11.16.2018 How NOW Shall We Live - Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey

PART ONE - WHY IT MATTERS

(followed by
PART 2 - CREATION - WHERE DID WE COME FROM AND WHO ARE WE?
PART 3 - THE FALL; WHAT HAS GONE WRONG WITH THE WORLD?
PART 4 - REDEMPTION: WHAT CAN WE DO TO FIX IT?
PART 5 - RESTORATION; HOW NOW SHALL WE LIVE?



PART ONE - WHY IT MATTERS
Chapter 1 - A NEW CREATION

*3   In Ecuador, the peaks of the Andes jut more than 2 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 2 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 Garcia 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.

though now 75, 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

*4  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 hi, 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 Garcia Moreno Prison in the center of Quito.  the sights and 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 Garcia 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, ell-like holes in the concrete walls. these are 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 elf-control slipped when he told us about a torture cell that was actually a water tank; prisoners had been kept there until

*5 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 tine orifices high on the mold-covered  limestone walls. from the walls of each cell hung 4 bunks ,  which were nothing more than iron slabs. 12 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 600 prisons in 40 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 starling , 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 4 to 5 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 Garcia 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'.

*6  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 hear 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. Cres 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. so 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 me clustered around us, i kept thinking of the time John the Baptist asked whether Jesus as 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

*7  the 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 200 inmates, who roes 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 (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 thee 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 Garcia Moreno standards. the bright and airy main room where we now stood,

*8  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 gagged figure huddled in a blue shadow of despair. the next figure huddled in a blue shadow of despair. the next figure turned to the rising sun and the next 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  (by 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 Garcia Moreno we had not traveled far in physical terms - mere yards. but in spiritual terms

*9  we had made a great journey;:  from the hell of the Detainees pavilion to Pavilion C. an analogy of the church here on hearth 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.

how was such a miraculous transformation possible? it all began several years earlier as Jorge Crespo was leaving his career in politics. one Sun at church, his wife, Laura, was moved by something the priest said on 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 Garcia 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 61..
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 -2 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

*10 legislation was passed to guarantee every detainee a trial within 3 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 ere 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. Cres believed that the transforming power of Christ could so change former criminals that they would even accept responsibility for their own imprisonment.

but Crepo'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 Garcia 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 security? 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 2 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 2 men ere 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 2 residents thrown out of the prion. the men had no option but to 'escape''.

within a short time a man hunt 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

*11  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 Cres 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 mad the visit to Garcia Moreno described earlier... 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 their 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!
in 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, Garcia 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 WORLD VIEW

*13  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.  St. Hippolytus

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 of 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 he world as God sees i, 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.

*14  ...actually  a person's 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 belie 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 had, this has been the movement's greatest strength, bringing millions to a relationship with Christ...

..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

*15  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 Al 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 it s 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. 1.16-70) 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 Hi. 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

*16  understanding Christianity as a total life system is absolutely essential, for 2 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'.  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 at 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.
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 ti', says Calvin College professor Cornelius Plantiga. 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

*17  with reality:  'Folly is a swimming against the stream of the universe...spitting into the wind...coloring outside the lines'.
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. 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 against it. this is what we must understand if we are going to be effective both in evangelizing our world today and in transforming it to reflect the wisdom of the Creator.


Chapter 3 - WORLDVIEWS IN CONFLICT

from barbarism to civilization requires a century; from civilization to barbarism needs but a day.  Will Durant.

*19  the world is divided not so much by geographic boundaries as by religious and cultural traditions, by people's most deeply held beliefs - by worldviews.  so argued the distinguished Harvard scholar Samuel Huntington  in a celebrated article a few years ago. and Christians would agree. because we are religious creatures, our lives are defined by our ultimate beliefs more sharply than by any other factor. the drama of history is played out along the frontiers of great belief systems as they ebb and flow.
but if this is so, what does it tell us about the divisions in the world today? where is the clash of civilizations most bitter?
but if this is so, what does it tell us about the divisions in the world today? where is the clash of civilizations most bitter?
Huntingtom predicted a clash between the worldviews of 3 major traditional civilizations: the Western world, the Islamic world, and the Confucian East.  but one of his former students, political scientist James Kurth, took issue with him, contending that the most significant clash would be with in Western civilization itself - between  those who adhere to a Judeo-Christian framework and those who favor postmodernism and multiculturalism.
I believe Kurth

*20  they cannot insulate themselves from the influx of Western books, movies and TV programs. in Singapore, I met with a Christian cabinet minister who lamented that because Asians associate the West with Christianity, the flood  of smut from the West is making his Christian witness difficult. across the globe, people are complaining  about what one French politician described as a 'US cultural invasion.
as a result, people around the world are wrestling with the same questions that we face in the States. in Africa, one of the continent's most respected Christian leaders asked for permission to reprint transcripts of my radio program, BreakPoint. though the program is targeted at an American audience, he found that the subjects are the same as those he is dealing with in Africa.  another African Christian leader told me that Western notions of multiculturalism are being used to justify tribalism and the local church is baffled over how to counter the divisive force. as people in Pakistan get online with people in Pennsylvania, America's culture war is increasingly spilling over into other nations.
the sobering conclusion is that our own effectiveness in defending and contending for truth has repercussions across the entire globe. American Christians had better get serious about understanding biblical faith as a comprehensive worldview and showing  how it stands up the challenges of our age.

