Introduction - How Now Shall We Live?
Part 1: Worldview: Why It Matters?
1. A New Creation
2. Christianity is a Worldview
3. Worldviews in Conflict
4. Christian Truth in an Age of Unbelief
Part 2: Creation: Where Did We Come From, and Who Are We?
5. Dave and Katy's Metaphysical Adventure (reminiscent of "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure)
6. Shattering the Grid
7. Let's Start at the Very Beginning (reminiscent of Sound of Music song)
- Was there an ultimate beginning?
One fascinating insight from this book is that the whole search for a "self-organizing" principle (e.g. Sante Fe Institute, Complexity, etc.) is really driven by the desire to avoid acknowledging any Creator of the universe. It was a response to the admission that the universe did indeed have a beginning (the Big Bang, vs. being eternal). Hmmm.
- Are we cosmic accidents?
8. Life in a Test Tube?
9. Darwin in the Dock
10. Darwin's Dangerous Idea
11. A Matter of Life
12. Whatever Happened to Human Life?
13. In Whose Image?
14. God Makes No Mistakes
Part 3: The Fall: What Has Gone Wrong With The World
15. The Trouble with Us
16. A Better Way of Living?
17. Synanon and Sin
18. We're All Utopians Now
19. The Face of Evil
20. A Snake in the Garden
21. Does Suffering Make Sense?
Part 4: Redemption: What Can We Do to Fix It?
22. Good Intentions
23. In Search of Redemption
24. Does It Liberate?: 11 May 2006; C S Lewis quote on danger of relying on automatic (moral, civilizational) progress, 'the lesson of history is the opposite.' We learn of Diane who went to college in 1976 and 'w/in weeks was smoking pot, flouting her childhood faith and mouthing slogans about women's liberation' (229). "Across the nation, groups gather around ideologies of gender, race, and sexual orientation, seething w/rage over alleged oppressions" (229). Instead of acknowledging sin as the problem, they see some 'oppressor' and adopt a pose of 'aggrieved self-righteousness' (235). All these liberation ideologies are "variations on a single theme that has been pervasive in Western thought since the 19C: that history is moving forward toward a glorious consummation ... the 'myth of progress' ... 'the Escalator Myth' ... [aka the Whig interpretation of history] ... secularization of the Christian teaching of divine providence ... [instead of] moving toward the kingdom of God ... we are evolving toward an earthly utopia that is the product of human effort and ingenuity" (232). This myth, along w/denial of original sin, fuels utopianism. This idea first took hold w/Hegel. All is evolving, including our "customs, cultures, concepts" (we could add 'truth'). Hegel's best-known disciple was Marx, but his ideas of oppression, exploitation, rage-based revolution are shared by radical feminism, black power, gay lib, multiculturalism, "it remains one of the most widespread and influential forms of counterfeit salvation" (233). Marxism is realy an alternate religion, w/creator (matter), Garden of Eden (primitive communism), original sin (private property, division of labor), Day of Judgment and redemption (revolution), and eschatology (communistic paradise). This religious aspect explains its persistence in the face of practical failure. Marx denounced religion as God-centered and frankly promoted his own views as man-centered. His goal was godlike autonomy, which even he admitted 'contradicts practical life' (235). Although these views promise freedom and liberation, they actually deliver "war, massacre, labor camps [Gulag], devastation, death" (236, not to mention spiritual, intellectual and moral despair). They give man absolute power, leading to absolute corruption.
