Colson, Charles and Nancy Pearcey. How Now Shall We Live? Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, 1999.
Murphy, Joseph. The Miracle of Mind Dynamics: A New Way to Triumphant Living. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1964.
Introduction:
We must show the world that Christianity is more than a private belief, more than a personal salvation. We must show that it is a comprehensive life system that answers all of humanity’s age-old questions: Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? Does life have any meaning and purpose? Colson Pg xi
God exercises His sovereignty in two ways: through saving grace and common grace. We are all familiar with saving grace; it is the means by which God’s power calls people who are dead in their trespasses and sins to new life in Christ. Bur few of us understand common grace, which is the means by which God’s power sustains creation, holding back the sin and evil that result from the fall and that otherwise would overwhelm His creation like a great flood. As agents of God’s common grace, we are called to help sustain and renew His creation, to uphold the created institutions of family and society, to pursue science and scholarship, to create works of art and beauty, and to heal and help those suffering from the results of the Fall. Colson Pg xii
C. S. Lewis once wrote that though he was often celebrated for offering innovative thoughts, his only purpose was to present ancient truth in a form that the contemporary generation could understand. Colson Pg xiv
We must be able to speak to the scientist in the language of science, to the artist in the language of art, to the politician in the language of politics. Colson Pg 34
Ideas do not arise from the intellect alone. They reflect our whole personality, our hopes and fears, our longings and regrets. People who follow a particular course of action are inevitably subject to intellectual pressure to find a rationale for it. The Reformers coined the phrase “total depravity,” meaning that our sinful choices distort all aspects of our being, including our theoretical ideas. Colson Pg 174
Redemption means the restoration and fulfillment of God’s
original purposes. Colson Pg 194
[Christianity] It provides a worldview that fits the structure of reality and enables us to live in harmony with that structure. Colson Pg xiii
In every action we take, we are doing one of two things: we are either helping to create a hell on earth or helping to bring down a foretaste of Heaven. We are either contributing to the broken condition of the world or participating with God in transforming the world to reflect His righteousness. We are either advancing the rule of Satan or establishing the reign of God. Colson Pg 12
Our major task in life is to discover what is true and live in step with that truth. Colson Pg 14
The basis for the Christian worldview is God’s revelation in Scripture. Colson Pg 14
Genuine Christianity is more than a relationship with Jesus, as expressed in personal piety, church attendance, Bible study, and works of charity. It is more than discipleship, more than believing a system of doctrines about God. Genuine Christianity is a way of seeing and comprehending all reality. It is a worldview. Colson Pg 15
Every worldview is a proposed map of reality, a guide to navigating in the world. One effective test of any truth claim, therefore, is to ask whether we can live by it. If you follow a map but still find yourself splashing into rivers or crashing off cliffs, you can be quite sure something is wrong with the map. By the same token, if you live according to a certain worldview but keep bumping up against reality in painful ways, you can be sure something is wrong with the worldview. It fails to reflect reality accurately. Colson Pg 99
To engage the world, however, requires that we understand the great ideas that compete for people’s minds and hearts. It is the great ideas that inform the mind, fire the imagination, move the heart, and shape a culture. Colson pg 17
History is little more than the recording of the rise and fall of the great ideas—the worldviews—that form our values and move us to act. Colson Pg 17
The culture war is not just about abortion, homosexual rights, or the decline of public education. These are only skirmishes. The real war is a cosmic struggle between worldviews—between the Christian worldview and the various secular and spiritual worldviews arrayed against it. Colson Pg 17 The drama of history is played out along the frontiers of great belief systems as they ebb and flow. Colson pg 19
The world is divided not so much by geographic boundaries as by religious and cultural traditions, by people’s most deeply held beliefs—by worldviews. Pg 19 Colson
In many parts of contemporary culture, it is acceptable to believe in God, but only if you keep your belief in a private box. Yet Christianity will not remain privatized. It is not merely a personal belief. It is a truth about all reality. Christians must learn how to break out of the box, to penetrate environments hostile to our faith, make people see the dilemma they themselves face, and then show them why the Christian worldview is the only rational answer. Colson Pg 199
