In their book “The Faith: What Christians Believe, Why They Believe It, and Why It Matters,” Chuck Colson and Harold Fickett wrote, “Knowing God is and He has spoken, enables the Christian to affirm that there is truth, an ultimate reality that begins with God and extends throughout his creation.”
As Christians, Colson and Fickett go on to argue, we believe that we can know truth, that is, “the way things really are,” through nature, reason, conscience, and preeminently through the Bible, the revealed Word of God.
The Bible is the bedrock of Christian faith, Christian spirituality, and Christian worldview. As theologian David Wells wrote in his book, “God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams,” “Without this transcendent Word in its life, the church has no rudder, no compass, no provisions. Without the Word, it has no capacity to stand outside its culture, to detect and wrench itself free from the seductions of modernity. Without the Word, the church has no meaning.”
Wells could have added, without the Word of God the church has no worldview beyond the relativistic post-modernity in which we find ourselves living. Without the truth of the Bible, we Christians are just as confused and lost as everyone else.
That’s why we at the Colson Center take the Bible very seriously. It is the truth God has revealed to us for salvation. And that’s why I’m trilled that my friend, Dr. Jim Tonkowich, has begun writing our daily Worldview Bible devotional series. Jim is an author, speaker, and scholar with a long history of worldview thinking—including his years working with Chuck Colson as Managing Editor of BreakPoint. Trained as a pastor, Jim is also a capable and careful Bible interpreter.
The intent of Worldview Bible is to approach the Scriptures devotionally, but from a worldview perspective, looking at story and structure.
Every Worldview Bible devotion begins with story in order to understand what the text means. That’s primarily because a biblical text had a specific meaning for the author and his original audience—people whose culture is removed from us today. What was the biblical writer talking about and what truth is he communicating?
Once a text’s meaning is established, the Worldview Bible goes on to talk about how that truth fits into the structure of a Christian worldview. How does it help us answer the basic worldview questions?—“Where did we come from and who are we?” “What has gone wrong with the world?” “What can we do to fix it?” and “How now shall we live?”
For the next months, we’ll focus on Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. In that letter, Paul addressed church divisions, moral laxity, church discipline, compromise with the culture, and the worldview differences between the elites of the day and what he calls “the foolishness” of “Jesus Christ and him crucified.”
If this sounds familiar to you, it’s because while the ancient setting of Paul’s letter differs from our own, we still struggle with the same issues today.
Now understand that Worldview Bible is not a substitute for more substantive devotions and Bible study. Instead Worldview Bible is a quick daily reminder of the connection between God’s truth revealed in Scripture and God’s truth lived with a Christian worldview. I think it’s best read in the middle of the workday, when we need to regain our bearings and remember what really matters most.
Why not head over to ColsonCenter.org and read today’s installment right now? Well, unless you’re driving, of course. Then it can wait till that first coffee break at work or until you get home.
BreakPoint is a Christian worldview ministry that seeks to build and resource a movement of Christians committed to living and defending Christian worldview in all areas of life. Begun by Chuck Colson in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today’s news and trends via radio, interactive media, and print. Today BreakPoint commentaries, co-hosted by Eric Metaxas and John Stonestreet, air daily on more than 1,200 outlets with an estimated weekly listening audience of eight million people. Feel free to contact us at BreakPoint.org where you can read and search answers to common questions.
Eric Metaxas is a co-host of BreakPoint Radio and a best-selling author whose biographies, children's books, and popular apologetics have been translated into more than a dozen languages.
Photo courtesy: Wikimedia Commons
Publication date: October 23, 2015