Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven,” and in Revelation as “making all things new.”

Christ is over all. His rule affects and informs everything — not just the spiritual, the personal, and moral. There’s no divide between the secular and the sacred. It’s all His.

If we want the Buzzfeeds and TIME magazines of our culture to start taking our faith seriously, we need to put away the modeling glue and start taking it seriously ourselves.

________

RESOURCES

Evolutionism, Creationism, and Treating Religion as a Hobby

Stephen Carter | Yale Law School | January 1, 1987

Question Everything

Time Magazine | 2015

5 Most Cringeworthy Problems With BuzzFeed’s Viral ‘I’m Christian, But I’m Not’ Video

Mollie Hemingway | The Federalist | September 8, 2015

TIME, Burning Man, and The Right Questions

John Stonestreet, Ed Stetzer | BreakPoint.org | September 18, 2015

________

Copyright (c) 2015 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

In times of economic turmoil, moral issues are often cast in financial terms. For those who promote the Culture of Death, the logic is that we would be better off if certain people were dead.

In an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation [BBC],

A Swiss “right-to-die” organization, which in a macabre twist is named “Dignitas,” advocates the legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide. The group has gone so far as to advocate assisting psychiatric patients to commit suicide.

Its founder Ludwig Minelli did an interview with BBC in which he criticized resistance to suicide and said, “I have a totally different attitude to suicide. I say suicide is a marvelous, marvelous possibility given to a human being.” Extending his gushing advocacy of killing oneself, he added: “Suicide is a very good possibility to escape a situation which you can’t alter.”

Minelli makes an economic argument in pressing his enthusiasm for suicide. In his view, society benefits from the cost savings he associates with a successful suicide:

For 50 suicide attempts you have one suicide and the others are failing with heavy costs on the National Health Service. If we would have another attitude to suicide, saying suicide is a very good possibility to escape. In many, many cases they are terribly hurt afterwards sometimes you have to put them in institutions for 50 years. Very costly.

Mr. Minelli also makes clear that he does not believe that suicide is a “marvelous possibility” only for the terminally ill, but also for those who may for any reason choose to end their own life. He told the BBC of a Canadian couple planning a joint suicide. The husband is ill but the wife is not, but she just wants to “go at the same time.” Minelli complained that Swiss law, though notoriously ambiguous on such matters, might present a problem if Dignitas helped the wife to commit suicide.

Meanwhile, here in the United States, U.S. News and World Report columnist Bonnie Erbe argues in her current column that abortions are “not a bad choice” in an economic downturn.

“The recession is driving American demand for contraception. And for abortions,” reports Erbe. “The media have been rife this past week with stories about the rising number of couples and single mothers doing the math and deciding this is no time to bring a child into the world — not when the economy is depressed, jobs are scarce, and family incomes are dropping.” She then proceeds to complain that many media reports treat this as a tragedy. “It is not,” retorts Erbe.

Erbe then related the story of a woman in Oakland, California who aborted what would have been her fourth child because she felt her family could not afford another baby. As her doctor explains, this was a wanted child and a “desired pregnancy.” The woman cried as she told the physician why she was seeking the abortion.

But Erbe, who also hosts the PBS news program, TO THE CONTRARY, thinks the tears were unnecessary and the decision was right. In her chilling words:

Yes, it’s sad that this unwed, pregnant mother of three had no money for bus fare. It’s terrible that her boyfriend lost his job. It is heart-wrenching that she fell to tears in the doctor’s office. But in the long run, can we not agree that an unwed couple’s decision not to bring a fourth child into the world when they are having trouble feeding themselves and three children is no tragedy? It’s actually a fact-based, rational decision that in the end benefits the three children they already have and society as well.

No, Ms. Erbe, we cannot agree that this is no tragedy. Abortion cannot be celebrated as “a fact-based, rational decision” that is supposedly justified by “benefits” to the family and society.