Theism is the belief that there is a transcendent God who created the universe; naturalism is the belief that natural forces alone are sufficient to explain everything that exists. The most fundamental questions reflect these categories: is ultimate reality God or the cosmos? Is there a supernatural realm or nature all that exists? Has God spoken and revealed His truth to us, or is truth something we have to find, or invent, for ourselves? Is there a purpose to our lives, or are we cosmic accidents emerging from the slime? Colson Pg 20
Naturalism begins with the fundamental assumption that the forces of nature alone are adequate to explain everything that exists. Colson Pg 52
1)
Moral relativism:
Moral relativism: In morality, naturalism results in relativism. If nature is all there is, then there is no transcendent source of moral truth, and we are left to construct morality on our own. Every principle is reduced to a personal principle. Colson pg 21
2) Multiculturalism:
Multiculturalism: As a result of relativism, the naturalist treats all cultures as morally equivalent, each merely reflecting its own history and experience. Contemporary trends like postmodernism and multiculturalism are rooted firmly in naturalism, for if there is no transcendent source of truth or morality, then we find our identity only in our race, gender, or ethnic group. Colson Pg 21
Multiculturalism is not about appreciating folk cultures; its about the dissolution of the individual into the tribal group. In postmodernism, there is no objective, universal truth; there is only the perspective of the group, whatever group that may be: African-Americans, women, gays, Hispanics, and the list goes on. In postmodernism, all viewpoints, all lifestyles, all beliefs and behaviors are regarded as equally valid. Tolerance has become so important that no exception can be tolerated. Colson Pg 23
3)
Pragmatism:
Pragmatism: Since naturalists deny any transcendent moral standards, they tend to take a pragmatic approach to life. Pragmatism says: Whatever works best is right. Actions and policies are judged on utilitarian grounds alone. Colson Pg 21
The influential legal theorist Oliver Wendell Holmes, an avowed Darwinian, taught that laws are merely a codification of political policies judged to be socially and economically advantageous. Colson Pg 93
4)
Utopianism:
Utopianism: Naturalists generally embrace the Enlightenment notion that human nature is essentially good, which leads to utopianism. Utopianism says: If only we create the right social and economic structures, we can usher in age of harmony and prosperity. Colson Pg 21
All the liberation ideologies in the marketplace of ideas today are variations on a single theme that has been pervasive in Western thought since the nineteenth century: that history is moving forward toward a glorious consummation. This is sometimes dubbed the “myth of progress’ and it is a secularization of the Christian teaching of divine providence. Whereas Christianity teaches that history is moving toward the kingdom of God, the Escalator Myth [same as myth of progress] reassures us that we are evolving toward an earthly utopia that is a product of human effort and ingenuity. Along with the denial of sin, the idea of inevitable progress has fueled the great utopian movements. In every field, from biology to anthropology, from law to sociology, there was a fevered search for “laws of development” that would reveal the pattern of history and the direction of evolution, providing people with guidance on how to live in accord with that great movement toward a better world. There was great optimism that the best human minds could uncover the laws of progress and lead us forward into utopia—a substitute vision of heaven. Colson Pg 232
The confidence that humans are perfectible provides justification for trying to make them perfect…no matter what it takes. And with God out of the picture, those in power are not accountable to any higher authority. They can use any means necessary, no matter how brutal or coercive, to remold people to fit their notion of the perfect society. Colson Pg 149
They [all utopians] start with a promise to liberate the individual from such things as economic depression or crime-ridden streets or ancient superstitions. And the bargain is always the same: Give me power, and I’ll use it to create an ideal society. But the exchange only brings out the worst in those who have power, while enslaving those they promise to liberate. Colson Pg 168
Across the nation, groups gather around ideologies of gender, race, and sexual orientation, seething with rage over alleged oppressions of one kind or another. To understand the appeal these groups exert, we need to understand their underlying worldview. According to these groups, what is the human dilemma? Oppression by whites or males or heterosexuals or some other group. What is the solution, the way to justice and peace? Raising our consciousness and rising up against the oppressor. Thus the promise of liberation is ultimately a promise of redemption. Colson Pg 231
