How Now Shall We Live?

A bracing challenge—just what the Christian church needs to hear in the new millennium. A very powerful book.—The Honorable Jack Kemp

"How Now Shall We Live? is truly inspiring for those who want to restore to our culture the values that made America great. It reminds us that we must not only defend what we believe, but also inspire others to give witness to the truth alongside us."—The Honorable Tom DeLay, Majority Whip, United States House of Representatives

The singular pleasure that comes from it is its absolute—learned—refusal to give any quarter to the dogged materialists who deny any possibility that there was a creator around the corner. This is a substantial book, but the reader never tires, as one might from a catechistic marathon. The arguments are cogently and readably presented.—William F. Buckley in National Review

The newest—and certainly the most important—of Charles Colson’s books . . . the essence of this book is that the Christian faith is not just a theory, not just a system, not just a framework. It is an all-consuming way of life, robustly applicable to every minute of every day of the rest of your life.—World

There is something wrong with the historical development of the evangelical mind, . . . a lopsidedness, a prodigious development of one divine gift coupled with the atrophy of another. . . . We know a great deal about saving grace, but next to nothing—though it is one of our doctrines—about common grace. The ambition of Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey is to do something about this lopsidedness, to strike a blow against the scandal of the evangelical mind. . . . A highly intelligent book, it is not ashamed to speak to ordinary folk.—First Things

"How Now Shall We Live? is brilliantly lit by its in-depth and succinct diagnosis of the modern mentality . . . an intelligent and thoroughgoing critique from a Scriptural perspective, of the American/Western culture. . . . The book is a veritable mosaic of precious intellectual gems, artistically designed by Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey. . . . This book is a virtual ‘must’ for the thinking Orthodox reader."—DOXA, a quarterly review serving the Orthodox Church

A magnum opus in the best Schaefferian tradition. It is clearly intended to be . . . a handbook for today’s Christian. . . . The authors presuppose that Christianity is more than just a religion of personal salvation: it involves a total world-and-life view.—Christianity Today

A very good and much needed book. . . . Colson argues that Christianity isn’t a private faith but a public worldview that, for believers, permeates politics, the arts, education, science and culture.—Insight

An elegantly written tutorial on adopting a biblical worldview and the discipline of thinking Christianly.—Good News

"I’d like to recommend a book. It’s How Now Shall We Live? by Charles Colson, the Watergate guy who got religion while in prison. . . . Now I don’t agree with everything Colson says, but the importance of the book is that it raises a question every American ought to face and then answer to his or her own satisfaction: What is your world view?" —Charley Reese, nationally syndicated columnist.

One of Ten Books Every Preacher Should Read This Year.—Preaching

Deeply troubled by the lack of biblical literacy within the American Church, this is Colson’s heroic effort to enable believers to accept the importance of having a biblical worldview and devoting themselves to adopting such a life perspective. . . . This book provides a wealth of insight into how we may effectively challenge the post-Christian, post-modern culture in which we live.—The Barna Report

"Colson and Pearcey aren’t talking about influencing business, politics and culture—they want it transformed through a coherent Christian world view. Their book will challenge every Christian leader to make an honest assessment about his or her commitment to use leadership gifts in the new millennium to the cause of Christ."—Christian Management Report

"Colson and Pearcey challenge the church to stay on the front lines. Believing that America is on the verge of a great spiritual breakthrough, the authors want to equip readers to show the world that Christianity is a life system that works in every area—family relationships, education, science, and popular culture."—Virtue

A radical challenge to all Christians to understand biblical faith as an entire world view, a perspective on all of life. Through inspiring teaching and true stories, Colson discusses how to expose the false views and values of modern culture, how to live more fulfilling and satisfying lives in line with the way God created us to live—and more.—Youthworker

(In developing and implementing an organizational learning strategy and integrating it with their organizational practices) "When it came to selecting materials, your How Now Shall We Live? was at the top of the list. To our minds this is now the best introduction to a Christian worldview and Christian cultural engagement available in English. At least in our organization, How Now Shall We Live? should become an indispensable resource."—Christian Labour Association of Canada

1999 Books of the Year—Award of Merit—Christianity Today

Visit Tyndale’s exciting Web site at www.tyndale.com.

TYNDALE and Tyndale’s quill logo are registered trademarks of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

How Now Shall We Live? is a registered trademark of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

How Now Shall We Live?

Copyright © 1999 by Charles Colson. All rights reserved.

Cover and interior globe photograph copyright © 1999 by David Greenwood/FPG. All rights reserved.

Cover design by Luke Daab

Interior design by Cathy Bergstrom

Edited by Judith Markham and Lynn Vanderzalm

The stories in this book are based on facts resulting from extensive research and from interviews with many of the main characters involved. However, some of the secondary characters in the stories are fictionalized or composite characters; any resemblance to real characters is purely coincidental. In addition, events and circumstances may have been rearranged for dramatic purposes.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version,® NIV.® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com.

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version.® Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. NKJV is a trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible,® copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Colson, Charles W.

  How now shall we live? / Charles Colson.

    p.   cm.

  ISBN 978-0-8423-1808-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)

  ISBN 978-0-8423-5588-9 (softcover)

  1. Christianity and culture.   2. Christianity—20th century.   3. Christian life.   I. Title.

BR115.C8C554   1999

261—dc21 99-22149

Build: 2016-02-01 14:50:43

We dedicate this book to the memory of Francis A. Schaeffer, whose ministry at L’Abri was instrumental in Nancy’s conversion and whose works have had a profound influence on my own understanding of Christianity as a total worldview.

CONTENTS

Introduction—How Now Shall We Live?

Part One: Worldview: Why It Matters

Chapter 1: A New Creation

Chapter 2: Christianity Is a Worldview

Chapter 3: Worldviews in Conflict

Chapter 4: Christian Truth in an Age of Unbelief

Part Two: Creation: Where Did We Come from, and Who Are We?