Christianity vs. Naturalism

what is the major challenge today?

in the broadest categories, the conflict of our day is theism versus naturalism. Theism is the belief that there is a transcendent God who created the universe; Naturalism is the belief that natural cause alone are sufficient to explain everything that exists. the most fundamental questions reflect these categories:
Is ultimate reality God or the cosmos?
Is there a supernatural realm or is nature all that exists? 
Has God spoken and reveled His truth to us or is truth something we have to find, even invent, for ourselves?
is there a purpose to our lives, or are we cosmic accidents?emerging from the slime?

these 2 major systems are utterly opposed and if we are going to defend the truth effectively, we must grasp their full implications. Naturalism is the idea that nature is all that exists, that life arose from a chance collision of atoms, evolving eventually into human life as we know it today. in its broadest sense, naturalism can even include certain forms of religion - those in which the spiritual is conceived as completely inherent within nature,

*21  such as NEO-PAGAN and NEW AGE religions. by contrast, Christianity teaches that there is a transcendent God who existed before the world existed and who is the ultimate origin of everything else.  the universe is dependent at every moment on His providential governance and care.

*MORAL RELATIVISM. in morality, naturalism results in relativism. if nature is all there is, then there is no transcendent source of moral truth and we are left  to construct morality on our own. every principle is reduced to a personal preference. by contrast, the Christian believes in a God who has spoken, who has revealed an absolute and unchanging standard of right and wrong, based ultimately on his own holy character.

*MULTICULTURALISM. as a consequence of relativism, the naturalist treats all cultures as morally equivalent, each merely reflecting its own history and experience. contemporary trends like postmodernism and multiculturalism  are rooted firmly in naturalism, for if there is no transcendent source of truth or morality, then we find our identity only in our race gender or ethnic group. but Christians can never equate truth with the limited respective of any group. truth is God's perspective , as revealed in Scripture. hence, while we appreciate the cultural diversity, we insist on the propriety of judging particular cultural practices as morally right or wrong. furthermore, Christians regard the Western tradition and heritage as worth defending;  that is, to the degree that historically it has been shaped by a biblical worldview.

*PRAGMATISM  since naturalists deny any transcendent moral standards,they tend to take a pragmatic approach to life. Pragmatism says:  Whatever works best is right. actions and policies are judged  on utilitarian grounds alone. by contrast, the Christian is an Idealist, judging actions not by what works but by what ought to be, based on objective standards.  (note - THY WORD IS TRUTH... Bible)

*UTOPIANISM naturalists generally embrace the Enlightenment notion that human nature is essentially good, which leads to utopianism. U says; if only we create the right social and economic structures, we can usher in an age of harmony and prosperity. but Christians can never give their allegiance to utopian projects. we know that sin is real, that it has deeply twisted human nature and that none of our efforts  can create heaven on earth. heaven is an eschatological hope that will be fulfilled only by divine intervention at the end of human history. in the meantime, the human propensity for evil and disorder must be hemmed in b law and tradition.
THIS WORLD PERSPECTIVE.  Naturalists consider only what happens in this world, this age, this life. but Christians see things from an eternal perspective.everything we do now has eternal significance, because one day there will be a judgment and then it will become evident that our choices in this life have consequences that last into eternity.

*22  Christianity in a Post-Christian Era

if we are going to make a difference in our world, we must grasp these profoundly contrary views of reality, for they are the root of our cultural crisis. the dominant worldview today is naturalism, which has created a culture that is both post- Christian and postmodernist. by post-Christian, we do not mean Americans no longer profess to be Christians or no longer attend church. as a matter of fact, most Americans do both. rather, by Post-Christian we mean that Americans, along with most other Western cultures, no longer rely on Judeo-Christian truths at the basis of their public philosophy or their moral consensus.
this is a significant cultural shift. at the birth of our nation, no one - not even deists and skeptics - doubted that basic biblical truths undergirded American institutions and informed the nation's values. though the founding Fathers drew heavily from Enlightenment philosophy as well as from Christian tradition, few at the time saw any contradiction between the 2. and for most of our nation's history, these basic truths remained the foundation of the social consensus.

today that is no longer true. to see how rapidly the shift occurred, one need look only at Supreme Court decisions. as recently as 1952, Justice William O. Douglas wrote:  'We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being'. the Court's language caused no stir.  it reflected what most Americans believed.
but in 1996, little more than a generation later, Court watchers were scandalized when Justice Antonin Scalia announced in a speech that as a Christina he believed in miracles and in the resurrection of Jesus. cartoonist Herbloc depicted the Supreme Court justices all holding law books  - except Scalia, who was holding a Bible. Washington post columnist Richard Cohen suggested that Scalia had disqualified himself from handling further  church-state questions (Does Cohen believe only atheists are qualified to make such decisions?) the talking head on TV savaged Scalia fro his 'bias'.
similar attitudes have filtered through all levels of society. in 1997,  a Boy Scout troop was denied the use of a public facility at the National Zoo,  which is owned by the Smithsonian. Why? because the Smith.  ruled that the  Boy Scouts organization is 'biased' when it requires that its members believe in God. religious expressions in public places are increasingly discouraged, if not by court order, than by social pressure. one major city has named the Christmas holiday 'sparkle season' and many others forbid the singing of Christmas carols, at least those that mention that Christ child, in public places. one school district even changed 'Easter eggs' to 'spring ovals'.

