Nancy Pearcey
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.Collection: Marriage
Competition is always a good thing. It forces us to do our best. A monopoly renders people complacent and satisfied with mediocrity.Collection: Good
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.Collection: Christmas
Urban areas tend to attract members of the 'knowledge class' - people who work with ideas, data, information.Collection: Knowledge
Beginning under the Roman Empire, intellectual leadership in the West had been provided by Christianity. In the middle ages, who invented the first universities - in Paris, Oxford, Cambridge? The church.Collection: Leadership
No matter how much you like your local school teacher, he or she is a government agent.Collection: Teacher
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.Collection: Attitude
The defense of marriage is the defense of freedom. Neither of which is obsolete.Collection: Freedom
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.Collection: Letting Go
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.Collection: Christian
All of science is largely formalized common sense.Collection: Common Sense
'Biblical worldview'. The term means literally a 'view of the world', a biblically informed perspective on all of reality. A worldview is like a mental map that tells you how to navigate the world effectively. It is the imprint of God's objective truth on our inner life.Collection: Mean
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.Collection: Religious
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?"Collection: Jesus
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.Collection: Feelings
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.Collection: Atheist
Darwinism has become our culture's official creation myth, protected by a priesthood as dogmatic as any religious curia.Collection: Religious
Developing a Christian worldview means submitting our entire self to God, in an act of devotion and service to Him.Collection: Christian
In many cases students are never exposed to competing ideas within their families, churches, or Christian schools, and as a result they go out into the world unprepared for the intellectual battles they are about to encounter, especially on secular college campuses.Collection: Christian
The loss of objectivity in moral thought does not lead to liberation. It leads to oppression. Secular ideologies preach liberty, but they practice tyranny.Collection: Loss
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.Collection: Mean
In studies asking why young people left their family religion, their most frequent response was unanswered doubts and questions. The researchers were surprised: They expected to hear stories of broken relationships and wounded feelings. But the top reason given by young adults was that they did not get answers to their questions.Collection: Asking Why
The most fundamental decision we all face over the course of our lives is what we will recognize as the ultimate reality, the uncaused source and cause of our existence. Everything else in our worldview depends on that initial decision. The Bible speaks of this foundational choice in terms of who or what we worship. We must all answer the challenge Joshua issued to the Israelites as they were poised to enter the Promised Land: "Choose this day whom you will serve" (Josh. 24:15).Collection: Reality
The human mind inherently seeks intelligible order. Thus the conviction that such an order exists to be found is a crucial assumption.Collection: Order
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.Collection: Christian
Artists are often the barometers of society.Collection: Artist
Can reason be an idol? Certainly. The philosophy of rationalism puts human reason in the place of God as the source and standard of all truth.Collection: Philosophy
Yet church youth groups rarely teach apologetics, majoring instead on games and goodies.Collection: Games
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.Collection: Philosophy
Schools ought to teach students to challenge secular ideologies masquerading as science in the classroom.Collection: School
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.Collection: Christian
There are unprecedented numbers of movements for human rights and freedoms. But the dominant worldviews in academia, like materialism and naturalism, deny the reality of freedom, reducing humans to robots. So where does the concept of human rights come from?Collection: Reality
Clearly, Enlightenment thinkers were seeking a God substitute.Collection: Enlightenment
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."Collection: Law
But things that are intrinsically good can also become idols-if we allow them to take over any of God's functions in our lives.Collection: Idols
Only a God of love is fully personal. Thus the Trinity is crucial for maintaining a fully personal concept of God. As theologian Robert Letham writes, “Only a God who is triune can be personal.... A solitary monad cannot love and, since it cannot love, neither can it be a person.” Therefore it “has no way to explain or even to maintain human personhood.Collection: Writing
We do not create marriage from scratch. Instead, in the elegant language of the marriage ceremony, we 'enter into the holy estate of matrimony.Collection: Scratches
Morality is always derivative. It stems from one's worldview.Collection: Derivatives
The best organizations regard the nurturing of their employees as a spiritual mandate.Collection: Spiritual
Because humans are capable of choosing, the first cause that created them must have a will.Collection: Firsts
Knowing the truth has meaning only as a first step to living the truth day by day.Collection: Knowing
Urban areas tend to attract members of the 'knowledge class' - people who work with ideas, data, informationCollection: Data
The only way to drive out bad culture is with good cultureCollection: Culture
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.Collection: Trying
To use biblical language, those who exchange the glory of God for something in creation will also exchange the image of God for something in creation - and because it is something less than God, it always leads to a lower view of humanity.Collection: Biblical
The sense of all stylistic change is that the underlying view of the world changes.Collection: Views
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.Collection: Reality
No one lives like a robot. We all make choices from the moment we wake up in the morning.Collection: Morning
Because a human is a someone and not a something, the source of human life must also be a Someone - not the blind, automatic forces of nature, as philosophies like naturalism and materialism tell us.Collection: Philosophy
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.Collection: Christian