Chapter 5: Dave and Katy’s Metaphysical Adventure

Chapter 6: Shattering the Grid

Chapter 7: Let’s Start at the Very Beginning

Chapter 8: Life in a Test Tube?

Chapter 9: Darwin in the Dock

Chapter 10: Darwin’s Dangerous Idea

Chapter 11: A Matter of Life

Chapter 12: Whatever Happened to Human Life?

Chapter 13: In Whose Image?

Chapter 14: God Makes No Mistakes

Part Three: The Fall: What Has Gone Wrong with the World?

Chapter 15: The Trouble with Us

Chapter 16: A Better Way of Living?

Chapter 17: Synanon and Sin

Chapter 18: We’re All Utopians Now

Chapter 19: The Face of Evil

Chapter 20: A Snake in the Garden

Chapter 21: Does Suffering Make Sense?

Part Four: Redemption: What Can We Do to Fix It?

Chapter 22: Good Intentions

Chapter 23: In Search of Redemption

Chapter 24: Does It Liberate?

Chapter 25: Salvation through Sex?

Chapter 26: Is Science Our Savior?

Chapter 27: The Drama of Despair

Chapter 28: That New Age Religion

Chapter 29: Real Redemption

Part Five: Restoration: How Now Shall We Live?

Chapter 30: The Knockout Punch

Chapter 31: Saved to What?

Chapter 32: Don’t Worry, Be Religious

Chapter 33: God’s Training Ground

Chapter 34: Still at Risk

Chapter 35: Anything Can Happen Here

Chapter 36: There Goes the Neighborhood

Chapter 37: Creating the Good Society

Chapter 38: The Work of Our Hands

Chapter 39: The Ultimate Appeal

Chapter 40: The Basis for True Science

Chapter 41: Blessed Is the Man

Chapter 42: Soli Deo Gloria

Chapter 43: Touched by a Miracle

Chapter 44: Does the Devil Have All the Good Music?

Chapter 45: How Now Shall We Live?

With Gratitude

Notes

Recommended Reading

Index

About the Authors

Study Guides

INTRODUCTION—HOW NOW SHALL WE LIVE?

Without a biblical worldview, all the great teaching goes in one ear and out the other. There are no intellectual pegs . . . in the mind of the individual to hang these truths on. So they just pass through. They don’t stick. They don’t make a difference.

G

EORGE

B

ARNA

Centuries ago, when the Jews were in exile and in despair, they cried out to God, How should we then live?[1] The same question rings down through the ages. How shall we live today?

The year 2000 marks the beginning of the new millennium—an extraordinary moment for the Christian church. After two thousand years, the birth of the Son of God still remains the defining moment of history. Jesus founded a church that could not be destroyed—not by the deaths of his followers in the Colosseum, not by barbarian hordes or mighty Turkish emperors, not by modern tyrants or the power of sophisticated ideologies. After two thousand years, we can affirm that Jesus Christ is indeed the same yesterday, today, and forever. This alone should make the opening decade of the millennium a cause for jubilation, a time when Christians boldly and confidently recommit to engaging contemporary culture with a fresh vision of hope.

Yet my sense is that most Christians are anything but jubilant. And for good reason. We are experiencing some of the same sense of exile that the Jews did in the time of Ezekiel. We live in a culture that is at best morally indifferent. A culture in which Judeo-Christian values are mocked and where immorality in high places is not only ignored but even rewarded in the voting booth. A culture in which violence, banality, meanness, and disintegrating personal behavior are destroying civility and endangering the very life of our communities. A culture in which the most profound moral dilemmas are addressed by the cold logic of utilitarianism.

What’s more, when Christians do make good-faith efforts to halt this slide into barbarism, we are maligned as intolerant or bigoted. Small wonder that many people have concluded that the culture war is over—and that we have lost. Battle weary, we are tempted to withdraw into the safety of our sanctuaries, to keep busy by plugging into every program offered by our megachurches, hoping to keep ourselves and our children safe from the coming desolation.

Right after signing the contract for this book, and while still plagued by writer’s remorse (was I really convinced that this book needed to be written?), my wife, Patty, and I visited old friends for a weekend and attended their local evangelical church, which is well known for its biblical preaching. I found the message solidly scriptural and well delivered. That is, until the pastor outlined for the congregation his definition of the church’s mission: to prepare for Jesus’ return through prayer, Bible study, worship, fellowship, and witnessing. In that instant, all lingering doubts about whether I should write this book evaporated.

Don’t get me wrong. We need prayer, Bible study, worship, fellowship, and witnessing. But if we focus exclusively on these disciplines—and if in the process we ignore our responsibility to redeem the surrounding culture—our Christianity will remain privatized and marginalized.

Turning our backs on the culture is a betrayal of our biblical mandate and our own heritage because it denies God’s sovereignty over all of life. Nothing could be deadlier for the church—or more ill-timed. To abandon the battlefield now is to desert the cause just when we are seeing the first signs that historic Christianity may be on the verge of a great breakthrough. The process of secularization begun in the Enlightenment is grinding to a halt, and many people believe that the new millennium will mark the desecularization of world history.[2]

Do we sound delusional? Or like Pollyannas wearing rose-colored glasses? If you think so, consider just a few signs of the times.

First, several cultural indicators are at long last reversing, which suggests that some of the most destructive pathologies are beginning to decline. The divorce rate is down 19 percent since 1981; the birth rate among unmarried teens is down 7.5 percent since 1994; abortion is down 15.3 percent since 1990; and there has been an astonishing 37 percent decrease in people on welfare since 1993. Even crime is down, despite a surge in the teen population, the age-group that commits the most crime.[3]

Second, moral discourse is reviving. Just a few years ago, it was all but impossible to discuss serious moral issues in public forums. In 1997, for example, I was invited to a popular week-in-review program where Washington talking heads dispense inside-the-beltway wisdom to the masses. In the course of the discussion, I suggested that the breakdown of the inner cities has a moral component—only to be greeted with incredulous stares. After an awkward pause, the host quickly changed the subject. But only a year later, as a result of the Monica Lewinsky–White House scandals, I was asked to appear on most major news shows in the country to discuss, of all things, the nature of repentance. For the first time in years, many people are actually willing to admit that private immorality has public consequences.