“It’s no tragedy: it’s a good decision,” she insists. She also makes the economic argument central to her argument, insisting that the abortion “lessens the chance the family will have to rely on scarce public resources.”

So, Ludwig Minelli argues that suicide is a “marvelous, marvelous human possibility” that will cut medical costs and Bonnie Erbe argues that abortion is “a good decision” that will benefit us all.

The Culture of Death usually disguises itself better than this. Here the ugliness and brutality -- the utter Godlessness of such proposals are here for all to see. Worldviews matter. Indeed, worldviews are a matter of life and death.

_________________

The BBC interview with Ludwig Minelli can be viewed courtesy of the BBC.

”Charles Darwin didn’t want to murder God,” TIME magazine commented recently. “But he did.” The murder weapon, according to most historians of science, was the theory of natural selection. If all living things, including human beings, evolved by a blind and undirected process of variation and selection, then we become, as TIME puts it, “an accident of natural selection, not a direct product of God.”

Chances are your teenager has heard something like this in high school — or, if not there, on a public television program, or from friends. But the news of God’s death, as Mark Twain joked after reading his own obituary, has been greatly exaggerated. A delightful new book from InterVarsity Press, What’s Darwin Got to Do with It?, makes the point beautifully.

This isn’t a book you’ll have to urge your kids to read. In fact, they won’t be able to put it down. And you’ll probably find yourself sneaking a peek at the book, as well. It’s hard to resist.

"What’s Darwin Got to Do with It?" is a cartoon-format conversation between a young female biologist, Professor Questor, and her older male colleague, Professor Teller. Teller is an advocate of Darwinism. Questor, on the other hand, is skeptical of the claims made for Darwinism. She’s been doing some hard thinking, and the evidence of biology has convinced her that “intelligent design” is a better explanation for what she observes.

Of course, Professor Teller doesn’t give in easily. He throws one argument after another at Dr. Questor. How can anyone invoke intelligent design? he asks her. Isn’t that just religion or fantasy, masquerading as science?

Not at all, she replies. We know that an arrangement of flowers spelling “Welcome to Victoria” has an intelligent cause, even if we can’t personally see that cause. Even Darwin’s favorite examples, Dr. Questor explains, the changes wrought by selective breeding in domesticated animals like pigeons or dogs, show evidence of intelligent design. Great Danes and Chinese Pugs exist only because of careful, deliberate steps in the breeding process.

Well, how about similarities between different organisms? asks Professor Teller. Doesn’t that prove Darwinian evolution?

Not so fast, answers Questor patiently. She then explains that similarity can have many causes, including design, and illustrates her point with a funny story about space aliens and automobiles.

The book What’s Darwin Got to Do with It? is marked by its sense of humor — but it’s still fair and valid. Professor Teller, as the representative of standard neo-Darwinism, isn’t mocked. Rather, the book’s authors — Robert Newman, John Wiester, and a husband-and-wife team, Jonathan and Janet Moneymaker — take care to keep the tone friendly and open.

In writing and illustrating the book, they drew on a wide range of expert scientific advice, in fields like population genetics, paleontology, and the philosophy of science. But What’s Darwin Got to Do with It? is just plain fun to read. Talking panda bears, super-heroes, criminal detectives, and even Harvard’s Stephen Jay Gould, put in appearances.

If intelligent design isn’t welcome in your kids’ science classroom, why not give them something to read on the bus? What’s Darwin Got to Do with It? will help them understand the powerful insights of intelligent design — and even have some good-natured fun in the process.

Efforts to reconcile Christianity and evolutionary theory abound, even as evolutionists bemoan the fact that such a large percentage of Americans simply will not accept a naturalistic understanding of cosmic and human origins.

Writing in the New Scientist, Michael Zimmerman calls for a new public celebration of Darwinism. Zimmerman is one of the proponents of “Evolution Sunday,” an attempt to encourage liberal churches to support the compatibility of evolution and Christianity, scheduled annually for the Sunday closest to Darwin’s birthday.