Because revolutionaries are confident that the next stage in history will automatically represent progress, that any change will be for the better, they readily tear down and destroy the existing order—which historically has often meant killing off anyone who resists, from rulers to peasants. Colson Pg 236
Contrary to comfortable contemporary assumptions, the threat of tyranny did not die in the rubble of the Berlin Wall. The utopian myth lives on. Admittedly there’s an enormous difference between a totalitarian state and America’s democratic republic, yet the assumptions that led to the most destructive tyrannies of the twentieth century are at work in our own society. The only difference is the speed at which these ideas are being played out toward their inevitable conclusion. While the totalitarian nations have completed the cycle, demonstrating the consequences of utopianism in all their horror, most Western nations are still somewhere in the earlier stages, still couching the utopian vision in humanitarian language. For example, the denial of sin and responsibility is couched in therapeutic terms, such as the need to “understand” even the worst crimes as a result of a dysfunctional childhood or other circumstances. Symptoms of family breakdown—such as divorce, adultery, and abortion—are defended as expressions of the individual’s freedom of choice. Social engineering schemes are dressed up as public compassion. Colson Pg 168-169
In fact, many Americans and other Western people continue to cherish the same utopian myth that produced such bitter fruit in the totalitarian nations: the same assumption that human nature is basically good, the same rejection of transcendent morality as confining and oppressive, the same grandiose dreams of social engineering. And unless we change these basic presuppositions, we are headed down our own path to tyranny in a form the great French statesman Alexis de Tocqueville called “soft despotism,” an oversolicitous nanny state that debilitates its citizens just as thoroughly, but by coddling them instead of coercing them. Colson Pg 175
The same ideas were applied to law. The law was redefined as a tool for identifying and manipulating the right factors to create social harmony and progress. Colson Pg 178
Utopianism can be maintained only by a kind of willful blindness to the reality of human sin. But when we succumb to that blindness, we lose the capacity to deal with sin, and in the end, we actually compound its effects. Therein lies the greatest paradox of all attempts to deny the Fall: in denying sin and evil, we actually unleash its worst powers. Colson Pg 183
The utopian myth has even taken hold in the home, where the same ideas are served up through magazines, parenting seminars, maternity classes, and books on child development. Back in the 1940’s, in the most influential book ever written for parents, Dr Benjamin Spock encouraged parents to reject the old puritan notion of children as savages, prone to evil and in need of civilizing. Instead, he urged them to understand children as evolving psyches in need of attention. The same message was advanced in the most popular parenting books of the 1960s and 1970s: Haim Ginott’s Between parent and Child and Thomas Gordon’s parent Effectiveness Training. These books aimed at transforming parents from stern moralizers into sympathetic therapists, who were to remain coolheaded, nonjudgmental, even professional in their demeanor, calmly leading their children to “clarify” their own values. Thus even in the home, the heart and hearth of society, a sense of duty has been replaced by a sense of entitlement, a sense that we have a right to what we want, even if it means violating standards of proper behavior. Adults who once gave firm and unequivocal moral direction—parents, teachers, even pastors—have been indoctrinated with the idea that the way to ensure healthy children is not to tell them what’s right and wrong but to let them discover their own values. As a result, many Americans have lost even the vocabulary of moral accountability. Colson Pg 187-188
The fatal flaw in the myth of human goodness is that it fails to correspond with what we know about the world from our own ordinary experiences. And when a worldview is too small, when it denies the existence of some part of reality, that part will reassert itself in some way, demanding our attention. We do know, both intuitively and from experience, that evil is real. We sense a force—in ourselves and in others—that has the power to dominate and destroy. Our sense of sin will always find expression in some form. Take, for example, the enormous appetite Americans have for horror fiction. What explains this fascination? Part of the answer is that these books deal with gnawing questions about the depth of human evil. Colson Pg 189
The fact is that a utopian framework has taken away the conceptual tools we need to grapple effectively with genuine evil. And when we cannot name or identify evil, we lose the capacity to deal with it—and ultimately we compound its deadly effects. Colson Pg 190