Why are cultural trends shifting? Because modernity has played out its destructive logical consequences. All the ideologies, all the utopian promises that have marked this century have proven utterly bankrupt. Americans have achieved what modernism presented as life’s great shining purpose: individual autonomy, the right to do what one chooses. Yet this has not produced the promised freedom; instead, it has led to the loss of community and civility, to kids shooting kids in schoolyards, to citizens huddling in gated communities for protection. We have discovered that we cannot live with the chaos that inevitably results from choice divorced from morality.

As a result, Americans are groping for something that will restore the shattered bonds of family and community, something that will make sense of life. If the church turns inward now, if we focus only on our own needs, we will miss the opportunity to provide answers at a time when people are sensing a deep longing for meaning and order. It is not enough to focus exclusively on the spiritual, on Bible studies and evangelistic campaigns, while turning a blind eye to the distinctive tensions of contemporary life. We must show the world that Christianity is more than a private belief, more than personal salvation. We must show that it is a comprehensive life system that answers all of humanity’s age-old questions: Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? Does life have any meaning and purpose?

As we will argue in these pages, Christianity offers the only viable, rationally defensible answers to these questions. Only Christianity offers a way to understand both the physical and the moral order. Only Christianity offers a comprehensive worldview that covers all areas of life and thought, every aspect of creation. Only Christianity offers a way to live in line with the real world.

But if Christians are going to carry this life-giving message to the world, we must first understand it and live it ourselves. We must understand that God’s revelation is the source of all truth, a comprehensive framework for all of reality. Abraham Kuyper, the great nineteenth-century theologian who served as prime minister of Holland, said that the dominating principle of Christian truth is not soteriological (i.e., justification by faith) but rather cosmological (i.e., the sovereignty of the triune God over the whole cosmos, in all its spheres and kingdoms, visible and invisible).[4] The entire cosmos can be understood only in relation to God.

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. This failure has been crippling in many ways. For one thing, we cannot answer the questions our children bring home from school, so we are incapable of preparing them to answer the challenges they face. For ourselves, we cannot explain to our friends and neighbors why we believe, and we often cannot defend our faith. And we do not know how to organize our lives correctly, allowing our choices to be shaped by the world around us. What’s more, by failing to see Christian truth in every aspect of life, we miss great depths of beauty and meaning: the thrill of seeing God’s splendor in the intricacies of nature or hearing his voice in the performance of a great symphony or detecting his character in the harmony of a well-ordered community.

Most of all, our failure to see Christianity as a comprehensive framework of truth has crippled our efforts to have a redemptive effect on the surrounding culture. At its most fundamental level, the so-called culture war is a clash of belief systems. It is, as Kuyper put it, a clash of principle against principle, of worldview against worldview. Only when we see this can we effectively evangelize a post-Christian culture, bringing God’s righteousness to bear in the world around us.

Evangelism and cultural renewal are both divinely ordained duties. God exercises his sovereignty in two ways: through saving grace and common grace. We are all familiar with saving grace; it is the means by which God’s power calls people who are dead in their trespasses and sins to new life in Christ. As God’s servants, we may at times be agents of his saving grace, evangelizing and bringing people to Christ. But few of us really understand common grace, which is the means by which God’s power sustains creation, holding back the sin and evil that result from the Fall and that would otherwise overwhelm his creation like a great flood. As agents of God’s common grace, we are called to help sustain and renew his creation, to uphold the created institutions of family and society, to pursue science and scholarship, to create works of art and beauty, and to heal and help those suffering from the results of the Fall.

Because we wanted to communicate a fuller sense of how we cooperate with God’s common grace, Nancy Pearcey and I felt compelled to write this book. Our goal is to equip believers to present Christianity as a total worldview and life system, and to seize the opportunity of the new millennium to be nothing less than God’s agents in building a new Christian culture.

To that end, we have divided our discussion into five parts. In part 1, we explain what we mean by the term worldview, why it is important, and how to develop the skills to think christianly about all of life. In parts 2, 3, and 4, we take you through the contours of a Christian worldview: first, the creation of both the universe and human life; second, the fall into sin and how it marred God’s good creation; and third, how God has provided a means of redemption.

These categories provide the means to compare and contrast the various ideas and philosophies competing for allegiance in today’s world, for they cover the central questions that any worldview must answer:

1. Creation—Where did we come from, and who are we?

2. Fall—What has gone wrong with the world?

3. Redemption—What can we do to fix it?

This method of analysis is indispensable, for it will enable each of us to discern and defend the truth of what we believe. For Christianity is, after all, a reasonable faith, solidly grounded in human experience. It provides a worldview that fits the structure of reality and enables us to live in harmony with that structure.

On a personal note, I can’t help mentioning that preparing the section on redemption has been one of the most rewarding and exciting experiences of my writing career. The process of contrasting the various false claims of salvation that clamor for our attention turned out to be profoundly faith-affirming. And what became unmistakably clear as we studied and wrote is that only Christianity provides credible, defensible answers to life’s most crucial questions, and only Christianity offers a reasonable strategy for how we are to live in the real world.

The final section of the book, part 5, applies the basic worldview principles—creation, fall, redemption—to the restoration of culture. It illustrates how we can use these principles as tools not only to critique the false worldviews holding sway today but also to build a new culture. Examining everything from politics to education to the arts, we give examples of the way the Christian worldview provides a more coherent and rational way of living in the world— examples that provide a rough blueprint for living out a biblical worldview and renewing the culture in whichever arena of life God has placed us.

