The Christian Worldview #1

Finding a Unity Between Head and Heart

Note: The following is a manuscript version of a sermon I preached last Sunday. This is the first installment in what I anticipate will be a lengthy series on the Christian worldview. I have linked the sermon audio/video at the very end of the article if you’d prefer to watch/listen.

Introduction

“What am I? Where did I come from? How does my mind relate to the world outside me? Do I, and how can I, know? How should I act? And what is the point of life? To where am I going?” (Editors intro, Christian Worldview, Herman Bavinck). I would only add to those questions two more: What is wrong with the world, and how can it be fixed?

I shall say, outright, from the start, that the only existent worldview that can consistently answers these questions, in a livable way, is the Christian worldview.

These questions are asked by everyone, including the atheists who’ve resorted to nihilism, that there are no answers at all. And they are not satisfied with that answer. These are the questions that everyone has asked since the beginning of time, and they sit at the center of every philosophy ever.

Until very recently, philosophers searched for truth, goodness, and beauty – and they all desperately wanted a single circle to encompass them all together. What ties together science and religion, the head and heart of man, the thoughts of man and his being, his being and his acting?

The only adequate and livable worldview is one in which man finds a unity between his head and his heart, his will and his behavior, his theology and his science.

Jesus Christ is the central reason for existence, for our personal essence, for our purpose, and he is the one who ties together everything. Thinking this way and living accordingly is what a Christian worldview is all about.

The Discord of Head and Heart

Here is what a Christian worldview is not…

There should be no scientific presuppositions that create contradictions with the human heart. We cannot think we are animals while speaking romantically of love. We cannot pretend that the universe is merely material while remaining hopeful for something beyond the grave.

The naturalism and anti-philosophies of the 19^th and 20^th centuries have created such a split between the hearts and minds of men that, while throwing out Jesus per our scientific bias, we simultaneously, in that very disposal, find our great need for him.

Bavinck says, “The convergence of [the] rejection of Christianity and the inner discord that disturbs us in modern life gives occasion to the question whether the two phenomena exist in a causal relation. And this question is urgent when we see that at the demise of the Christian religion, no one can find comfort and everyone is fantasizing about the search for a new religion...it is precisely the loss of religion that gives rise to the inventors of new religions everywhere—and in great numbers” (p. 25, Christian Worldview).

Do you see this? Have you noticed this? That as we become more secular, the youth of Zarathustra are at once enchanted with the religions of the East – or they seek to quell their burning consciences with social causes, protests, and aligning with perceived oppressed classes?

Luke records, “And Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.’ Having said this, he breathed his last. Now when the centurion saw what had happened, he began praising God, saying, ‘Certainly this man was innocent.’ And all the crowds who came together for this spectacle, when they observed what had happened, began to return, beating their breasts” (Luke 23:46-47).

Do you see what this story conveys? In his death – in our doing away with Jesus – we realize at once that we’ve done something terrible. The heart and the soul and the inner man finds no rest when the mind cuts out the Creator.

The modern man, your neighbor, cannot sleep well because of a war within. He knows of love inside his soul, but with his mind he must accept that even this feeling is but a series of chemical reactions and firing neurons. The modern man knows that murder is wrong – he knows piracy wrong – and he will even stand on that notion, but for no good reason.

His intellect cannot explain it. If we are merely material, which came about by chance and time – if we are the dust of ancient stars, not the image of God, filled with his breath – then what value does man have? And how can he be of any greater value than a piece of broccoli or a stone from Mars?

This discord exists everywhere. “I know that all we are is flesh and bone, but in my heart I don’t wish it so. I cannot live with such a conclusion!” If the existentialists were right, then I authenticate myself simply by acting in any direction I so choose. To help the lady across the street is no righter than to trip her on the sidewalk.

On the basis of naturalism, the existentialists could not say that one of those choices was better than the other. So why in my heart do I so feel that to help her is the right thing? Where do I get such an idea? Sam Harris and his ilk pretend that even morals can be explained by science – that our moral drive is an evolutionary feature meant to preserve the species.

Sir Julian Huxley, the British evolutionary biologist said that, even though he’s an atheist, he knows that man functions better if he acts like there is a God. Ibsen, the Norwegian playwright, said, “if you take away a man’s lie, you take away his hope.”

What these people are saying is, we’ve evolved to a point in which we must pretend something is true – that we know is not true – in order to continue on. Schaeffer pointed out that this is the very worst kind of despair.

In naturalism and all of the dark philosophies of the last two hundred years, we’ve severed heart and mind. We’ve made it to where they can’t cohere. We’ve created an irreconcilable divide within man. Due to Darwin, man has concluded, “I’m an animal.” But due to the conscience and the inner man and the moral compass put there by God, nobody agrees that we should act like animals.

Nietzsche wrote his parable of the madman because even he knew, this cannot be so. And just a month or so ago, I was watching an interview with the renowned atheist and evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, and he said, “I’m a cultural Christian. I don’t believe a word of the Bible. But I believe that Christianity is good for society.”

And why is Mr. Dawkins so romantically inclined to say this? Because he lives in two worlds that he cannot reconcile. There is a disunity between his head and heart. What he believes scientifically does not cohere with what he knows in his own conscience.

Church, there are so many young persons today, despaired in heart and mind and soul. In their very minds they cannot bring a unity to it all. In our public schools they were taught, you are an animal, no different in kind than a primate. And they believe this in their minds, because this theory, which is fraught with errors and false conclusions and scientifically self-defeating propositions, has been presented to them as fact. Because anyone bold enough to question it has been called a science-denier or stupid. And so it has persisted by way of ad hominems, without good reason.

The Concord of Jesus Christ

So how do we bring unity to a man’s own self and a unity between neighbors and mankind?

We bring man to Calvary. This is where a truly Christian worldview begins: “15 [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together [cohere]. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross”(Colossians 1:15-19).

I want you to notice the implication of verse 20. If the cross of Jesus was accomplished in order to reconcile everything in heaven and on earth, then this means there is no reconciliation without the cross. There is a divide, there is a hostility, there is a separation that I’ve been telling you about all morning. The first divide was between man and God, and this resulted in a divide within man himself – his logic embracing atheism and his soul yearning for more. And that divide within man’s own self has led to his divide with the world. He will only act morally as it suits him. When he’s tempted to sin, he will sin because “there is no right or wrong.” If he’s moved to compassion, he will pretend naturalism is not true. And so his love for neighbor will be inconsistent at best. So Paul says – and this is staggering – in Jesus all things cohere (v. 17).

Paul says, everything in the universe finds its coherence in Jesus Christ. Man must first be unified with Jesus. All of the individual pieces find their consistency in Jesus. Every particular finds its essence in Jesus. The word translated “hold together” (v. 17) means, “to come to be in a condition of coherence.”

How many things find their coherence in Jesus? All things. Your mind and heart find their coherence in Jesus Christ. Your marriage finds its coherence in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the only one in all of the universe who can explain who you are, why you are here, and what all of this is about.

Do you believe that such a unity is possible? I do. Jesus is on his throne making all things new, reconciling all things to himself — things in heaven and things on earth.