In an interesting section of his article, Zimmerman cites me as an example of one who argues for the fundamental incompatibility of Darwinian evolution and biblical Christianity. Here is the section [available to New Scientist subscribers only]:

Fundamentalist religious leaders pushing a creationist agenda

regularly assert that the faithful must choose between their

religious beliefs and evolution. Evolution is regularly

caricatured as being incompatible with belief in God; Albert

Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary,

has stated that one can’t be a Christian and believe in

evolution. This is particularly dangerous because I believe that

most people, if forced to choose between religion and evolution,

will select religion.

First, a clarification. I have not said that one can’t be a Christian and believe in evolution. It is entirely possible to be a confused Christian or a confused evolutionist ... or both. Nevertheless, the dominant theory of evolution -- the theory as taught and defended by the world’s leading evolutionary scientists -- explicitly rules out any supernatural design or interference at any point in the evolutionary continuum. That fact alone makes the theory incompatible with any legitimate affirmation of divine creation or of biblical theism.

That point is also affirmed, though almost surely not intentionally, in the current issue of The Christian Century. In “God in Evolution,” Amy Frykholm would seem to reassure Zimmerman.

As she writes:

While controversies over evolution continue to arise in some

sectors of American Christianity, most mainline Christians have

made their peace with Darwin. We may not grasp all the nuances

of the scientific debate, but we have concluded that evolutionary

theory is good science and therefore must be compatible with good

theology. Darwin’s name doesn’t send chills up our spines. We

are theistic evolutionists: we believe that natural selection is

evidently part of God’s method of shaping the natural world.

According to Frykholm “most mainline Christians have made their peace with Darwin.” But, even as Frykholm makes this claim, she slips and admits that the “peace” is rather “combustible.” As she explains, “When theology faces off against the account of the world set forth by evolutionary biology, God’s goodness and power and God’s plans for the future seem to be called into question with new force.” Needless to say, those are rather significant issues.

Consider this section of her article:

Still, evolutionary biology makes it hard to discern purpose or

direction in creation. For some theologians, facing a universe

that includes randomness and chance may require a shift in

thinking about how God works. John Haught, Catholic theologian

and professor of theology at Georgetown University, suggests that

we think in terms of a God who offers “a wide range of

possibilities that the world can realize, a universe of

innumerable possibilities.” Realization of any one possibility

happens amid the play between God and creatures.

And then this passage:

The theological problem with going in this direction, of course,

is that such a view leaves little sense of divine direction or

action. Clayton [Philip Clayton, a theologian at Claremont

School of Theology] argues that evolutionary biology severely

limits what we can call divine action, though he believes that

science does allow a small but significant space for interaction

between creature and Creator. Nature can be “biologically

constrained without being biologically determined,” he says. He

calls the divine-creature interaction “the divine lure.” As

evolution occurs, more complex structures emerge. And the more

complex forms that emerge are not reducible to a mere compilation

of the kinds that come before them. In the space between what is

and what is becoming, God might be said to act.

Theologies that emphasize God as deeply involved in natural,

open-ended processes seem better able to make sense of evolution

than do the classical accounts of an omnipotent God. On the

other hand, if Jenson is right, perhaps what is needed is a

richer notion of the God in whom these processes occur. At the

very least, substantial interaction between Christian theology

and evolutionary biology is prompting new metaphors and new ways

of thinking about God.

In other words, the theology that has declared a truce with Darwin is a theology that is required, for example, to see God allowing any number of possible outcomes to history -- a God who is “deeply involved” in creation, but not omnipotent. So I repeat my assertion: This is not biblical Christianity.

Tellingly, Michael Zimmerman sees the public status of evolutionary theory endangered by the fact that so many Christians resist the theory. As he admits, “I believe that most people, if forced to choose between religion and evolution, will select religion.” He is right, of course -- and that is why there is such panic in the temple of Darwin.