While this book contains serious and sometimes weighty material, we have written it for laypeople in a style we hope is accessible. For this reason, we have included stories throughout the book to illustrate the principles in action. If you are interested in a more scholarly, in-depth approach to worldview questions, you will find a good selection of recommended reading at the end of the book.

We will be delighted if you are inspired to read the works on which we have relied most heavily. Our controlling source, of course, is Scripture. Beyond that, we are indebted to many who have gone before us and upon whose shoulders we stand, especially John Calvin, Abraham Kuyper, C. S. Lewis, and Francis Schaeffer.[5] (For a more complete list, please see the recommended reading section at the back of the book: Or, if you are interested in deepening your understanding of this book by doing individual or group study, you may want to use the companion study guide published for that purpose.) We have seen our task not as a trailblazing effort to produce new theological revelations or to uncover hidden philosophical insights, but rather as an attempt to renew timeless and enduring truths. C. S. Lewis once wrote that though he was often celebrated for offering innovative thoughts, his only purpose was to present ancient truth in a form that the contemporary generation could understand. That has been our modest aim as well.

Is there yet time in this epic moment, at the dawn of the third millennium, to revive the church’s sense of hope and to bear witness to the immutable truth of biblical revelation? Can a culture be rebuilt so that all the world can see in its splendor and glory the contours of God’s kingdom? Emphatically yes. Pope John Paul II has urged Christians everywhere to work to make the new millennium a springtime of Christianity. We can indeed make the year 2000 the beginning of a new season for the faith.

For that to happen, however, we must first listen to the answer God gave his people when they cried out, How should we then live? Through the prophet Ezekiel, God admonished his people to repent—turn from their evil ways and turn toward him—and to show their neighbors that their hope was in his justice and righteousness.

God’s word to us today is precisely the same. And to unfold what obedience to that word means, we begin our journey in an unlikely place, among unlikely people, where you will first descend into hell and later catch a glimpse of heaven. Our opening story reveals the pattern by which we must redeem the world around us.

Soli Deo Gloria

Charles W. Colson

Nancy R. Pearcey

April 1999

Washington, D.C.

CHAPTER 1

A NEW CREATION

In Ecuador, the peaks of the Andes jut more than two miles into thinning air. Within their cratered throat, the green incisor-shaped mountains hold the old colonial center of Quito, its ornate Spanish architecture surrounded by poured-concrete high-rises. Puffy clouds drawn through high mountain passes drift low over the city. Beneath them, banks of pink and white houses scatter like petals over the base of the mountains.

From the air, Quito is an exotic jungle orchid, appearing suddenly amid the foliage. But in its center is a place where the two forces vying for allegiance in the human heart become dramatically visible in an allegory of good and evil, heaven and hell.

In December 1995, I traveled to Quito with a group of Prison Fellowship friends to visit the deteriorating García Moreno Prison, one wing of which had been turned over to Prison Fellowship. We were met at the airport by one of the most remarkable men I’ve ever known: Dr. Jorge Crespo de Toral, the chairman of Prison Fellowship Ecuador.[1]

Though now seventy-five, Crespo remains an imposing figure, tall and patrician, with silvery hair and ruggedly handsome features. Born into aristocracy and educated in the law, he seemed destined for a life of affluence and power. Instead, Jorge Crespo became a labor lawyer and took up the cause of the poor, battling the monopolies that enslaved the workers and filled the pockets of the ruling elite. He became so well known as the champion of the poor that during one case an owner shouted at him, So, Dr. Crespo, you are our guardian angel? Indeed he was, although the industrialists were unwilling to admit it.

During Ecuador’s tumultuous transition from military rule to democracy, Jorge Crespo was twice arrested and imprisoned. But the democratic forces ultimately prevailed, and in the 1960s, he was selected to help draft Ecuador’s constitution. He was also a candidate in the nation’s first presidential election, finishing a strong third. In the midst of all this, Crespo found time to write and publish poetry as well as literary criticism, winning a well-deserved reputation as a writer and a statesman.

But it was not his literary or political accomplishments that drew me to Ecuador. By the time I met him, Jorge Crespo had forsaken a personal career in politics and was engaged in what he considered the most important task of his life: reforming Ecuador’s criminal justice system and its prisons.

I

WILL NEVER

forget the moment we arrived at García Moreno Prison in the center of Quito. The sights and smells are seared indelibly in my memory.

The prison’s white baroque bell tower hovers like an evil eye, while its heavy dome seems to be collapsing into the sprawling old building. Jorge Crespo elbowed his way through the ragged crowds clustered outside—families waiting in hope of a brief visit—and led us to the front entrance, a small doorway at the top of a few steps. On each side of the steps were huge mounds of garbage, decaying in the heat, and the putrid odor was nearly overpowering. The uneven steps were slippery in places, the top step splattered with fresh blood.

Someone was beaten and then dragged over the threshold, said Crespo, shaking his head. Such things were routine at García Moreno, he added.

We passed from the sun-drenched street into the dim, narrow passageways in the first section of the prison, known as the Detainees Pavilion, where Crespo pointed out several black, cell-like holes in the concrete walls. These were the notorious torture chambers. They were no longer in use—thanks to his work—but still they gaped there, grotesque evidence of their bloody history. Knowing that Crespo himself had twice been cast into this prison, I watched him, wondering what horrors this sight must bring to his mind. At one point his self-control slipped when he told us about a torture cell that was actually a water tank; prisoners had been kept there until their flesh began decaying and sloughing off the bone—a means of extracting confessions.

As we moved along, we seemed to be descending into darkness, our eyes straining to make out the contours of the narrow passageways, until we came to a series of cells that were still in use. They were eerily illuminated by narrow shafts of light penetrating downward from tiny orifices high on the mold-covered limestone walls. From the walls of each cell hung four bunks, which were nothing more than iron slabs. Twelve inmates shared each cell, so the men had to sleep in shifts or stretch out on the floor, thick with grime and spilled sewage. There was no plumbing, and the air was fetid. Water was brought into the cells in buckets; when empty, these same buckets were filled with waste and hauled back out.