In any society, only two forces hold sinful nature in check: the restraint of conscience or the restraint of the sword. The less that citizens have of the former, the more the state must employ the latter. A society that fails to keep order by an appeal to civic duty and moral responsibility must resort to coercion—either open coercion, as practiced in totalitarian states, or covert coercion, where citizens are wooed into voluntarily giving up their freedom. Colson Pg 191
That’s why utopianism always leads to loss of liberty. Colson Pg 192
When morality is reduced to personal preferences and when no one can be held morally accountable, society quickly falls into disorder. Then, when social anarchy becomes widespread in any nation, its citizens become prime candidates for a totalitarian-style leader (or leader class) to step in and offer to fix everything. Sadly, by that time many people are sick of the anarchy and chaos that they readily exchange their freedom for the restoration of social order—even under an iron fist. The Germans did exactly this in the 1930s when they welcomed Hitler; so did the Italians, eagerly following Mussolini, who promised to make the trains run on time. Colson Pg 199-200
Every civilization from the beginning of time has known that lawlessness leads to cruelty and barbarism. Even thieves have codes of honor, as the saying goes. Moral laws are not stifling rules that repress and restrict our true nature; rather, they are directions for becoming the kind of beings God intended when He created us. When we understand this, we see that moral standards are life-giving, life-enhancing, life-enriching truths. Colson Pg 200
We frequently hear it said that religion is merely wish fulfillment. This was Freud’s argument: Christianity is an illusion we invent to meet various personal needs. And it’s true that there are psychological benefits to be derived from believing in God. But psychological reductionism is a game both sides can play. Indeed, we could argue that the myth of human goodness to which modern culture has succumbed is best explained by the psychology of atheism, which is itself a form of wish fulfillment—a deep desire to be free from all external authority or from any transcendent source of morality. It can be much more pleasant to believe the dogma of the autonomous self, which reassures us that there are no objective truths making legitimate demands on us, that right and wrong are subject to our own choices, that by our own decisions we create value out of nothing. Each individual is a mini-god, creating his or her own private world. No God, no sin, no guilt. Humanity is on the throne, and all’s well with the world. No wonder the utopian myth can appear, initially, to be so attractive. Colson Pg 201-202
Since modern culture has given science the authority to define the way the world “really is,” Darwinism provides the scientific justification for a naturalistic approach in every field. Colson Pg 94
Many Christians shrink from drawing a sharp contrast between theism and Darwinism. They hope to combine Darwin’s biological theory with belief in God—suggesting that God may have used evolution as His method of creating. Yet Darwin himself insisted that the two are mutually exclusive. For natural selection acts as a sieve, sifting out harmful variations in living things and preserving helpful variations. But if God were guiding evolution, He would ensure that each variation was beneficial from the start. Natural selection would be, in Darwin’s words, “superfluous.” The whole point of his theory was to identify a natural process that would mimic intelligent design, thus making design “superfluous.” Colson Pg 94
The authority of science rest primarily on its public image—on the impression that its theories rest firmly on a foundation of empirical facts. The truth is that much of Darwinism is not science but naturalistic philosophy masquerading as science. So an honest debate between Darwinism and Christianity is not fact versus faith but philosophy versus philosophy, worldview versus worldview. Colson pg 96
6)
Postmodernism:
The philosophy of existentialism, a precursor of postmodernism, swept the campuses, proclaiming that life is absurd, meaningless, and that the individual self must create his own meaning by his own choices. Choice was elevated to the ultimate value, the only justification for any action. Pg 23 Colson
Postmodernism tenets
1) There are not facts, but only interpretations Nietzsche
2) Since acquisition of knowledge or truth is not a simple process of infallible means, there can be no knowledge or truth in any meaningful sense.
3) we are thus emancipated from rules of reasoning and substitute willfulness for rationality. All interpretations deserve an equal billing.
4) Built on the paradox and absurdity that it is a fact that there are no facts.
5) Man is incapable of discerning a reality of truth that exists independently of our perceptions, attitudes, or attributes such as race, age, and gender.
