Nancy Pearcey Quotes

A worldview is not the same things a formal philosophy, otherwise it would only be for philosophers. Even ordinary people have a set of convictions about how reality functions and how they should live. Some convictions are conscious while others are unconscious but together they form a consistent picture of reality.

The Christian message does not begin with "accept Christ as your Savior"; it begins with "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth". The Bible teaches that God is the sole source of the entire created order. No other gods compare with Him; no natural forces exist on their own; nothing receives its nature or existence from another source. Thus, His Word, or laws, or creation ordinances give the world its order and structure. God's creative world is the source of the laws of physical nature (natural sciences), human nature (ethics, politics, economics, aesthetics) and even logic. That's why Psalm 119:91 says, "all things are your servants". There is no philosophically or spiritually neutral subject matter.

The fact/value split has taught most people to put religion in the same category. This explains why Christians are often accused of imposing their views, no matter how gentle and polite they may be in person. Christians intend to communicate life-giving, objective truths about the real world. But their statements are interpreted as attempts to impose personal preferences. For the secularist, then, Christians are not merely wrong or mistaken. They are violating the rules of the game in a democratic society.

Beginning with sin instead of creation is like trying to read a book by opening it in the middle: You don't know the characters and can't make sense of the plot.

We tend to have a limited concept of spiritual death as saying no only to things we want or covet
our guilty pleasures and selfish ambitions. But in reality, it means dying inwardly to whatever has control over us. The thing that really controls us may not be what we want. It may be what we fear. Fear can dominate our lives just as strongly as desire.

Pro-lifers have long been castigated for bringing private values into the public square. But actually it is the pro-abortion position that is based on merely personal views and values.

Reductionism is like a kid who argues that whatever does not fit into his toy box is not a toy.

The core of the evolution controversy can thus be phrased in simple terms: Did mind create matter? Or did matter give rise to mind? According to a theistic worldview, mind is primary. It is the fundamental creative force in the universe (whether God created the world quickly by fiat or slowly by a gradual process). Darwin reversed things. According to his theory, matter is the primary creative force, and mind emerged only very late in evolutionary history.10

The first step in conforming our intellect to God's truth is to die to our vanity, pride, and craving for respect from colleagues and the public. We must let go of the worldly motivations that drive us, praying to be motivated solely by a genuine desire to submit our minds to God's Word - and then to use that knowledge in service to others.

For many women today, on a personal level, the problem is not male dominance so much as male desertion.

To adapt a phrase, idols have consequences.

The biological structure of our bodies is not some evolutionary accident.

Many journalists are influenced by a myopic multiculturalism that is suspicious of anything Western, while giving the benefit of the doubt to non-Western societies.

ironically the term tolerance is used to justify intolerance toward Christianity.

Morality is always derivative. It stems from one's worldview.

The best organizations regard the nurturing of their employees as a spiritual mandate.

Literary theory has become a parody of science, generating its own arcane jargon. In the process, tragically, it discourages love of literature for its own sake.

The genius of the American Founders was to create an intricate system of balanced powers both within the state and between state and society - a system that has fostered unprecedented political, social, and intellectual freedom.

Having a Christian worldview means being utterly convinced that biblical principles are not only true but also work better in the grit and grime of the real world.

Most of the early modern scientists were Christians; they believed that matter was *not* preexisting, but had come from the hand of God. Thus, it had no power to resist His will but would obey he rules He had laid down- with mathematical precision.

Knowing the truth has meaning only as a first step to living the truth day by day.

Materialists try to live in the lower story NON-MATERIAL WORLD Subjective, Superstitious, Mental Constructs MATERIAL WORLD Objective, Scientific, Knowable Facts

The defense of marriage is the defense of freedom. Neither of which is obsolete.

An idol is not necessarily something concrete, like a golden calf. It can also be something abstract, like matter. Is matter part of the created order? Sure it is. So the philosophy of materialism qualifies as an idol in the biblical sense.

The Rosetta Stone of Christian social thought is the Trinity.

Urban areas tend to attract members of the 'knowledge class' - people who work with ideas, data, information.