I was stunned. I’ve been in more than six hundred prisons in forty countries, yet these were some of the worst conditions I had ever seen. Worse than Perm Camp 35, one of the most notorious in the Soviet Gulag. Worse than prisons in the remotest reaches of India, Sri Lanka, and Zambia. Even more startling, the prisoners here had not been convicted of any crimes. The cells in the Detainees Pavilion were for men awaiting trial. In Ecuador, as in much of Latin America, there is no presumption of innocence nor any right to a speedy trial. A detainee can wait four to five years just to come to trial—and sometimes even longer if no one outside is agitating for his rights, knocking almost daily on some prosecutor’s door, or paying off some official. There are palms to be greased at every level. In such a system, the poor are powerless, cast into dungeons and easily forgotten.

The guards urged us onward from the cells to a courtyard, where we could see inmates milling about in the open air. The yard was bounded by high-walled cellblocks and monitored by armed guards patrolling the parapets. As we gazed into the courtyard through a barred iron gate, the image was so surreal that I felt I had been transported to a scene of human desperation out of a Dickens novel. The men shuffled around the yard, many dressed in rags and wearing a vacant look of hopelessness on their pale, drawn faces.

A group of garishly made-up women huddling together against one of the walls caught my attention. What are the women doing in there? I asked Crespo.

There are no women in García Moreno, he replied. When we first started working here, the fathers sometimes brought their children in with them, even little girls, because there was no one else to take care of them. But now we have a home for the children.

Puzzled by his answer, I nodded toward the wall. Over there. Those women.

Oh, said Crespo. Those are transvestites and male prostitutes. They usually stay together for protection from the other inmates.

My heart sank. Truly this was a kingdom of evil. Hell on earth.

Crespo began talking with the official standing at the gate, and he appeared to be arguing with him. Finally Crespo turned to me, shrugged his shoulders and said, I’m sorry. The guard says it’s impossible to enter the compound. Much too dangerous.

Tell him we insist, Jorge. Tell him the minister of justice promised us access.

No doubt there was a bit of bravado mixed in with my adamant persistence, but I was certain that God had brought us here for a purpose. Crespo resumed his animated conversation with the guard until finally the man, shaking his head in disgust, unlocked the gate.

In the New Testament, Jesus described the gate into heaven as narrow, but this gate into hell was narrow as well. We could pass through only one at a time. Crespo stepped briskly into the yard before I could even collect my thoughts. My heart racing, I moved in behind him.

As we walked to the center of the compound, conversation ceased, and the inmates turned to watch us. I prayed a silent prayer for grace and started speaking. As I did, the men began shuffling toward us. Several were limping; a man who had only one leg had to be helped along by another prisoner. Directly in front of me was a man with an empty eye socket and open sores spotting his face. Several men had scarves covering most of their faces, perhaps to cover sores or to filter the vile smells.

Suddenly, despite the wretched scene before me, I felt the same freedom I’ve known thousands of times in the past years, whether in palaces, universities, or television studios—but especially in prisons. It is that special anointing God gives us to communicate his boundless love to even the most pitiful souls. I will never know who responded to the invitation to receive him that day, but afterward, scores of men reached out to us, many smiling. Yet no one broke the sacred canopy of silence, the sense of God’s presence, that seemed to settle over the courtyard.

As I shook hands or just reached out to touch the shoulders of the men clustered around us, I kept thinking of the time John the Baptist asked whether Jesus was the Messiah. Tell him, Jesus replied, that the blind see, the lame walk, . . . and the Good News is being preached to the poor (Matt. 11:4-5,

NLT

).

T

HE HOLY SILENCE

held as the guards led us out of the yard and through heavy iron gates into another darkened corridor. Crespo told us that we were approaching the prison area that had been turned over to Prison Fellowship. We walked through a wide door and were ushered into a huge, triple-tiered cellblock.

All at once, we stepped out of the darkness and into a radiant burst of light.

This is Pavilion C, Crespo said proudly with a wide smile.

At the far end of the corridor was what looked like an altar, with a huge cross silhouetted against a brightly painted concrete wall. Gathered in an open area before the altar were more than two hundred inmates, who rose up out of their seats, singing and applauding. Some were playing guitars. All were glowing with joy and enthusiasm. Within seconds, we were surrounded, and the prisoners began embracing us like long-separated brothers.

In Pavilion C, Prison Fellowship volunteers and inmate leaders provided rigorous instruction in Christian faith and character development to inmates who were brought out of the other pavilions, including the Detainees Pavilion. Regular worship services were led by a variety of priests and ministers. This was a holy community, a church like none I had ever seen.

Yet Jorge Crespo was quick to point out that Pavilion C was only a stop on the way, a place of preparation. The ultimate destination was Casa de San Pablo (St. Paul’s House), so named because of Paul’s imprisonment in the Philippian jail (see Acts 16:22-34). This was a prison wing for those who had been received into full Christian fellowship and who ministered to the rest of the prisoners. Crespo hustled us on to see it.

Like Pavilion C, Casa de San Pablo was spotlessly clean, with the added beauty of tiled floors and separate dormitories, furnished with wooden bunks made by inmates. Beneath a flight of stairs, the inmates had partitioned off a small prayer closet containing only a bench with a cross on it. Because of the low ceiling, the men had to stoop down upon entering the room, then remain on their knees inside. The prayer closet was in use all day.

Pictures of Christ and other religious symbols were everywhere, and I momentarily forgot that we were in a prison. In fact, it wasn’t called a prison, but the Home, and it was populated not by prisoners but by residents.