Danger: Once a society abandons its belief in facts and truths and its beliefs in standards for distinguishing facts and truth from fictions and falsehoods everything becomes arbitrary and relative.
6) Another paradox; These philosophies exhort its rhetoric to gain prestige while through its own philosophical tenets it denies the distinction of prestige since it means one is better than another.
7) Every speaker should remember the story of White Sox manager Jeff Torborg’s trip to remove pitcher Jim Kern. Kern told Torborg he wasn’t tired. Torborg said, “I know, but the outfielders are”
7)
Three questions:
Every worldview has to begin somewhere—God or matter, take your choice. Everything else flows from that initial choice. This is why the question of creation has become such a fierce battleground today. It is the foundation of the entire Christian worldview. For if God created all of finite reality, then every aspect of that reality must be subject to Him and His truth. Everything finds its meaning and interpretation in relation to God. No part of life can be autonomous or neutral, no part can be sliced off and made independent from Christian truth. Because creation includes the whole scope of finite reality, the Christian worldview must be equally comprehensive, covering every aspect of our lives, our thinking, our choices. Colson Pg 97-98
Because the world was created by an intelligent being rather than by chance, it has an intelligible order…We know that certain laws exist in the physical world and that if we defy those laws, we pay a steep price. Ignoring the law of gravity can have very unpleasant consequences if we happen to be walking off the edge of cliff. To live in defiance of known physical laws is the height of folly. But is no different with the moral laws prescribing human behavior. Just as certain physical actions produce predictable reactions, so certain moral behavior produces predictable consequences. Adultery may be portrayed as glamorous by Hollywood, but it invariably produces anger, jealousy, broken relationships, even violence. Defiance of moral laws may even lead to death, whether it is the speeding drunk who kills a mother on her way to the store or the drug addict who contacts and spreads AIDS. [thus] If we want to live healthy, well-balanced lives, we had better know the laws and ordinances by which God has structured creation. And because these are laws of our own inner nature, Kuyper notes, we will experience them not as oppressive external restraints but as “a guide through the desert,” guaranteeing our safety. Colson Pg 16
The understanding of life’s laws is what Scripture calls wisdom. A wise person is one who knows the boundaries and limits, the laws and rhythms and seasons of created order, both in the physical and the social world. “To be wise is know reality and accommodate yourself to it.” Colson Pg 16
Our view of origins shapes our understanding of ethics, law, education—and yes, even sexuality. Colson Pg 92
The scriptural basis for this understanding [that it is a worldview] is the creation account, where we are told that God spoke everything into being out of nothing (see Gen 1 and John 1:1-14). Everything that exists came into being at His command and is therefore subject to Him, finding its purpose and meaning in Him. The implication is that every topic we investigate, from ethics to economics to ecology, the truth is found only in relationship to God and His revelation. God created the natural world and natural laws. God created our bodies and the moral laws that keep us healthy. God created our minds and the laws of logic and imagination. God created us as social beings and gave us the principles for social and political institutions. God created a world of beauty and the principles of aesthetics and artistic creation. In every area of life, genuine knowledge means discerning the laws and ordinances by which God structured creation, and then allowing those laws to shape the way we should live. As the Church fathers used to say, all truth is God’s truth. Colson Pg 15
What is the meaning of human existence? Why are we here? What is the value of human life? The most vexing cultural issues of our day—abortion, assisted suicide, euthanasia, genetic engineering—all turn on questions about what it means to be human, about the value of human life and how life should be protected. Which, in turn, center on the question of our origin. Colson Pg 116
Our understanding of the origin of life is intensely personal. It determines what we believe about human identity, what we value, and what we believe is our very reason for living. It determines who lives and who dies. This is why ethical questions surrounding human life have become the great defining debate of our age. Colson Pg 118
Freud reduced humans to complex animals, rejecting explanations of behavior couched in “old-fashioned” theological terms—such as sin, soul, and conscience—and substituting scientific terms borrowed from biology, such as instincts and drives. In Freud’s theory, people are not so much rational agents as pawns in the grip of unconscious forces they do not understand and cannot control. Colson Pg 176
