Review: How Now Shall We Live? Chuck Colson & Nancy Pearcey

by T. C. Pinckney                                                                                           Vol. XIII, No. 3, March 2000

At the end of the book the authors write, "Our goal has been to give you the tools to analyze and respond to false worldviews, and to defend and live out the glorious truth of the Christian faith." They have done an excellent job of just that.

The book is divided into five "Parts": Worldview: Why It Matters; Creation: Where Did We come From; The Fall: What Has Gone Wrong with the world?; Redemption: What Can We do to Fix It?; and Restoration: How Now Shall We Live?. As you can see from these titles, the book has an ambitious purpose. It comes as close as possible in one volume to achieving its mission. And it does so in an interesting, easily readable style. One device that sustains the level of human interest is that throughout there are short chapters which recount someone's personal experience illustrating the point to be made in the next chapter.

Some brief quotes will, perhaps, give you the flavor of the book. "The church's singular failure in recent decades has been the failure to see Christianity as a life system, or worldview, that governs every area of existence." "Naturalistic scientists try to give the impression that they are fair-minded and objective, implying that religious people are subjective and biased in favor of their personal beliefs. But this is a ruse, for naturalism is as much a philosophy, a worldview, a personal belief system as any religion is." "We must be clear about what is at stake here. As long as Darwinism reigns in our schools and elite culture, the Christian worldview will be considered the madwoman in the attic -- irrational and unbelievable. That's why we can no longer allow naturalists to treat science as a sanctuary where their personal philosophy reigns free from challenge."

"In any society, only two forces hold the sinful nature in check: the restraint of conscience or the restraint of the sword. The less the citizens have of the former, the more the state must employ the latter." "... the reality of hell is what makes our choices significant and what grants us full human dignity. For if our actions had no ultimate consequences, they would be meaningless. Furthermore, there would be no final moral accountability and therefore no reason for acting morally, which in turn means there would be no basis for a civilized society."

"If we deny the reality of the virtues that make us superior to the beasts, then those virtues wither away, reducing us to the level of beasts. Thus while science has created technological advances that make life easier and healthier, when science is confused with the philosophy of scientific naturalism, it destroys the very things that make life worth living."

How Now Shall We Live? (Tyndale House) is much more than can be described in a short review. I strongly recommend that each Baptist Banner reader get a copy and read it. And get your teenagers to read it. I presume that every Christian bookstore carries it. If yours doesn't, suggest that they get it. This is an important book.