The means by which the Home came into being is nothing less than miraculous. When Crespo first approached authorities about taking over a wing of the prison, these facilities were considered unfit even by García Moreno standards. The bright and airy main room where we now stood, Crespo told us, was once scarcely more than a cave, dark and unlit, shrouded with spiderwebs. Once he got the go-ahead, however, Christian inmates and an army of volunteers from local churches went to work with shovels and tools. Tradesmen volunteered their services, as did local contractors. Many churches raised money. And overseeing it all was the tall, imposing figure of Jorge Crespo himself, the visionary who could see what others could not— a church inside a prison. It took several years of sweat and sacrificial labor— and no end of Crespo’s cajoling the officials—but eventually the vision became a reality.

That afternoon, as we assembled with residents in the meeting room, I noticed that the windows were barred on only one side: the side facing the main prison compound. The windows facing out to the street were open—a powerful symbol of trust and hope.

The meeting room was dominated by a huge mural, painted across the main wall by the prisoners themselves, depicting the emerging freedom of life in Christ. On the left, a ragged figure huddled in a blue shadow of despair. The next figure turned to the rising sun, and the next traveled toward it. Finally, a figure lifted his hands to heaven in praise of his Creator. The men in this room knew exactly what those symbols meant, for once they had been just like the men in the Detainees Pavilion, without hope and left to rot like garbage. But now they were new creatures in Christ.

As we worshiped together, several men gave stirring testimonies. Coming to this prison is the best thing that ever happened to me, said one man, who had been a high-ranking operator in a drug cartel. "I found Jesus here. I don’t care if I ever leave. I just want others to know that this place is not the end. There is hope. God can change us even here—especially here."

The inmates included both Protestants and Catholics, but they drew no distinctions. Bible studies were led by Protestant ministers and by Father Tim, the resident Catholic chaplain. They loved the same Lord, studied the same Word. It was the kind of fellowship one longs for (but seldom finds) in our comfortable North American churches. Perhaps only those who have plumbed the depths of despair and depravity can fully appreciate the futility of life without Christ and can thus learn to love one another in the way Jesus commanded.

Father Tim summed it up best, speaking in his charming Irish lilt. I never learned about God in seminary, he said, embracing Jorge Crespo. I learned about God through this man.

We, too, had learned about God from this man and the transformation he had helped work in this place. From the time we entered García Moreno, we had not traveled far in physical terms—mere yards. But in spiritual terms we had made a great journey: from the hell of the Detainees Pavilion to Pavilion C, an analogy of the church here on earth with its struggles, and then to the Home, a foretaste of heaven. A world transformed within a single building. It was nothing short of miraculous.

H

OW WAS SUCH

a miraculous transformation possible? It all began several years earlier as Jorge Crespo was leaving his career in politics. One Sunday at church, his wife, Laura, was moved by something the priest said in his homily.

What if we really lived by what we say we believe? she whispered to her husband.

Crespo smiled, for of late he had been pondering similar questions. And for the first time it struck him full force that his faith was not just a personal matter but a framework for all of life. Everything he did—his literary work, his political work, and his work on behalf of the poor—had to be motivated by God’s truth.

An opportunity to put his convictions into action came in 1984 when Javier Bustamante, the Prison Fellowship regional director, visited Quito and urged Crespo to begin a ministry bringing Christ to prisoners and reforming Ecuador’s criminal justice system. One walk through the Detainees Pavilion at García Moreno convinced Crespo. He was appalled by the filthy, inhumane conditions, by the darkness, hopelessness, and despair. Against the cautions of the authorities, he demanded entrance to some of the punishment cells, where the men quickly recognized him and surrounded him with pleas for help. Most had been there many months, some for years.

When he and Bustamante stepped out into the sunlit street, he said, All right. I’ll lead the effort.

Jorge Crespo’s great work had begun. He was sixty-one years old.

Crespo began by campaigning within the national legislature for criminal justice reform. In Ecuador the saying was The wheels of justice grind slowly, and sometimes they need to be lubricated, meaning most detainees had to bribe the judges just to see their cases come to trial. The judges reasoned that because they were underpaid, they deserved such rewards. But the legislature, noting the corruption, refused to vote the judiciary better salaries. Thus, those arrested found themselves in a catch-22, and those unable to pay the bribes simply languished in jail for years.

Crespo argued that the right to a speedy trial constitutes one of the hallmarks of democracy, and his persistent advocacy finally paid off when legislation was passed to guarantee every detainee a trial within three years. (This law has yet to be consistently observed, but its passage gave prisoners throughout Ecuador a significant legal victory.) Yet his crowning accomplishment, as we have seen, was the creation of a prison based on Christian principles.

Pavilion C was a spiritual boot camp, preparing its residents for life in Casa de San Pablo, or the Home. And there were no guards within the Home; security was maintained exclusively by internal and external councils. Prisoners were allowed to leave the facility on temporary furlough passes for medical appointments or other urgent business; they also helped carry on the work in Pavilion C and among the prison’s general population. Crespo believed that the transforming power of Christ could so change former criminals that they would even accept responsibility for their own imprisonment.

But Crespo’s experiment was not without its opponents. Many of Ecuador’s experts in rehabilitation, the bureaucrats who ran the prison system, bridled at the unflattering comparisons now evident between Prison Fellowship’s work and their own. Furthermore, the guards who ran García Moreno’s black markets rebelled at having their day-to-day activities exposed to the Christian volunteers who constantly trekked into the place. How long would it be before their lucrative enterprises were exposed to something more than inadvertent scrutiny? As a result, the guards began harassing volunteers and confiscating supplies.

Trouble of this sort had been brewing since Crespo’s first efforts in the prison. But with the opening of the Home, the campaign to sabotage the work became far more aggressive.

In early 1995, guards greeted two residents of the Home, a Canadian and an Israeli, returning from a morning’s furlough granted for medical appointments, and marched them to the warden’s office. There, they were told that the Home had been closed and that they were being returned to the regular prison.

The two men were horrified. The warden suggested that they take the easy way out and simply leave. The men refused, demanding to see Crespo, but the warden grimly began filling out a form.