This denial of sin and loss of moral responsibility has spread across the entire spectrum of our culture, ushering in “The Golden Age of Exoneration.” When people are consistently told that they are controlled by outside forces, they begin to believe it. When things go wrong, someone else must be to blame. The victim ploy can be attractive because it frees us from having to admit to wrongdoing. Yet it is in admitting guilt that we find our true dignity, for doing so affirms our moral dimension of human nature. For centuries, Western law codes and social morality were based on a high regard for individual responsibility. It was understood that human beings are moral agents capable of distinguishing right from wrong, and are, therefore, accountable for their actions. Yet punishment actually expresses a high view of the human being. If a person who breaks the law is merely a dysfunctional victim of circumstances, then the remedy is not justice but therapy; and the lawbreaker is not a person with rights but a patient to be cured. Colson Pg 182
Denial of sin may appear to be benign and comforting doctrine, but in the end, it is demeaning and destructive, for it denies the significance of our choice and actions. It reduces us to pawns in the grip of larger forces: either unconscious forces in the human psyche or economic and social forces in the environment. Social planners and controllers then feel perfectly justified in trying to control these forces, to remake human nature and rebuild society according to their own blueprints—and to apply any force required toward that end. Colson Pg 183
8) Created dichotomies and dualisms
What makes this view [why shouldn’t we do whatever we choose] possible, notes professor Robert George of Princeton, is a radical dualism between body and soul, a dualism that can also be traced back to Descartes, who reduced the body to little more than a machine operated by the mind. It follows that the body is not really “me,” but something separate from my real self—an instrument to be used, like a car or a computer, for whatever purposes I choose. Therefore, what I do with my body, whether I use it for physical pleasure or even discard it if it becomes inconvenient, has no moral significance. Colson Pg 119
Carried to its logical conclusion, this view implies that sexual acts between unmarried people or partners of the same sex or even complete strangers have no moral significance. Since the body is reduced to the status of a mere instrument of the conscious self, it can be used for any form of pleasure and mutual gratification as long as there is no coercion. Even disposing of physical life is of no greater moral consequence than discarding an old set of ill-fitting clothes. Colson Pg 120
And yet many well-meaning Americans, including Christians, have bought into the “choice” argument. They don’t see that abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia are all part of the same package. The logic that supports abortion as a “useful social policy” to prevent the birth of “defectives” or to reduce welfare and crime, applies with equal force at all stages of life. If the body is merely an instrument of the self, if it has no inherent dignity, then we are free to dispose of it at will—or others are free to dispose of it for us. Colson Pg 123
The supremely tragic irony in all of this is that a supposedly exalted view of human reason has led to such a degraded view of human life. When Descartes declared, “I think, therefore I am,” he had no idea his slogan would lead to a culture in which what I am is determined by what other people think. Colson Pg 126
Roe vs. Wade was the leading edge of a powerful social movement, fueled by sexual politics, to free the individual from the yoke of allegedly repressive moral restraints. “Choice” over what to do with one’s own body became the defining value of the 1970s and 1980s—all the while ignoring the fact that choice itself cannot possibly be a value and that value depends on what is chosen. Colson Pg 120
Abortion has always been about more than abortion. It is the wedge used to split open the historic Western commitment to the dignity of life. With the “Baby Doe” case in 1982, in Bloomington, Indiana, the relentless demand for choice crossed the great divide—from the living fetus in the womb to the living baby outside the womb—and America moved from abortion to infanticide. Baby Doe was born with a deformed esophagus, making it impossible for him to digest food. Doctors proposed a fairly simple operation, a procedure that had proven to be 90 percent successful. But the parents refused to grant permission for the operation, even though they knew this meant certain death for the newborn infant. Their won doctor concurred. The reason? Infant Doe was born with Down’s syndrome. Two Indiana courts declined to intervene, and six days later baby Doe was starved to death. Colson pg 120-121
9)
CULTURAL DECEPTION
