Every spring I teach a second year Bible College class called “Apologetics and Christian Thought,” which I abbreviate “ACT.” I tend to invest the first session of any course in something other than syllabus recitation; students are rarely more attentive in class than they are on day one. For ACT my day one activity involves two (very) large red helium balloons.Each balloon bears the statement “The Bible Is God’s Word.” One floats alone, while the other is attached to several strings, each containing some key element of worldview. I ask students for their “fundamental questions or observations that everyone must answer.” They always come up with some item I haven’t considered, but here’s a sampling:
- Existence– why is there something rather than nothing?
- The origin of the universe– where did this all come from?
- The reliability of our senses– how can we trust them?
- The nature of humanity– in contradistinction to the rest of creation
- The phenomenon of Scripture– even if you don’t believe it, it exists
- Right/wrong
- Beauty
- Order/purpose in creation
- The source of fundamental human life
- Human choice or moral agency
And there is a lot more. I then pop both balloons. One balloon more or less disappears, but the balloon attached to all of those worldview elements leaves behind a tangled mess. In other words, the one popping the “balloon” of the Bible being God’s Word has a lot of explaining to do. It is a false choice. The world (and everything in it) is the Lord’s (Psalm 24:1). Imperfect, sinful, and fallen as we are, we see the world as it really is. There is a reason why the first scientists were Christians in awe of what God’s hand had wrought. As Nancy Pearcey (author) says, “The purpose of a worldview is to explain our observations, not to explain them away.” Christians have plenty of questions, but we also have great answers to life’s most important questions. We need not– we dare not– shy away.
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