As Schaeffer once wrote, there is nothing uglier than theological orthodoxy without understanding or compassion.

Visit a typical science classroom and you will discover far more than empirical facts being taught. The dominant worldview among scientific intellectuals is evolutionary naturalism, which holds that humans are essentially biochemical machines.

Ironically, moral relativists often even pride themselves on being morally superior to others.

liberals have no compelling truth, no 'good news,' to proclaim.

It is clear now why Christianity played a significant role in launching the scientific revolution in the first place. Only a biblical worldview provides an adequate epistemology for science. First, a rational God created the world with an intelligible structure, and second, he created humans in his image. In the words of historian Richard Cohen, science required the concept of a "rational creator of all things," along with the corollary that "we lesser rational beings might, by virtue of that Godlike rationality, be able to decipher the laws of nature." Theologian Christopher Kaiser states the same idea succinctly: the early scientists assumed that "the same Logos that is responsible for its ordering is also reflected in human reason.

When the only form of cultural commentary Christians offer is moral condemnation, no wonder we come across to non-believers as angry and scolding.

How do we break free from the dichotomies that limit God's power in our lives? How can love and service to God become living sparks that light up our whole lives? By discovering a worldview perspective that unifies *both* secular and sacred, public and private, within a single framework. By understanding that all honest work and creative enterprise can be a valid calling from the Lord. And by realizing that there are biblical principles that apply to every field of work. These insights will fill us with purpose, and we will begin to experience the joy that comes from relating to God in and through every dimension of our lives.

A Christian approach to any field needs to be both critical and constructive. We cannot simply borrow from the results of secular scholarship as though that were spiritually neutral territory discovered by people whose minds are completely open and objective- that is, *as though the fall had never happened*.

If people deny free will, then when ordering at a restaurant they should say, "Just bring me whatever the laws of nature have determined that I will get."

A part is always too limited to explain the whole. You might picture a worldview as trying to stuff the entire universe into a box. Invariably, something will stick out of the box. Its categories are too "small" to explain the world.

Clearly, Enlightenment thinkers were seeking a God substitute.

Yet church youth groups rarely teach apologetics, majoring instead on games and goodies.

Many Christians with Ph.D.'s have simply absorbed a two-track approach to their subject, treating science or sociology or history as though it consisted of religiously neutral knowledge, where biblical truth has nothing important to say.

The whole creation of God preaches, as Jonathan Edwards

The human mind inherently seeks intelligible order. Thus the conviction that such an order exists to be found is a crucial assumption.

Christianity is saving truth and it's sanctifying truth, but we believe that it's Total Truth. It is the truth about every aspect of life from economics to masculinity to marriage. God has the right view on all of these things.

children tend to hold a concept of God even if their parents are atheists.

Homeschoolers are the ultimate do-it-yourselfers. They are self-motivated and self-directed, independent-minded and creative. They are not content to turn their education of their children over to the government.

Romantics deified the imagination;

I began asking, 'How can we know Christianity is true?' Sadly, none of the adults in my life offered an answer. Eventually I decided Christianity must not have any answers, and I became an agnostic.

Schools ought to teach students to challenge secular ideologies masquerading as science in the classroom.

The Tea Party has imparted political energy to common-sense American constitutionalism.

Modern secular thought has its own dualism: It treats only the physical world as knowable and testable, while locking everything else - mind, spirit, morality, meaning - into the realm of private, subjective feelings. The so-called fact/value split.

America has always welcomed anyone willing to assimilate to its national character. But radical Islam rejects assimilation and is bent on the conquest of our national character.

In Gnosticism, the physical world did not ultimately matter - which meant physical suffering did not matter either. Seeking 'enlightenment' meant cultivating an attitude of detachment, even indifference.

The loss of objectivity in moral thought does not lead to liberation. It leads to oppression. Secular ideologies preach liberty, but they practice tyranny.

Because humans are capable of choosing, the first cause that created them must have a will.

The costs of marriage breakdown are borne by the entire society, and therefore it is reasonable for the entire society to demand support for marriage - to insist that it is privileged both culturally and legally.