Every time we turn on the television or open a magazine or newspaper, we are bombarded with the gospel of commercialism: that for every need, every insecurity, every worry, there is a product for sale that can satisfy our need, pump up our self-esteem, soothe our worry. Colson Pg 228 [see pages 228-230 for further development]
Through advertising, the “religion” of appetite and ego gratification is offered to us as a solution to the human dilemma, a comfort in our insecurities, a way of salvation. The most advanced tools of communication and persuasion are being used to press us into the service of America’s most popular deity, the idol of consumerism. Colson Pg 230
Loving the Lord with your mind means understanding God’s ordinances for all creation, for the natural world, for societies, for businesses, for schools, for the government, for science, for the arts. Colson Pg 34
Sadly, many Christians have been misled into believing there is a dichotomy between faith and reason, and as a result they have actually shunned intellectual pursuits. Colson Pg 34
Sin is choosing what we know is wrong. We have a choice, and when we sin, we choose to do evil. Colson Pg 186
The consequences of sin affect the very order of the universe itself. Sin is much more than breaking the rules. God created an intricate, interwoven cosmos, each part depending on the others, all governed by laws of order and harmony. Sin affects every part of that order and harmony—twisting, fracturing, distorting, and corrupting it. First, sin disrupts our relationship with God. Because of sin, humans feel guilty and afraid of God. Real guilt is an internal signal that we have done something wrong, just as pain is a signal we have done something harmful to our body. When we put a hand on a hot stove, pain tells us we need to change something we are doing. (We need to take our hand off the burner.) Guilt works the same way. It is an awareness in the core of our being that we have violated the law that governs the universe and have shattered our relationship with the Creator. Second, sin alienates us from each other. Adam immediately began to blame Eve for his action; Eve, in turn, blamed the serpent for tempting her. Evasion, blaming, finger-pointing, superiority, bitterness, and pride—all the elements of social breakdown are right there in the early chapters of Genesis. Third, the Fall affects all of nature. This is a difficult concept to grasp in our scientific age, but Scripture clearly teaches that sin ruptured the physical as well as the moral order. Colson Pg 197
Death “had no place in the original creation,” writes C.S. Lewis; it entered our experience because the physical world itself—including our physical bodies—was damaged by the Fall. “It is not the soul’s nature to leave the body; rather the body (denatured by the Fall) deserts the soul.” Creation itself is in “bondage to decay” until the final redemption (Rom 8:21). Colson Pg 198
Clearly, the Fall was not just an isolated act of disobedience that could be quickly mended. Every part of God’s good handiwork was marred by the human mutiny. This is why the reformers described human nature as “totally depraved.” They did not mean that human nature is completely corrupted, for in the midst of our sin, we still bear the image of God, just as a child’s sweet face shows through smudges of mud and dirt. Total depravity, according to the Reformers, means that every part of our being—intellect, will, emotions, and body—shows the effects of sin. No part remains untouched by the Fall. At the Fall, every part of creation was plunged into the chaos of sin, and every part cries out for redemption. Only the Christian worldview keeps these two truths in balance: the radical destruction caused by sin and the hope of restoration to the original created goodness. Colson Pg 198
[five common solutions for the existence of evil]
Solution #1: Deny that God exists at all.
For the atheist there is no answer to the question of evil because there is really no question. There is no such thing as objective evil; we are merely projecting our subjective feelings onto external events. But does this satisfy the innate human outrage over evil and suffering? Of course not. Instead, it mocks us by reducing our deepest moral convictions to a trick of our minds. We may cry out in the night for answers, but objective reality is indifferent to our tears. Poet Stephen Crain portrays this dilemma poignantly:
A man said to the universe,
“Sir, I exist.”
“However,” replied the universe
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.” Colson Pg 208
On its own terms, atheism simply has no answer, and the pointlessness of our suffering makes it all more painful. Colson Pg 209
Solution #2: Deny that suffering exists.
Some people attempt to solve the problem by casting evil and suffering as illusions created by our own minds. This is the strategy adopted by Christian Science and some Eastern religions. The physical universe is an illusion (maya in Hinduism), and the suffering of the body is a misconception of the mind. If we train ourselves to think correctly, we can overcome suffering through realizing that it does not exist. Colson Pg 209
Solution #3: Place God beyond good and evil. Colson Pg 210
Solution #4: God’s power is limited.
