Right On! The Nancy Pearcey interview

The following exerpt is from an interview with an incredibly brilliant, Christian evangelical wordview-focused intellectual mind, Nancy Pearcey. She is the author of a new book, TOTAL TRUTH. from which much of the questions asked of her stem. This woman so closely mirrors my own thoughts on some more prominent topics of the Christian worldview that I find myself audibly breathing deep sighs of contented JOY as I read.

I am in awe that God so finely tunes minds such as Mrs. Pearsey's to be able to ponder and express so clearly many of the exact thoughts we have so often muddled around in our own craniums, but which we've left unexpressed out of inability or sheer distraction. And with such eloquence, evidence, and conviction. Christianity is not for those who check their minds and intellectual contemplation at the door. It is THRILLING to read and be challenged and taught by the wisdom of this woman. I find comfort in the intelligence of others who will inherit the Kingdom of heaven alongside me one day. Her words cause me new awareness of my own anemic capacity in some intellectual arenas in which faith is somehow pitted against science or modernity. I want to be more capable, more aware, more wise, more...

The complete text of her interview appears here, and is worth reading in it's ENTIRETY, especially for those who so often fail to see God's truth across the board, not limited ot science, politics, environment, protection of life, etc. She astutue, learned, wise, and humblingly intelligent in her analysis and presentation of facts and Christian apologetics from a worldview perspective.

I offer the following snippet to whet your appetite. Please let me know your thoughts:

Catez: One of the points that you make in Total Truth is that evangelicals have tended to "put all their eggs" in one basket by embracing political activism. Some people say all Christians should be involved politically and some say we shouldn't be involved at all. Is it as clear-cut as either of those two positions? Would you say our calling is a determinant in deciding our position?

Nancy: Working out an intentional Christian worldview certainly includes a biblical view of politics, but that it is only one part of our cultural engagement. We are also called to have a Christian worldview on economics, education, entertainment, and every other area of life. Of course, we all have to specialize in some field or profession. Because I live in the Washington, D.C., area, many of my friends are political professionals. But they are keenly aware that they are part of the larger Body of Christ, and that cultural renewal requires all of us to be faithful in the sphere of influence and responsibility where God has called us.In fact, I would go further and say that if we are not working out an overarching, comprehensive Christian worldview that applies across the board, we will not be effective even in politics. Why? Because we will get caught up in sheer activism. We may win elections, but we will not know how to address the deeper, underlying ideas that shape our culture. We will always be reacting to the latest outrage instead of acting intelligently in ways that establish justice and protect the public good.

Catez: Recently I had an interesting discussion on the use of the word "objective". Total Truth is about having an objective view and approach to the world I think. Does objective just mean factual and rational?

Nancy: Western thought is divided into two contradictory streams, often called the fact/value split. Francis Schaeffer used the imagery of two stories in a building - the lower story is what we know by science and reason, which is supposedly objective and publicly verifiable (fact), while the upper story is the realm of religion and morality, which has been relegated to subjective private experience (value). Once we understand this pervasive split, we will realize that "objectivism" and "subjectivism" are each only part of the story. As Christians, we want the complete truth.This has become an issue today among Christians who adopt the label postmodern. They tell us that the church must leave the modernist age behind and move forward into postmodernism, or risk becoming irrelevant. But this is based on the mistaken idea that modernism and postmodernism are sequential stages in history. In reality, they coexist within the same two-track divide I just talked about, which is endemic in Western thought. Modernism remains firmly entrenched in the lower level, in the hard sciences and the world of politics, finance, and industry. (No one designs an airplane by postmodern principles.) And postmodernism is simply the current form of the upper level. The two-realm theory of truth can be diagrammed like this:

POSTMODERNISM

Private, Subjective, Personal

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MODERNISM

Public, Objective, Rational

This is not to deny that something new is taking place in our day. But a more accurate way to picture the change is that the two stories are moving farther apart from one another. In the lower story, modernism is growing increasingly materialistic and reductionistic. Today many scientists consider humans to be nothing but mechanisms - complex data-processing machines. At the same time in the upper story, postmodernism is growing ever more subjective and relativistic, reducing truth to private, individual experience ("true for me, but not true for you"). As Christians, our goal should be to reject this dichotomy altogether. All truth is God's truth, in every area or field. God has created a multi-dimensional world with many forms of truth - scientific truth, religious truth, moral truth, mathematical truth, artistic truth, and so on. That's why the title of my book declares that Christianity is Total Truth.

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Please visit CATEZ's blog for complete text of this fascinating interview. Yahoo! Another deeply wise, intelligent, and meek WOG.

So inspired am I by her latest book and this interview, I could not resist sharing this with you.

RIGHT ON!