25. Salvation through Sex?: 11 May 2006; "Medieval mystics used meditation and self-denial to achieve transcendence and to commune with the sacred; modernists use sex" (238). These ideas mostly come from Rousseau, "who taught that human nature was good and that evil was the result of the constraints of civilization, with its moral rules and social conventions" (238). Freud said these constraints lead to neuroses. Margaret Sanger is remembered as a champion of birth control, but she "taught a broad philosophy of sexuality ... described Christian ethics as 'the cruel morality of self-denial and 'sin' ... free sexual expression is the path to redemption" (238). This is another Escalator Myth, with the oppressor being Christian sexual ethics. Alfred Kinsey also promoted free sex (based on his 'studies' of deviant prisoners and his molestation of children). A devout Darwinian, he emphasized that humans are mere animals and reduced sex to its biological base. He saw biblical morality as the 'Fall'. Another promoter was 1960s cult figure Wilhelm Reich, who wrote Salvation through Sex. Robert Rimmer's 1966 book The Harrad Experiment was a best-seller and was instrumental in merging male-female colleges and coed dorms. "The premise is that man is innately good and can lift himself by his bootstraps into an infinitely better world [utopia]" (241). This philosophy, which encourages sexual experimentation, and discourages traditional morality, is rampant in the design of sex ed curricula. Its just more attempted social engineering by 'scientific' elites. However, the personal lives of these folks demonstrates the failure of their views; Sanger "was addicted to the pain-killer Demerol and obsessed w/numerology, astrology, and psychics in a desperate attempt to find meaning ... Kinsey was a masochist [and child-molester] ... Reich demanded complete sexual freedom for himself, but ... was desperately jealous and forbade [his wife] from living as he did ... If we reject God, we will put something in his place; we will absolutize some part of creation ... The irony is that those who reject religion most emphatically, who insist most noisily that they are 'scientific,' end up promoting what can only be called a religion [and a primitive one at that]" (242-3).
26. Is Science Our Saviour?
27. The Drama of Despair
28. That New Age Religion
29. Real Redemption
Part 5: Restoration: How Now Shall We Live?
30. The Knockout Punch
31. Saved to What?
32. Don't Worry, Be Religious
33. God's Training Ground
34. Still At Risk
35. Anything Can Happen Here
36. There Goes the Neighborhood
37. Creating the Good Society
38. The Word of Our Hands
39. The Ultimate Appeal
40. The Basis for True Science
41. Blessed Is the Man
42. Soli Deo Gloria
43. Touched by a Miracle
44. Does the Devil Have All the Good Music?
45. How Now Shall We Live?
Recommended Reading (16pp)
- Worldview:
- Harry Blamires, The Christian Mind
- Christopher Dawson, Religion and the Rise of Western Culture
- Herman Dooyeweerd, Roots of Western Culture
- T. S. Eliot, Christianity and Culture
- Willis Glover, Biblical Origins of Modern Secular Culture
- Arthur Holmes, The Making of a Christian Mind
- J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism
- J. P. Moreland, Love Your God with All Your Mind
- Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind
- Evan Runner, The Relation of the Bible to Learning
- Francis Schaeffer, *
- James Sire, The Universe Next Door
- Apologetics:
- C S Lewis, Mere Christianity
- FS, Escape From Reason
- Creation:
- Phillip Johnson, Darwin on Trial
- Michael Polanyi, Science, Faith and Society
- Life:
- Individual Choices:
- Marriage and Family:
- Education:
- Charles Malik, A Christian Critique of the University
- George Marsden, The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship
- ", The Soul of the American University
- Neighborhood:
- Work and Economics:
- Craig Gay, With Liberty and Justice for Whom?
- RJN, Doing Well and Doing Good
- Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism
- Wilhelm Roepke, A Humane Economy
- Robert Sirico, A Moral Basis for Liberty
- Ethics:
- Robert Bellah, HofH
- Gertrude Himmelfarb, The De-Moralization of Society
- C S Lewis, The Abolition of Man
- Alisdair MacIntyre, After Virtue
- Cornelius Plantinga, Not the Way Its Supposed to Be
- Law and Politics:
- Michael Alison, Christianity and Conservatism (1990)
- Hadley Arkes, First Things (1986)
- Jacques Ellul, The New Demons
- The Arts:
- Cowan/Guinness, Invitation to the Classics
- Pop Culture:
- *, ditd
I browsed through a recent biography of Colson by ? (in SBC bkstr, by Aitken) and it indicated that the flap w/Pearcey was, believe it or not, over the relative size of their names as shown on the HNSWL book! The publishers insisted on showing Colson's name bigger, since he's better known. She asked him to intervene. He tried, but the publisher wouldn't back down. Colson mainains he couldn't do anything more. Pearcey felt he didn't do enough and, in effect, stole credit from her (yikes, Christians w/big egos!?).