I’m filing the report of your escape, he said and had the two residents thrown out of the prison. The men had no option but to escape.

Within a short time a manhunt was underway. The Canadian and Israeli embassies were drawn into the matter, guaranteeing this would be no minor incident. But the warden’s real intent became clear when the police report named Crespo as an accessory to the escape, charging him with negligence for allowing the prisoners to leave. Hostile authorities took advantage of the opportunity to suspend the in-prison ministry, threatening that the residents would be cast back into the Detainees Pavilion.

The warden had done his work well, and all the official reports lined up. It seemed to be an open-and-shut case.

Providentially, the testimony of a released inmate, a man who had been led to Christ by Crespo, created the first break in the solid phalanx of officials who were determined to scuttle the project and put Crespo behind bars. The inmate, it turned out, was a friend of a high government official, and word soon spread that Crespo was not implicated after all. Negotiations began with the police chief, the minister of government, and the prosecutors.

It was during those negotiations that I made the visit to García Moreno described earlier in this chapter. At that time Crespo told me that he fully expected to be sent to prison; yet not for a moment did he consider backing down, either in his human rights campaign or his ministry in the prison.

I know why Jesus Christ lives among the poor, he told the residents at the Home during those tension-filled days. "I know why he became poor in order to serve humankind. Only the poor are rich in mercy. Only the poor possess nothing—nothing but gratitude.

Whatever happens, whether I am imprisoned once again, whether I am separated from my family as you have been, whether the work is damaged and we are separated from each other, we shall never be separated from the love of Christ. Neither height nor depth, nor any human power, can separate us from that love!

I

N THE END,

the conspiracy to destroy Crespo’s work and put him behind bars was exposed, and in May 1997, all charges against him were dropped. And in the years since our visit, García Moreno Prison has become an even more striking parable of God’s kingdom at work in the midst of a fallen world. Although guards and government officials continue to harass Crespo (the work was even suspended for a second time), enormous progress continues to be made.

By nurturing the flower of justice in what was once the most evil of gardens, by living out the reality of being a new creation in Christ, Jorge Crespo has helped to create a whole new world for others. And the forces of hell are being conquered by the power of heaven.

CHAPTER 2

CHRISTIANITY IS A WORLDVIEW

When [Christ’s] cosmic battle came to an end, the heavens shook . . . stones were split open, and the world might well have perished. . . . And then, when He ascended, His divine spirit gave life and strength to the tottering world, and the whole universe became stable once more, as if the stretching out, the agony of the Cross, had in some way gotten into everything.

S

T.

H

IPPOLYTUS

The way we see the world can change the world. Jorge Crespo and his work at Garcia Moreno are living proof. The sharp contrast between the hellish darkness of the Detainees Pavilion and the whitewashed brilliance of the Home is a stark reminder of the way our own moral and spiritual choices are realized in the world. In every action we take, we are doing one of two things: we are either helping to create a hell on earth or helping to bring down a foretaste of heaven. We are either contributing to the broken condition of the world or participating with God in transforming the world to reflect his righteousness. We are either advancing the rule of Satan or establishing the reign of God.

The evil forces that created the hell of the Detainees Pavilion are the same forces that ravage families, cities, and whole cultures around the globe. Conversely, the divine force that brought new life to dejected inmates is the same divine force that can renew people anywhere. How does this happen? Renewal can occur when Christians are committed to living out their faith, seeing the world as God sees it, viewing reality through the lens of divine revelation. Jorge Crespo saw the battered inmates of Garcia Moreno as potential citizens of the kingdom of God, and he helped create a corner of that kingdom even in a dark prison.

Our choices are shaped by what we believe is real and true, right and wrong, good and beautiful. Our choices are shaped by our worldview.

The term worldview may sound abstract or philosophical, a topic discussed by pipe-smoking, tweed-jacketed professors in academic settings. But actually a person’s worldview is intensely practical. It is simply the sum total of our beliefs about the world, the big picture that directs our daily decisions and actions. And understanding worldviews is extremely important.

Our major task in life is to discover what is true and to live in step with that truth. As we saw earlier, every worldview can be analyzed by the way it answers three basic questions: Where did we come from, and who are we (creation)? What has gone wrong with the world (fall)? And what can we do to fix it (redemption)? These three questions form a grid that we can use to break down the inner logic of every belief system or philosophy that we encounter, from the textbooks in our classrooms to the unspoken philosophy that shapes the message we hear on Oprah. In this book, we will show you how to apply the three-part grid to critique nonbiblical worldviews, while at the same time framing a biblical worldview on any subject, from family life to education, from politics to science, from art to popular culture.

The basis for the Christian worldview, of course, is God’s revelation in Scripture. Yet sadly, many believers fail to understand that Scripture is intended to be the basis for all of life. In the past centuries, the secular world asserted a dichotomy between science and religion, between fact and value, between objective knowledge and subjective feeling. As a result, Christians often think in terms of the same false dichotomy, allowing our belief system to be reduced to little more than private feelings and experience, completely divorced from objective facts.

Evangelicals have been particularly vulnerable to this narrow view because of our emphasis on personal commitment. On one hand, this has been the movement’s greatest strength, bringing millions to a relationship with Christ. Somewhere in most of our spiritual journeys is a sawdust trail, as there certainly is in mine. I remember as vividly as if it were yesterday that sultry summer night in 1973, in the midst of the Watergate scandal, when I, a former marine captain—often called the toughest of the Nixon tough guys, the White House hatchet man,—broke down in tears and called out to God.[1] Apart from that encounter with Christ and assurances of his forgiveness, I would have suffocated in the stench of my own sin. My soul would never have found rest.

But this emphasis on a personal relationship can also be evangelicalism’s greatest weakness because it may prevent us from seeing God’s plan for us beyond personal salvation. Genuine Christianity is more than a relationship with Jesus, as expressed in personal piety, church attendance, Bible study, and works of charity. It is more than discipleship, more than believing a system of doctrines about God. Genuine Christianity is a way of seeing and comprehending all reality. It is a worldview.

