Interview with Crossway

Crossway: Why did the time seem right to write a follow-up to How Now Shall We Live?

Nancy Pearcey: As I travel around the country, I sense a real hunger for worldview thinking. In the past few decades, America has undergone a dramatic cultural decline—an epidemic of family breakdown, abortion, morally decadent entertainment, the secularization of education—a host of issues across the board. This has jolted many Christians into realizing they have a responsibility for the public culture, and they are eager to have a redemptive impact. But most don’t really know how—they have never worked out a biblical approach to politics, bioethics, entertainment, and the rest of the public arena. That’s where a worldview comes in.

Crossway: Is there such a thing as a thought unaffected by worldview? In other words, is there an unbiased, objective, completely neutral idea?

Nancy Pearcey: In every field, there are certain areas that are more “worldview sensitive” than others. Take something as straightforward as mathematics. Certainly everyone agrees on basic math facts, such as 5 + 7 = 12. But if you ask what kind of truth mathematics gives us, you’ll find that people suddenly diverge. Christians believe that the world was created by a rational God, and that explains why it has a mathematical structure. But some of the ancient Greeks, the Pythagoreans (who gave us the Pythagorean theorem), thought numbers were divine and actually worshipped them. At the other end of the spectrum, many contemporary philosophers of mathematics say that it is merely a social construction—that we make the rules of math just like we make up the rules of baseball. The rules are not true or false, they’re just the way we play the game. If something as objective and certain as mathematics is affected by one’s worldview, then every field includes at least some basic worldview principles that shape its dominant views and theories.

Crossway: Is there a Christian perspective on everything?

Nancy Pearcey: Certainly. Every part of creation is caught up in the drama of Creation, Fall, and Redemption, which means it cannot be truly understood apart from those great turning points in cosmic history. Everything came from the hand of God, everything has been affected by the Fall, and everything will participate in the final redemption. (That’s why Scripture calls it a new heavens and a new earth.) The way to craft a worldview perspective is to ask: What was God’s original purpose for it? How has it been twisted and distorted by the Fall? And how can we work with God in bringing about redemption and restoration?

Crossway: What does it mean to “think Christianly”?

Nancy Pearcey: It means we are no longer content to live divided lives, with faith tucked into a separate realm of church and prayer and Bible study, while work and leisure activities are treated as neutral or faith-free zones. That kind of bifurcated life cannot open us up to the full power and joy that God intends for us. Thinking Christianly means developing a biblically based outlook that applies across the board. Once we grasp the meaning of the Cultural Mandate, we will realize that every aspect of life can be offered up as service to God and to His great purpose in the world.

Crossway: How does worldview thinking benefit a person?

Nancy Pearcey: It allows the power of the gospel to permeate every aspect of your life, instead of being locked into the merely personal realm. Modern societies tend to be sharply split between public and private spheres. The public realm consists of the state, large corporations, academia, and so on—which claim to operate by principles that are “scientific” and “value-free.” As a result, “values” have been relegated to the private sphere of family, church, and personal relationships. What this means, though, is that the gospel is restricted to our private life, and is robbed of its power to transform entire cultures and societies.

Crossway: You discuss something called the “fact/value split” and say that is among the most powerful weapons used to delegitimize the Christian perspective. Explain what this is and why it works.

Nancy Pearcey: The public/ private split tends to be reflected in the world of ideas as the fact/value split. “Facts” are public truth—scientific, rational, and binding on everyone. “Values” are private preferences—based on personal experience. The reason it is so important to recognize this division is that it’s the most common way Christians are disempowered in the public square. Most secularists are too politically savvy to attack religion directly or debunk it as false. So what do they do? They relegate it to the “value” realm—which takes it out of the categories of true and false altogether. That way, they can assure us that they “respect” our religion, while at the same time denying that it has anything to do with real knowledge.

Crossway: In your mind, what has caused such a sharp distinction between private faith and public action?

Nancy Pearcey: The linchpin is Darwinian naturalism. If natural forces are perfectly capable of doing all the creating, then there’s nothing left for God to do. He’s out of a job. And if the existence of God serves no explanatory or cognitive function, then all that’s left is an emotional function. We believe in God because it makes us feel good. So long as Darwinian naturalism is considered “fact,” then religion will be relegated to a subjective “value.” I recently read an article by Daniel Dennett, a prolific defender of Darwinism, who wrote that atheists “don’t believe in ghosts or elves or the Easter Bunny or God.” That about sums it up: If God is not the Creator, then He is on the same level as the Easter Bunny.

Crossway: Why is it so important to develop a Christian worldview today?

Nancy Pearcey: Our parents’ generation grew up when American culture largely accepted Christian morality, which meant believers did not stand out very much from the crowd. It was easy for them to think it was enough just to be “respectable.” But today’s young people are growing up in an environment that is drastically more hostile to Christian truth, and if they do not develop a fully Christian worldview, they will be swept away. It is necessary to be much more intentional about our faith today.

Crossway: What risks do Christians take when they segregate their faith as something sacred and personal?

Nancy Pearcey: Christians have largely accepted a trade-off: As long as we are allowed to have our Bible studies and prayer meetings, we have conceded the content of the world of ideas to the secularists. And then we wonder why there is no room for a Christian perspective in the work place or politics or the public schools. We wonder why entertainment has become so godless and immoral. We wonder why our children go off to college and lose their Christian faith. We thought it was enough to have a “heart” religion without a “head” religion, and now we are reaping the bitter consequences.

Crossway: What are some principles for integrating faith into every aspect of life?

Nancy Pearcey: To craft a Christian worldview in any field, we can use the basic structural elements of Creation, Fall, and Redemption. Starting with Creation means we ask: How was this originally created? What was God’s original purpose for it? Taking account of the Fall means asking: How was it been perverted by sin and false worldviews? How have humans marred and misused this portion of God’s good creation? And Redemption gives direction for a plan of action: How can we help set things right and restore them to God’s original purpose? How can we be instruments of divine grace to overcome evil with good? Believers sometimes treat redemption as a one-time conversion event, and it certainly begins that way. But what we’re talking about here is an on-going process of restoration and renewal, bringing all of creation back under the Lordship of Christ.