The reasoning here is that an all-powerful God would not allow bad things to happen; since bad things do happen, God must not be all-powerful. This perspective is gaining popularity today through a school of thought known as process theology, which proposes a God who is still in the process of becoming—a God who is evolving with the world and is not yet omnipotent. This God has the best of intentions (he really would like to change things), but being finite, he is not able to get rid of evil that plagues creation. We must direct our hope to the future, when God and the world will reach a glorious stage of evolution and all ills will be overcome. This is the theology promoted in Rabbi Kushner’s best-seller When Bad Things Happen to Good People, which defends God’s goodness by denying His omnipotence. Colson Pg 210
Solution #5: God has created evil to achieve a greater good.
Only in a world where we have to struggle for the good can we freely choose God, Hick [philosopher John Hick in Evil and the God of Love] argues. The struggle itself is necessary to mature the soul and make us ready to enjoy God forever. The problem is that if we propose that God created evil for any reason, then we are back to Einstein’s dilemma: that God himself is evil and there is no escape, no salvation. For if evil is an intrinsic part of reality, it cannot ultimately be eliminated. Besides, if God created human beings in such a way that they require evil in order to mature, then He made them flawed rather than “very good,” as Genesis 1 proclaims. Colson Pg 211
So why is there evil in the world? How do we find any meaning in our suffering? None of the alternatives described above satisfies the cry of the human heart. Every one of them either diminishes God or diminishes us. Only the biblical explanation is consistent with both reason and human experience, for it alone tells us how God can be God—the ultimate reality and Creator of all things—and yet not be responsible for sin. How does the Bible reconcile God’s goodness and power with the presence of evil? Scripture teaches that God is good and that He created a universe that was “very good.” It also teaches us that the universe is now marred by evil, death and suffering. Logically there is only one way to reconcile these two statements without denying any element in them: There must be a source of sin outside of God. Evil does not have an independent existence, nor was it created by God. Evil is created by sin. Colson Pg 212
People sometimes ask, What made Adam and Eve sin? But freedom means there is no external cause. We are not trapped in an endless chain of cause and effect, as determinists like Einstein believe. Instead, we can initiate a genuinely new chain of cause and effect. In making moral choices, we are genuine first causes; and logically you can’t ask what caused a first cause. Colson Pg 213
Scripture gives a genuine answer to the problem of evil only because it insists that God created the world originally good—and that sin entered at a particular point in history. And when that happened, it caused a cataclysmic change, distorting and disfiguring creation, resulting in death and destruction. Then, once humans did choose evil, God’s holy character required justice. He could not ignore it, overlook it, or simply wipe the slate clean and start over again. Once the moral fabric of the universe had been torn, it had to be mended. In that case, says the skeptic, the human race should have ended with Adam and Eve. They should have been punished for their rebellion, cast into hell, and that would have been the end of human history. Ah, but God is merciful as well as just, and He devised an astonishing alternative. He Himself would bear the punishment for His creatures. God Himself would enter the world of humanity to suffer the judgment and death that sinful humans deserved. Colson pg 213-214
In his famous doctrine of “Blessed Fault,” Augustine encapsulated the mystery of suffering: “God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil at all.” Better to endure the pain involved in redeeming sinners than not to create human beings at all. Why did he do that? There is only one answer. Love. God loved us so much that even when He foresaw the sin and suffering that would darken and distort His creation, He chose to create us anyway. That is the most profound mystery, and one that inspires our hearts to worship. Colson Pg 214
You are frequently deceived by what you look at. For example, a stick inserted into the water appears broken. When you stand on a railroad track, the two parallel lines of the rails seem to come together in the distance. Your eye often misrepresents the true state of existence, because it deals only with the surface appearance of the fact. People say, “The sun rises and the sun sets,” but actually it neither rises nor sets. The reason I have pointed out these things is to cause you to realize that things are not what seem to be. Murphy Pg 44
Millions are suffering from the great deception because they are self-hypnotized by an accumulation of false ideas, beliefs, opinions, and sense evidence. Murphy Pg 49