*23  Christianity In a PostModernist World

but antireligious pressure is not the worst of it. as we said, today's culture not only a post-Christian but also is rapidly becoming postmodernist, which means it is resistant not only to Christina truth claims but to Any truth claims. POSTMODERNISM rejects any notion of a universal, overarching truth and reduces all ideas to social constructions shaped by class, gender and ethnicity.

once again , the shift to this new philosophy has been breathtakingly rapid.  in the 1960s the percentage of young people going to college suddenly surged and attitudes once held only by the intellectual elite suddenly became common coinage. the philosophy of EXISTENTIALISM, a precursor of postmodernism, swept the campuses, proclaiming that life is absurd, meaningless and that the individual self must create  his own meaning by his own choices. choice was elevated to the ultimate value, the only justification for any action. American became  what one theologian aptly describes as the 'imperial republic of the autonomous Self'.
it was a small step from existentialism to postmodernism , in which even the self is dissolved into the interplay of the forces of RACE, CLASS  and GENDER. Multiculturalsim is not about appreciating folk cultures; it's about the dissolution of the individual into the tribal group.  in postmodernism, there is no objective, universal truth; there is only the perspective of the group, whatever the group may be: African-Americans, women, gays, Hispanics and the list goes on. in postmodernism, all viewpoints, all lifesyles, all beliefs and behaviors are regarded as Equally Valid. institutions of higher learning have embraced this philosophy so aggressively that they have adopted campus codes enforcing political correctness. tolerance has become so important that no exception is tolerated.

but IF all ideas are equally valid, as postmodernism insists, then NO IDEA IS REALLY WORTHY OF OUR ALLEGIANCE, NOTHING  IS WORTH LIVING OR DYING FOR  - OR EVEN ARGUING ABOUT.  and this climate  of apathy can actually make it harder than ever to witness to the truth of Christianity. in the past, Christians proclaiming their faith might expect to encounter a vigorous debate over the rational grounds fro belief, but today the same message is likely to be met with bored indifference.
this is exactly the attitude I witnessed when I spoke at Yale Law

*24  School in 1996.  a few fearless Christian students had organized a forum to address the provocative question of how Yale had contributed to undermining the rule of law .  (it was at Yale that Critical Legal Studies was born, a DECONSTUCTIONIST  (def - a philosophical and critical movement, starting in the 1960s and especially applied to the study of lit, that questions all traditional assumptions about the ability of language to represent reality and emphasizes that a text has no stable reference or identification because
words essentially only refer to other words
and therefore  a reader must approach a text
by eliminating any metaphysical or ethnocentric assumptions
through an active role of defining meaning,
sometimes by a reliance on new word construction, etymology, puns and other wordplay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

movement to strip the law of any objective meaning.) when the  students invited me to speak, i wondered if the meeting might erupt into a riot - or , at least, an unpleasant confrontation.

before my lecture,  i dined with prof. Stephen Carter, the brilliant Yale  legal scholar, committed christian and author of several best-sellers, including The Culture of Disbelief and integrity. over a place of enchiladas in a small campus hangout, I voiced my apprehensions.

'Don't worry about a riot, he chuckled. 'They'll listen quietly and walk away without saying a word'.

But I'm going to tell them that there can be no basis for law without a Christian consensus or at least a recognition of natural law., i sad.
Carter smiled patiently. 'when these kids come to Yale, they are taught that the law has nothing to do with morality. and they accept that.  so you can have your opinions and they'll find those interesting, but they won't even bother to argue.
when i arrived at Levensen Auditorium, shortly before 8 the hall was full. down in from  were perhaps 200 townspeople, most of them Christians, i supposed ,  and then row on row of students. as i spoke, I searched the students' eyes, hoping for some sign of engagement. Nothing. as I progressed into my material, i became more provocative, but they remained impassive.

during the question-and-answer period, no one challenged a single premise I had advanced. most of the queries came from the Christians in the front rows. Carter had sized up his students well. they listened politely, took a few notes, then packed up their papers and quietly slipped out of the auditorium.
death can be unpleasant at times, but at least it presupposes that there are truths worth defending, ideas worth fighting for. in our postmodernist age, however,
your truths and yours,
my truths are mine and
none are significant enough to get passionate about.
and if there is not truth, then we cannot persuade one another by rational arguments. all that's left is sheer power - which opens the door to a new form of fascism. (def - dictator with complete power)

Stanley Fish,  a leading postmodernist scholar at Duke University, author of the article 'There's No Such Thing As Free Speech:  and It's a Good Thing, Too'  argues that all statements of principle are really just expressions of person preferences and therefore, an appeal to principle is no more than  a power play, an attempt to impose one's own private preferences

*25  on others in the guise of 'objective truths'. and if the game is about power, the only thing you worry about is coming out on top. 'Someone is always going to be restricted next, Fish writes,  and it is your job to make sure that the someone is not you.
the demise of truth is not confined to the academic halls of Yale law School or Duke University. across the country, a generation of college graduates have marched off, degrees in their hands and a postmodernist ideology in their heads, to work in executive suites, political centers and the editorial rooms of newspapers, magazines and television studios. the result has been the emergence of a new and influential group of professionals who work primarily with words and ideas 0 what some sociologists call the New Class or the knowledge class or, more derogatory, the chattering class. and because they control the means of public discourse, their philosophy has become dominate. no longer is the majority view the outlook of morally conservative, religious, patriotic middle America  - the group Richard Nixon in 1970 called the 'silent majority', or what Jerry Falwell a few years later labeled the 'moral majority'. the worldview framed on campuses from the 1960s on has now entered the mainstream  of American life.
American Demographics magazine, summarizing a demographic study done in 1997, noted that there has been 'a comprehensive shift in values, worldviews and ways of life' that so far affects about one-fourth of American adults;  this is the New Class, or what the article called the 'Cultural Creatives. they embrace a new 'trans-modernist' set of values, including 'environmentalism, feminism, global issues and spiritual searching/, they after have a background in movements for social justice, civil rights, feminism and New Age spirituality. thoroughly postmodernist, they are skeptical, if not resentful, of moral absolutes. they 'see nature as sacred' and emphasize self-actualization and spiritual growth. they tend to be antihierarchical and embrace a public philosophy that is decentralized, democratic and egalitarian.
this new worldview is emerging against the backdrop of 2 already existing worldviews, the study noted. the first is 'Traditionalism', held by 29% of adults, labeled 'Heartlanders'. they are often 'country folks', holding to 'a nostalgic image of small towns and strong churches'.

the  other existing world view is 'Modernism', held by 47% of adults. they value technological progress and material success and they tend to be politicians, military leaders, scientists and businesspeople .  they are pragmatic, comfortable with the economic establishment and less concerned with ideology and social issues.
most significant, however, are the demographic projections. according

*26  to the study, the number of Traditionalists and Modernists is in decline. the average age of Traditionalists, for example, is 53 and they are dying faster than they are being replaced. by contrast, individuals in the fat-growing Cultural Creatives group tend to be young, well educated, affluent and assertive (interestingly, 6 out of 10 are women.) they are on the cutting edge of social change and if hey are not already the dominant influence, they soon will be.

...the most significant clash of worldviews is not between traditional religions or cultures; it is between classic Christian theism and naturalism - in both its modernist and its rapidly growing postmodernist forms. the task for the  Christian church appears daunting. but this should not discourage us, for out faith tells us that the truth will ultimately prevail. and as we well see ...even postmodernists are beginning to realized the inadequacy of their beliefs as they  come face-to-face with the social chaos that naturalism breeds.
Christians must understand the clash of worldviews that is changing the face of American society. and we must stand ready to respond as people grow disillusioned with false beliefs and values and as hey begin to seek real answers. we must know not only what our worldview is and why  people believe them. only then can we present the gospel in language that can be understood. only then can we defend truth in a way that is winsome and persuasive.

it can be one - as I discovered in the fall of 1996 during a trip to Sofia, Bulgaria, one of Europe's most impoverished countries, both materially and spiritually.



Chapter 4  -CHRISTIAN TRUTH IN AN AGE OF UNBELIEF

false ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel. we may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here or there, if we permit the  whole collective thought of a nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion.  J. Gresham Machen
when I visited Bulgaria in 1996, not only was the country extremely poor, but it was also the last major Eastern European nation will in the grip of a marxist regime. though the iron Curtain had fallen in 1989, communist officials in Bulgaria simply took new party labels, ran in the first free elections and won. most never even changed offices.
but while the government didn't change, the church did. a young orthodox priest from Bulgaria, Father Nikolai, traveled to Poland to attend  prison Fellowship training session and was gripped b a vision to work in prisons. after his return home, Father Nicolai built  a thriving ministry with the help of 150 volunteers, all of whom worked and sacrificed to restore the chapel  and to refurbish the antiquated hospital in the century-old prison in Sofia.
the purpose of my visit was to dedicate the hospital and the event attracted an unexpectedly high level of interest. Government officials arrived in black limousines, joined by more than 100 reporters. along with  crowd of local Prison Fellowship volunteers. among the dignitaries was Bulgaria's minister of justice, who had remained an uncompromising communist.

in his official comments, the minister of justice praised Prison Fellowship profusely for supplying new cots, medicines and operating -room equipment. but later, during the dedication ceremony, as Father Nikolai

*28  explained that the work was motivated by faith in God, the official drew furiously on his cigarette and was noticeably ill at ease. a dark, brooding young man, he kept shifting his position and staring into the distance,  broadcasting to everyone that he, at least, had nothing to do with Father Nikolai, who was leading us in prayer in front of the brightly pained icons placed on the hospital steps. the official's disdain was so evident that even newspaper reports the next day mentioned it.

at a press conference following the dedication, I spoke on the theme that crime is ultimately a moral problem and that the solution, therefor, is moral reformation. the hospital we were dedicating that day would heal the body, i said, but the chapel would heal the soul. the minister of justice watched me intently as i spoke and afterward he invited me to his office the next day.

so the next morning , accompanied by Father Nikolai and my associates, i arrived at the office of the minister of justice. he led us into a bare-walled conference room painted in characteristic communist drab-green. but in a move uncharacteristic of officials of the Communist party, who are always followed by nodding minions, he was alone. and what ensued was a remarkable conversation.

the official seated himself at the head of a long conference table, cigarette in hand and immediately started firing questions in a brisk, business-like voice, speaking flawless English. 'Mr. Colson, yesterday you said crime is a moral problem. what do you mean by that? do you say that in a sociological sense?'
'No, I said. 'Crime is a matter of people choosing to do wrong. it is the individual's moral failure.

he demured politely. 'It seems to me that crime is caused by social and economic forces, that people respond to environmental conditions'.
my turn to demur politely. 'the moral dimension transcends social forces. people are genuine moral agents and they make real moral choices'.  I cited several studies, including one showing that crime decreased during he great American religious revivals and one concluding that crimes are the result of 'wrong moral choices'.
as our conversation continued,the outlines of the minister's own worldview  became clear and i could see why he aw having trouble understanding me. educated in a communist school system, he had been steeped in marxist philosophy. in marxism, human beings are merely a complex form of matter and their identity lies in the way they relate to other forms of matter - that is, how they shape and make material things or the means of production,  economics is the foundation, while everything else - culture,

*29  art, morality, religion - is mere superstructure, reflecting the dominant class's economic interests. because of this, the minister couldn't even grasp what I meant by individuals making moral choices. 'What i don't understand, he said, is why some people know the law of the land but blatantly disregard it.
he set his cigarette pack on the table , using it to symbolize the barrier that the law sets up against certain behavior;  then his hand jumped over the pack to illustrate a criminal ignoring the law. 'It seems that only fear will stop people from committing crimes'. and he alluded to Talleyrand, the 19th century French foreign minister who hung corpses in the street every night to deter he restless masses from fomenting revolution.
'No, Sir, i responded. 'Fear does not stop people. if it did no one would smoke.' the official juggled his cigarette pack nervously and we both smiled.
'Only love changes human behavior, I said. 'If I love another person, i want to please him or her; if i love God, I want to please Him and do what he wants. only love can overcome our sinful self-centeredness'.
I soon realized, however, that before i could even began to explain biblical concepts to this man, I would have to engage in what the late Francis Schaeffer called 'pre-evangelism'. in other words I would have to address the huge gap between his worldview and mine, the gap that kept him from grasping concepts such as sin and guilt, responsibility and forgiveness. for the next hour, i challenged the official's basic presuppositions.
I led off with Plato, a philosopher who would be familiar to him and who taught that there is a spiritual aspect to human nature. 'at the core, I said,  people are spiritual beings, not pawns of economic forces'. he arched his eyebrows at me as i challenged his most basic belief.

then I explained the reality of the Fall and sin, so tragically evident
at each point, trying to remain sensitive to his feelings, I gently rebutted the basic Marxist assumptions, showing how they fail to conform to the reality of human experience. I saw understanding slowly dawning  in his eyes. it was as if a new world gradually opened to him, a new way to see human nature.
finally he asked about my won life and I shared the gospel, telling the story of how I met Jesus Christ in the darkest days of Watergate. then I saw

*30  his face light up, as if a dark cloud had lifted and for the first time he could see clearly. we even prayed together at the end of the meeting.

PRE - EVANGELISM

my experience with the Bulgarian minister of justice illustrates the great gaps dividing worldviews and how we have to work to bridge them. her was a man steeped in a view that rejects sin and promises utopia through  social and economic revolution. so who needs salvation? besides, the notion of God has been disproved by science, which explains life by purely natural causes. religion is a fiction, an opiate of the masses. to get through to the young man I had to challenge these presuppositions.
the church faces a similar ask. so in many ways the church today must function like the first-century church, which crafted different approaches to Jews and Greeks. the Jews wee steeped in the old testament Scriptures. they knew here was one God and that he was eh Creator; they understood sin and guilt and sacrifice; they looked forward to the coming Messiah. the apostles were able to approach them by beginning with the message that Christ was, in fact, the awaited Messiah.

by contrast, the Greeks had no knowledge of Scripture and the concepts of sin and redemption were not familiar to them. their concept of 'god' was a pantheon of deities  who operated from human passions, merely on a grander scale.  as a result, the apostles had o find a different starting point. the classic example of the apostle Paul's speech on Mars hill in Athens, where he began by referring to one of the city's religious sites, an alter that bore the inscription 'TO AN UNKNOWN GOD' (see Acts 17) later he quoted Greek poetry: 'as some of your won poets have said 'we are his offspring'. Acts 17.28 in other words, paul appealed to his audience's own experience and literature to find a foothold in their understanding or the biblical message.

even then, Paul didn't begin with salvation. he first laid a foundation with the doctrine of creation:  'The God  who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth' . Acts 17.24 he hen argued that his listeners ought to understand for themselves that this god could not be like  a gold or silver idol. for if he created them, then He must be a personal being someone to whom they owed a personal allegiance - and someone to whom they personally accountable. only after establishing who God is and why we are morally responsible to Him did Paul talk about repentance and Christ's resurrection.

*31  western culture once resembled the first-century Jewish culture:  most people knew the Scriptures, even if they weren't always obedient to its commands. likewise most American had some sort of church affiliation and knew the basic tenets of Christianity, even if they went to church only on Easter. but that is no longer the case. today, many people are completely unfamiliar with even basic biblical teaching and we must find ways to engage those who think more like Jews than like Greeks than Jews.  we must follow the New Testament pattern  for addressing a pagan culture.

'Why not rely on the simple gospel?' some may ask. the answer is that God calls us to love people enough to go where they are - not only physically but also conceptually.  we are to listen to their questions and frame answers they can understand. God is sovereign,of course and can penetrate even the hardest heart with His Word. but we, as His instruments, are called to love people  enough to reach out to them in their won language. this is, of course, what foreign missionaries do and today, more than ever , we are aliens in our own land, worldview missionaries to our own post-Christian, postmodernist culture.

APOLOGETICS

grasping Christianity as a worldview is important not only for pre-evangelism but also  for apologetics. the apostle Peter tells us, 'always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for he hope that you have'. i Pet. 3.15 the word Answer comes from the Greek word apologia, from which we get our word apologetics, meaning a defense or vindication of what we believe.
the late Henri Nouwen, when he was a professor at Harvard, asked me why I devoted half of a presentation at the Harvard Divinity School to apologetics  - to evidence supporting the existence of God. 'Christianity is like marriage, he said in his gentle way.  'You can explain that you love Jesus the same way you love your wife'.
'yes, Henri, but they can See my wife,  I replied.  'they don't need me to convince them that she exists. but they do need reasons to believe that God exists.
the world can accept that we love Jesus - they can even acknowledge the social benefits of religion - and yet they can still think that he is merely a human or mythical figure. that's why we need o offer reasons for belief. while it is true that no one comes to God apart from faith, Christian faith is not an irrational leap. examined objectively, the claims of he Bible are

*32  rational propositions well supported by reason and evidence. in fact as we will argue through this book, all other explanations of reality are irrational. J. Gresham Machen, one of the great fundamentalist theologians in the early part of this century, said that the purpose of apologetics is to 'mold the thought of the world in such a way as to make the acceptance of Christianity something more than a logical absurdity.'
but, you might ask, in a culture so hostile and hardened,  can we really persuade others of the truth of Christianity? yes, indeed, for we have a strong case to make and people will listen if we cast it in terms of the questions they have.
consider the common charge hurled against Christians - that they want to impose their views on others, restrict the liberty of others.  my response whenever i hear this is to list the great martyrs who brought down the soviet Union, pointing out the 'odd coincidence' that the overwhelming majority were members of the clergy. the truth is that Christians vigorously  defend the persecuted because they believe human rights are God-given.
the responsibility for apologetics is not limited to Christian pastors or intellectuals. when I challenge people to learn how to defend their faith and 'think christianly', they often respond, 'Oh, I'm not up to this' or 'It's too deep for me'.  but God has created each of us with a mind, with the capacity to study, think and ask question. no one is an expert in every area, but each of us can master the subjects in which we have some experience.
if our culture is to be transformed, ti will happen from the bottom up - from ordinary believers practicing apologetics over the backyard fence or around the barbecue grill. to be sure, it's important for Christian scholars to conduct research and hold academic symposia, but the real leverage for cultural change comes from transforming the habits and dispositions of ordinary people.

and let us always bear in mind the final words of Peter's admonition - that when we give reasons for our hope, we do so 'with gentleness and respect' i Pet.3 .15 a living sample of the right attitude is Ron Greer, an ex-offender who once hated all white people. but then was gloriously converted and is now a Prison Fellowship instructor and pastor of an evangelical church in Madison, Wisconsin. Greer was dismissed from his regular job at a fire department for passing out Christina tracts describing homosexuality as a sin. Madison's homosexual activists were enraged and stormed into Greer's church, disrupting the service, throwing condoms at the altar and shouting obscenities. Ron Greer responded by graciously inviting them to join in the worship service.

later, when the press asked how he had kept his cool, he smiled and

*33  said, 'I  have no more reason to be angry with them than i would with a blind man who stepped on my foot'. precisely. most of those who object to Christianity are simply spiritually blind and our job is lovingly to help bring them into the light.

THE CULTURAL COMMISSION

understanding Christianity as a worldview is important not only for fulfilling the Great Commission but also for fulfilling the Cultural Commission - the call to create a culture under the Lordship of Christ. God cares not only about redeeming souls but also about restoring his creation. he calls us to be agents not only of his saving race but also of His common grace. our job is not only to build up the church but also to build a society to the glory of God.
though we live in a pluralistic society, we serve a God who is sovereign over all and all aspects of personal and social life are at their best when they reflect His character. all citizens live better in a world that more closely conforms to reality, to the order god created. making such prudential arguments is a much more effective way to reform or rebuild a culture than mounting political campaigns. changing laws to conform to Biblical standards of righteousness is a crucial task, of course, but the law alone cannot reform the heart or change behavior. how people live is determined more by their shared values and this in turn is changed by patient persuasion and example.

when advancing the biblical perspective in public debate, we ought to interpret biblical truth in ways that appeal to the common good. so although we believe that Scripture is God's inerrant revelation, we do not have to derive all arguments directly from Scripture.

for example, when I argue in state legislatures that criminals should be required to pay restitution to their victims,  I do not say,  'd this because the Bible says so'.  rather, I present it as sound public policy. it makes sense to give back what you have taken, to restore what you have destroyed. (almost always,  someone will ask m where the idea came from and then I say, 'Go home and check your Bible. read Exodus 22 or the New Testament  story of Zacchaeus.

yet whenever I write about the need to use reasoned arguments in the public square, I can count on a barrage of letters from shocked readers, asking, 'Isn't the Bible adequate for salvation?  doesn't the Bible tell us that the word will not return void?  the answer is that of course god's Word is sufficient for salvation - for Saving Grace. but here we are talking about Common

*34  Grace - that is, carrying out God's work of maintaining creation by promoting righteousness and restraining evil. to do this, we must translate God's revelation into the language of the world. we must be able to speak to the scientist in the language of science, to the artist in the language of art, to the politician in the language of politics.

DISCIPLESHIP OF THE MIND

the Christian calling is not only to save souls but also to save minds. in the words of harry Blamires, a student of C. S. Lewis,  'there is no room in Christendom for a culture of the spirit which neglects the mind'. that notion might sound alien to many people, but it is surely biblical. the greatest commandment, Jesus  says, is to 'love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your Mind(Mt. 22.37), emphasis added). loving the Lord with your Mind means understanding God's ordinances for all of creation, for the natural world, for societies, for businesses, for schools, for the government, for science, for the arts. the apostle Paul tells us to take 'every thought captive to the obedience of Christ (II Cor. 10.5 offer your bodies as 'a living and holy sacrifice',  he also says, and then explains that this means we must not 'be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of (our)mind' Romans 12.1-2

sadly, many Christians have been misled into believing there is a dichotomy between faith and reason, and as a result they have actually shunned intellectual pursuits. in The Christian Mind, Blamires stated the problem succinctly in his opening sentence:  'there is no longer a Christian mind'.  what he meant was that evangelicals have not developed a distinctively Christian perspective on all of life. recently, Wheaton College historian Mark Noll made a similar point in The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.
today we must break down this false dichotomy between the  spiritual and the intellectual and recover the calling to save minds - especially in our highly educated society. unlike a generation ago, churches today are filled with college graduates; in fact, polls show that evangelicals are better educated than the general populace, a striking change from 40  years ago. pastors must begin to redefine their task to include intellectual evangelism, for if they do not preach to issues of the mind, they will find themselves increasingly alienated from their own flock.

this is not a burdensome task - one more thing to whip ourselves into doing. I have found that developing a Christian mind is a rewarding and enriching act of discipleship. back when I was in college, I was a moderately

*35  good student, at least in subjects I enjoyed, like history and political philosophy.  but studying was work for me, even drudgery at times, particularly when it conflicted with fraternity parties. in law school, I was at the top of my class, but rarely because  of genuine intellectual curiosity;  i simply wanted to be the best at my profession. but after my conversion to Christianity,  I felt a keen desire to lean about God's work throughout history. Dr. Richard Lovelace, a professor from Gordon-Conwell seminary, began tutoring me in church history and I found  it enthralling, it was like having  my mind born again, along with my spirit. History and literature and science all took on new meaning because i began to see these disciplines as explorations of God's truth. I found it exciting to be able to see through all the pretensions of the philosophies I had studied in college. it was as if a searchlight were shone into a cave, exposing the dark holes and crevices.

my intellectual curiosity has not abate. when I read about the history of modern liberalism, for example, or Renaissance art or ancient understandings of law, I  am not merely absorbing knowledge for its own sake. i am understanding God's creative handiwork.  I am witnessing God's great morality drama that we call human history. and I am learning new ways to defend God's truth.
it is especially crucial to cultivate the mind in order to avoid the snares and expose the false values of modern culture. every day we face attempts to seduce us into worshiping the idols of modern life, sometimes cleverly disguised. for example 2 years ago, one television network produced a Christmas movie advertised as pure family entertainment. a huge picture of Julie Andrews, costumed as a nun, adorned the cover of the newspaper's TV section, with rave reviews inside. ' a warm holiday drama' gushed one reviewer, 'calculated to tap comforting memories'.

assuming that a story about a nun would carry some Christian message  and wanting to 'tap comforting memories', I gathered the Colson clan to watch Christmas Tree. but the story that unfolded was more about nature worship than about Christianity.  the plot involved an abandoned, psychologically disturbed child who was drawn almost mystically to a particular pine tree. eventually she entered a religious order because she wanted to spend her life caring for the tree. when the disturbed child, now miraculously transformed, was asked what turned her life around, she said, 'It was the tree'.
I do not recall a single reference to Jesus or even to God in the entire wearisome 2 hours. the film was blatant naturalism: Nature will 'save s and give our lives meaning;  the tree is the naturalistic messiah.
often the message is much more subtle. for example, you may

*36  remember Saab's 'Find your own road' campaign in the mid-nineties.  'You are having lunch with a large man who just happens to be your boss, said one ad. the boss makes a statement you know to be in error.  'What do you do?  the voice-over offered 2 options: a polite, respectful response of 'Come on, j. B. blow it out your ear'. 4 out of 5 Saab owners, the ad confided,  would choose the latter. in other words, tell the stuffy old establishment to chuck it  and 'find your own road', do your own thing. along with selling cars, Saab was selling a philosophy of autonomy and rebellion  against authority.  (the sequel to this story shows that Christians can make a difference. after I broadcast a BreakPoint program criticizing the ad, i received a call from Saab's US president, who happened to be a serious Christian, telling me the ads were being withdrawn.)

J. Gresham Machen challenged his Princeton seminary students in a charge every Christian today should take to heart:
'You can avoid the death (over contested issues of the faith) if you choose. .
 you need only drift with the current.
preach every Sun during your seminary course, study ans you studied in college
and these questions will probably never trouble you .
the great questions may be easily avoided.
many preachers are avoiding them.
and many preachers are preaching to the air'.
then Machen added:  'The church is waiting for men of another type'.

as we begin the new millennium, the mission for Christians is nothing less than becoming men and women of 'another type'.  we must be men and women who will dare to
wrest Christianity free from its fortress mentality, its sanctuary stronghold
and establish it once again as the great life system and force that acknowledges the Creator as sovereign over all. we must be men and women who understand  that the task is much more than launching spasmodic crusades to fight one battle or another - be it gay rights or abortion. we must be men and women who see, as Kuyper did, that the struggle is one of first principles.

'If the battle is to be fought with honor and with a hope of victory, then principle must be arrayed against principle.'
we must understand opposing views as total life systems and then 'take our stand in a life system of equally comprehensive and far-reaching power'.

the contours of a Christian life system will become  clear in the four sections that follow:
Creation -God spoke the universe into existence and created humanity in His image;
Fall - the human condition is marred by sin
Redemption - God in His grace provided a way to be reconciled to Himself, and
Restoration - we are called to bring these principles into every area of life and create a new culture.

*37  Equipped  with this understanding, we can show not only that the Christian worldview gives the best answers - answers that accord with common sense and the most advanced science - but also that Christians can take up spiritual arms in the great cosmic struggle between conflicting worldviews.

dare we believe that Christianity can yet prevail.
we must believe it.
as we stated at the outset, this is an historic moment of opportunity and when the church is faithful to its calling, it always leads to a reformation of culture. when the church is truly the church,  a community living in biblical obedience and contending for faith in every area  of life, it will surely revive the surrounding culture or create a new one.
religion is not a reflection or product of culture, but quite the reverse. as the great 20th century historian Christopher Dawson argued, cult is at the root of culture (taking 'cult' in its most  basic meaning as a  system of religious worship). the late political philosopher Russell Kirk agreed:  'It's from association in a cult, a body of worshipers, that human community grows'.

the oyster offers a good analogy. oysters make their own shells, so if  the shell is badly formed, the problem is not in the shell but in the oyster. likewise, when a culture deforms and decays,
don't ask what went wrong with the culture;
ask what went wrong with the cult - the religious core.
'when belief in the cult has been wretchedly enfeebled, the culture will decay swiftly, Kirk wrote.
'the material order rests on the spiritual order'.

the hope for today's world is a renewed and vibrant spiritual order,
a culture-creating cult,
men and women  of another type, arrayed for the great battle of principle against principle.
a battle that begins,  'In the beginning...

PART 2 - CREATION:  WHEE DID WE COME FROM AND WHO ARE WE?
*41  Chapter 5 - DAVE AND KATY'S METAPHYSICAL ADVENTURE

(note - this may or may not involve real people...the author seems to have created the story of this chapter in order to illustrate the actual outworking of what is mentioned above...I will skip all but the last part of the adventure...)
*48  (note - referring to one of the attractions of Disney World.... where a father who wants to dialogue with his daughter, who seems to be slipping away from the Christian world view she was brought up under due to the influence of what is taught as truth at her school, in the hope of bringing her back to the faith...)

(Dad) a lot of people think They know what's true. we just spent the day going  to exhibits where a whole bunch of ideas were presented at true'.
'That's science, Dad,  Katy said patiently, as if teaching a child.'Science is things that are proved'.
most of it was more like philosophy, Kate.
no, it wasn't.
yes it was. most of the exhibits here share one version of the truth, even when they're talking bout different things. it's a story more than anything, and it goes like this:
by chance the universe came into existence,
by chance Earth  was just right for life to exist,
by chance life developed into birds and bees and butterflies,
by chance human beings came along and by chance human beings turned out to be so smart that all the world's problems will someday succumb to our technological prowess.
end of story.
hallelujah, amen.

'But scientists can prove all that, Dad. no one can know for sure about God.

'Come on, how can anyone 'prove' that the universe cam about by chance?  everything i know about the universe, including my incredibly beautiful daughter, indicates to me that Somebody designed it. Created it'.  all the questions that had been eating at Dave's mind from the time they entered 'the Living Seas' were finally taking shape.

'my biology teacher says...he says that's our ego talking. people want to believe they're important,  so they invent religion. they invent the idea of a God who created them so they'll feel better'.

'You really think life came about by chance?

'It's chemicals. it's All chemicals. we Saw how it happened in 'The Living Seas' exhibit. volcanoes erupting, then the  ocean, then chemicals coming together. scientists have done it in a test tube. I read bout it in my science book. I even saw a photo of this thing with glass tubes and electrical sparks and then, you know, molecules came out.
Katy flopped back  against the bench and Dave pt his head in his hands. so that was it. she had been so indoctrinated with a secular view of the world, a view backed by the prestige of 'science', that Christianity  no longer made sense to her. he saw it now. but what could he say to make her change her mind.

'I just can't believe this beautiful world came about by chance he said it again, more out of desperation than out of any hope that it would make a difference.

'If what you believe is true, Dad, then how come no one else believes it?  Listen, last semester in English class we saw a movie called Inherit the Wind

*49  and you could see that all the scientists are on the side of Darwin.  Christians just close their minds to the facts of science'.
Dave sucked in his breath. he felt as if he had been hit in the chest.it made him angry.  'Come on, Katy. you know we didn't come from the monkeys'.  it was a pretty weak response, but it was the best he could muster on the spur of the moment.

Katy looked away without answering.

in despair, