Does a fish know it’s wet? When one is born in water, goes to school in water, marries in water and raises little fish in water before dying in water, despite its ever presence, the water just isn’t noticed. So it is with each of us. We come into a world that is the only world we’ve ever known. How we know it, its meaning and its message, is shaped by it. And it’s so hard to miss.
Since the work of Abraham Kuyper, and more recently Francis Schaeffer, the evangelical church has grown conscious of the importance of developing a Christian worldview. That’s a good thing, one I’m in favor of. It’s one of the reasons I wrote Tearing Down Strongholds. The devil understands the strategic importance of our little gray cells, and so invades our brains, intent on helping us think his thoughts after him. We must be conscious of the war, prepare for the war, and fight the war. But we must also beware the sleeper cells in our gray cells.
Consider this truth. Where does the Bible command us to develop a sound Christian worldview? It doesn’t. It commands us to seek after wisdom. It demands we not be conformed to this world but that we renew our minds. It insists that we tear down strongholds. All of which have overlap with developing a sound Christian worldview. But “developing a sound Christian worldview” also has overlap with modernism. It, in comparison to the Biblical command to pursue wisdom, is decidedly abstract, impersonal, even amoral. Just like modernism. It implicitly affirms that we are machines, and that ideologies are programs embedded on our hard drives.
Wisdom, on the other hand, is presented in our Bibles as a beautiful woman who is to be pursued. Her value is greater than gold. She is the paragon of virtue, a guider of earnest souls. Foolishness, in contrast, isn’t merely erroneous conclusions but a seductress and a killer of the simple. She isn’t passive (mis)information but aggressive assaults.
When we think that what is wrong with the world is bad information rather than wicked hearts we demonstrate that we have already given room to the world in our minds, and in our hearts. When we think that what is wrong with the church is bad information rather than wicked hearts we prove the point once again. When we think that what ails us will be cured by more and better education, we have adopted the sacrament of the moderns. When we think the way to prepare our children for a good life is securing them credentials from the poshest educational institutions we have handed them over to the priests of the false religion of modernism. When we think the most powerful weapon to tear down the stronghold of postmodernism is a double dose of modernism we show ourselves to be all wet.
The real solution is the same as it ever was- to repent and believe the gospel. And to call on all others to do the same.