If Christians do not develop their own tools of analysis , then when issues come up that they want to understand, they'll reach over and borrow someone else's tools- whatever concepts are generally accepted in their general field or in the culture at large.
But when they do that, Os Guiness writes, they don't realize that "They are borrowing not an isolated tool, but a whole philosophical toolbox laden with tools which have their own particular bias to every problem." They may even end up absorbing an entire set of alien principles without even realizing it.
In other words, not only do we fail to be salt and light to a lost culture, but we ourselves may end up being shaped by our culture.

Americans have grown impatient with the relentless politicizing of every area of life.

Many people operate as though the definition of faith were, Don't ask questions, just believe. They quote Jesus himself, who taught his followers to have the faith of a child (Mark 10:15). But I once heard Francis Schaeffer respond by saying, "Don't you realize how many questions children ask?"

No matter how much you like your local school teacher, he or she is a government agent.

When people commit themselves to a certain vision of reality, it becomes their ultimate explainer. It serves to interpret the universe for them, to guide their moral decisions, to give meaning and purpose to life, and all the other functions normally associated with a religion.

All of science is largely formalized common sense.

Christian adults need to think about talking to our own children as a form of cross-cultural missions. Cultural change happens so quickly that teens are exposed to ideas and worldviews very different from those of previous generations.

A biblically based worldview is capable of affirming the best insights of secular philosophies without ever falling into reductionism.

The word 'tolerance' once meant we all have the right to argue rationally for our deepest convictions in the public arena. Now it means those convictions are not even subject to rational debate.

During the first 13 centuries after the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, no one thought of setting up a creche to celebrate Christmas. The pre-eminent Christian holiday was Easter, not Christmas.

Many of us don't even know what it means to have a Christian perspective on our work. Oh, we know that being a Christian means being ethical on the job- as Saly put it, "no lying and cheating." But the work itself is typically defined in secular terms as bringing home a paycheck, climbing the career ladder, building a professional reputation.

The gospel is like a caged lion,' said the great baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon. 'It does not need to be defended, it simply needs to be let out of it's cage' Today, the cage is our accommodation to the secular/sacred split that reduces Christianity to a matter of personal belief. To unlock the cage, we need to become utterly convinced that, as Francis Schaeffer said, Christianity is not merely religious truth, it is total truth- truth about the whole of reality.

Redemption is as comprehensive as Creation and Fall. God does not save our souls while leaving our minds to function on their own. He redeems the whole person. Conversion is meant to give new direction to our thoughts, emotions, wills and habits.

My aim in homeschooling is to give my children the ability to be an adult learner, a skill set that will last the rest of their lives.

In every historical period, the religious groups that grow most rapidly are those that set believers at odds with the surrounding culture.

The Christian religion, hand in hand with various philosophical outlooks, has motivated, sanctioned, and shaped large portions of the Western scientific heritage. Modern Christians ought to drink deeply at the well of historical precedent. If we do, we will never feel intimidated by positivists and others who deny that religion has any role in genuine scholarship.
In the broad scope of history, that claim is itself a temporary aberration-a mere blip on the screen, already beginning to fade.

How do we know whether we are producing life or death? By whether our lives exhibit the beauty of God's character. When people see the way you live, are they drawn closer to God or are they alienated from God? When they observe the way you treat others, do they find the gospel more credible or less credible? That is the standard by which we should measure our actions. Christians are called to be "life-producing machines,

The contemporary design argument does not rest, however, on gaps in our knowledge but rather on the growth in our knowledge due to the revolution in molecular biology. Information theory has taught us that nature exhibits two types of order. The first type is produced by natural causes-shiny crystals, hexagonal patterns in oil, whirlpools in the bathtub. But the second type-the complex structure of the DNA molecule-is not produced by any natural processes known to experience.

When a worldview exchanges the Creator for something in creation, it will also exchange a high view of humans made in God's image for a lower view of humans made in the image of something in creation. Humans are not self-existent, self-sufficient, or self-defining. They did not create themselves. They are finite, dependent, contingent beings. As a result, they will always look outside themselves for their ultimate identity and meaning. They will define human nature by its relationship to the divine - however they define divinity. Those who do not get their identity from a transcendent Creator will get it from something in creation.

