That Which Matters

There are books that we read and then set aside; others serve as reliable resources we often return to.  Total Truth, by Nancy Pearcey is one of those sources for me.

The world gets Christianity wrong when it regards it as just a set of individual beliefs, that Christ is both God and Man, that He was born of a virgin and that He arose from the dead.  It also gets it wrong when it says beliefs should never get in the way of facts.  “Facts are objective, that is, they can be measured, and their truth tested. . .Value judgements, (beliefs) on the other hand, are subjective, being matters of personal preference. . . . Such preferences are based on personal likes and feelings, rather than on facts and reasons.” (Economics for Decision Making [D. C. Heath, 1988]).

If people understand that Christianity is a matter of private beliefs, (one’s own values) then Christianity is not ruled out just so long as it is not given any importance in the public sphere. That, Dr. Nancy Pearcey writes is where Christianity needs to become relevant. It is a system of truths that apply to every other discipline, science, history, politics, philosophy, anthropology and the arts.  

This is a challenge for Christianity because truth has been divided into issues of the heart and those of the brain. Many believe that if you truly accept Jesus in your heart, you will be saved. That is true not because I believe it, but because it is true. There are other believers who are deeply concerned about the moral and social decline that is undermining our culture.  They believe that to stem the tide of moral and social injustice one must become involved in political thinking.

Dr. Nancy Pearcey writes about a congressman who came to realize that the most effective way for moral and social change to take place is to change the culture. To do so one must begin at the very fundamental bases of any society–families, churches, schools, neighborhoods, work places and civic organizations. These are the systems Dr. Del Tackett speaks of in his video The Truth Project—systems that God created.

That all creation exists because of the mind of God, that mankind disobeyed God, turned away from Him and became a cause for God to reveal His heart of redeeming love are not preferences; this is truth. No one can tamper with truth to gain power or control. It can only be proclaimed. And that is the work of those who come to the realization that there is no public or private domain.

Truth is indivisible. Not only does the Word of God speak to the heart of a child, it speaks to their minds. What happens with our children is that they have been taught a heart view of God but their brain is taught to accumulate knowledge that the world has to offer. This is the division that we have the responsibility to teach our children to understand. There is no one set of truths that pertain to how the heart feels and another set of truths that pertain to how the brain thinks.

Any division is a lust after power on the part of those who keep insisting on the division between the heart and the brain, between fact and value. The division denies the authority of God and His Word over all of life. And it is the responsibility of the Christian church to make this known. Michael Goheen, a professor of worldviews studies writes the following. “The barred cage that forms the prison for the gospel in contemporary western culture is [the church’s] accommodation . . . to the fact-value dichotomy.” P22 Total Truth