Let’s continue with more from Nancy Pearcey’s book Total Truth. Good stuff here.

Pearcey says we can use the same three-part format (see previous blog post) to compare worldviews.  Creation refers to ultimate origins (where did all come from?  how did we get here?).  Every worldview will also offer a counterpart to the fall, an explanation of the source of evil and suffering (what has gone wrong with the world?  why is there warfare and conflict?).  Finally, every worldview has to instill hope by offering a vision of redemption — a way to reverse the fall and set the world right again.

As an example, she turns to Marxism.  Regarding creation, Marxists believe matter itself is the creative power.  The fall, according to Marx, was the creation of private property, bringing about all the evils of exploitation and of class struggle.  Redemption, for Marxists, involves destroying private ownership of property.  This explains why Marxism has such widespread influence today even though it never produces the classless society it claims.  It taps into a deep religious hunger for redemption.

The second example comes from New Age thought.  The origin of all things is a universal, spiritual essence.  The source of evil and suffering is our sense of individuality, and we solve the problem by being reunited with this essence.

This is the first part of Total Truth.  Pearcey has shed light on the secular/sacred dichotomy that restricts Christianity to the realm of religious truth, which creates double minds and fragmented lives.  She tries to overcome this by training Christians to come up with a biblically based worldview using the structural elements of creation, fall, and redemption.

I’ll look at Part Two of her book, which zeroes in on creation with a focus on Darwinian evolution. In the meantime, I hope we all think about how we can live whole lives, having brought Christianity into both the public and the private aspects of our existence.