Christianity is the key that fits the lock of the universe.

As with every aspect of our sanctification, the renewal of the mind may be painful and difficult. It requires hard work and discipline, inspired by a sacrificial love for Christ and a burning desire to build up His body, the Church. Developing a Christian worldview means submitting our entire self to God, in an act of devotion and service to Him.

There is no longer a Christian mind." -Blamires
What did Blamires mean? To say that there is no Christian mind means that believers may be highly educated in terms of technical proficiency, and yet have no biblical worldview for interpreting the subject matter of their field.
"We speak of the 'modern mind', and of the 'scientific mind', using that word 'mind' of a collectively accepted set of notions and attitudes," Blamires explains.
But we have lost the Christian mind. There is now no shared, biblically based set of assumptions on subjects like law, education, economics, politics, science, or the arts. As a moral being, the Christian follows the biblical ethic. As a spiritual being, he prays and attends worship services. But as a thinking Christian, he has succumbed to secularism.

The whole point of building theoretical systems is to explain what humans know by pre-theoretical experience. That is the starting point for any philosophy. That is the data it seeks to explain. If it fails to explain the data of experience, then it has failed the test. It has been falsified.

Atheists often denounce Christianity as harsh and negative. But in reality it offers a much more positive view of the human person than any competing religion or worldview. It is so appealing that adherents of other worldviews keep free-loading the parts they like best.

Competition is always a good thing. It forces us to do our best. A monopoly renders people complacent and satisfied with mediocrity.

You don't have to be a Christian to recognize that materialism does not match reality. Materialism is not true to universal human experience - what we all know about ourselves.

The great historian of religion Martin Marty once said every religion serves two functions: First, it is a message of personal salvation telling is how to get right with God; and second, it is a lens for interpreting the world.
Historically, evangelicals have been good at the first functions- at "saving souls". But they have not been nearly so good at helping people to interpret the world around them- at providing a set of interrelated concepts that function as a lens to give a biblical view of areas like science, politics, economics, or bioethics.
As Marty puts it, evangelicals have typically "accentuated personal piety and individual salvation, leaving men to their own devices to interpret the world around them.

No one lives like a robot. We all make choices from the moment we wake up in the morning.

A school superintendent once told me that most educators define "a Christian teacher" as strictly in terms of personal behavior: things like setting a good example and showing concern for the students. Almost none define it in terms of conveying a biblical worldview on the subjects they teach, whether literature, science, social studies, or the arts.
In other words, they are concerned about being a Christian *in* their work, but they don't think in terms of having a biblical framework *on* the work itself.

Christians must go beyond criticizing the degradation of American culture, roll up their sleeves, and get to work on positive solutions. The only way to drive out bad culture is with good culture.

When God redeems us, He releases us from the guilt and power of sin, and restores us to our full humanity, so that we can once again carry out the tasks for which we were created. Because of Christ's redemption on the cross, our work takes on a new aspect as well- it becomes a means of sharing in His redemptive purposes. In cultivating creation, we not only recover our original purpose, but also bring a redemptive force to reverse the evil and corruption introduced by the fall.

In many churches, the message of justification- how to get right with God- is preached over and over again. But much less is said about sanctification- how to live after you're converted.

Religion is no longer considered the source of serious truth claims that could potentially conflict with public agendas. The private realm has been reduced to an "innocuous 'play area'", says Peter Berger, where religion is acceptable for people who need that kind of crutch- but where it won't upset any important applecarts in the larger world of politics and economics.

Liberalism denies that there is any fixed or universal human nature.

What kind of ministry is that, just talking to people? Criticism directed at Francis Schaeffer's plan to open an obscure spot in the Swiss Alps to those who came with questions.

The sense of all stylistic change is that the underlying view of the world changes.

Darwinism has become our culture's official creation myth, protected by a priesthood as dogmatic as any religious curia.

The most consistent versions of materialism deny the reality of anything beyond matter - no soul, no spirit, no will, no mind. This is called reductionism: Humans are reduced to biochemical machines.