The scriptural basis for this understanding is the creation account, where we are told that God spoke everything into being out of nothing (see Gen. 1 and John 1:1-14). Everything that exists came into being at his command and is therefore subject to him, finding its purpose and meaning in him. The implication is that in every topic we investigate, from ethics to economics to ecology, the truth is found only in relationship to God and his revelation. God created the natural world and natural laws. God created our bodies and the moral laws that keep us healthy. God created our minds and the laws of logic and imagination. God created us as social beings and gave us the principles for social and political institutions. God created a world of beauty and the principles of aesthetics and artistic creation. In every area of life, genuine knowledge means discerning the laws and ordinances by which God has structured creation, and then allowing those laws to shape the way we should live.

As the church fathers used to say, all truth is God’s truth.

What’s more, that comprehensive truth is embodied in Christ, who is our Savior and yet also much more. In the first chapter of John, Christ is called the logos (John 1:1). In the Greek, logos literally means the idea, the word, the rational pattern of creation, the order of the universe. The apostle Paul expands on this: For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible . . . ; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together (Col. 1:16-17). Jesus himself is the word that God spoke to create the world.

Perhaps the most astonishing claim Jesus makes is, I am the way and the truth and the life (John 14:6). Jesus is the origin and end of all things, the Alpha and the Omega. Nothing has meaning apart from him. Nothing exists apart from him. He is the agent of creation, author of all that is and ever will be. Christ is Lord over all of creation, from the human soul to the vast reaches of the cosmos (see Pss. 2; 8; 110; Phil. 2:5-11).

When we truly grasp this, we are compelled to see that the Christian faith cannot be reduced to John 3:16 or simple formulas. Christianity cannot be limited to only one component of our lives, a mere religious practice or observance, or even a salvation experience. We are compelled to see Christianity as the all-encompassing truth, the root of everything else. It is ultimate reality.

NOT SPITTING INTO THE WIND

Understanding Christianity as a total life system is absolutely essential, for two reasons. First, it enables us to make sense of the world we live in and thus order our lives more rationally. Second, it enables us to understand forces hostile to our faith, equipping us to evangelize and to defend Christian truth as God’s instruments for transforming culture.

Because the world was created by an intelligent being rather than by chance, it has an intelligible order. As Abraham Kuyper wrote, All created life necessarily bears in itself a law for its existence, instituted by God Himself.[2] The only way to live a rational and healthy life is to ascertain the nature of these divine laws and ordinances and then to use them as the basis for how we should live. We tend to understand this principle very well when it comes to the physical order. We know that certain laws exist in the physical world and that if we defy those laws, we pay a steep price. Ignoring the law of gravity can have very unpleasant consequences if we happen to be walking off the edge of a cliff. To live in defiance of known physical laws is the height of folly.

But it is no different with the moral laws prescribing human behavior. Just as certain physical actions produce predictable reactions, so certain moral behavior produces predictable consequences. Adultery may be portrayed as glamorous by Hollywood, but it invariably produces anger, jealousy, broken relationships, even violence. Defiance of moral laws may even lead to death, whether it is the speeding drunk who kills a mother on her way to the store or the drug addict who contracts and spreads AIDS. No transgression of moral law is without painful consequences.

If we want to live healthy, well-balanced lives, we had better know the laws and ordinances by which God has structured creation. And because these are the laws of our own inner nature, Kuyper notes, we will experience them not as oppressive external constraints but as a guide through the desert, guaranteeing our safety.[3]

This understanding of life’s laws is what Scripture calls wisdom. Wisdom in Scripture is, broadly speaking, the knowledge of God’s world and the knack of fitting oneself into it, says Calvin College professor Cornelius Plantinga. A wise person is one who knows the boundaries and limits, the laws and rhythms and seasons of the created order, both in the physical and the social world. To be wise is to know reality and then accommodate yourself to it. By contrast, those who refuse to accommodate to the laws of life are not only immoral but also foolish, no matter how well educated they may be. They fail to recognize the structure of creation and are constantly at odds with reality: Folly is a stubborn swimming against the stream of the universe . . . spitting into the wind . . . coloring outside the lines.[4]

Precisely. To deny God is to blind ourselves to reality, and the inevitable consequence is that we will bump up against reality in painful ways, just as a blindfolded driver will crash into other drivers or run off the road. We make the bold claim that serious Christians actually live happier, more fulfilled, more productive lives by almost every measure. (Studies are beginning to bear this out, as we will see in later chapters.) This simply makes sense. Someone who accepts the contours and limits of the physical and moral order doesn’t engage in folly—whether stepping off a cliff or committing adultery or driving drunk.

THE REAL CULTURE WAR

Our calling is not only to order our own lives by divine principles but also to engage the world, as Crespo did. We are to fulfill both the great commission and the cultural commission. We are commanded both to preach the Good News and to bring all things into submission to God’s order, by defending and living out God’s truth in the unique historical and cultural conditions of our age.

To engage the world, however, requires that we understand the great ideas that compete for people’s minds and hearts. Philosopher Richard Weaver has it right in the title of his well-known book: Ideas have consequences.[5] It is the great ideas that inform the mind, fire the imagination, move the heart, and shape a culture. History is little more than the recording of the rise and fall of the great ideas—the worldviews—that form our values and move us to act.

A debilitating weakness in modern evangelicalism is that we’ve been fighting cultural skirmishes on all sides without knowing what the war itself is about. We have not identified the worldviews that lie at the root of cultural conflict—and this ignorance dooms our best efforts.

The culture war is not just about abortion, homosexual rights, or the decline of public education. These are only the skirmishes. The real war is a cosmic struggle between worldviews—between the Christian worldview and the various secular and spiritual worldviews arrayed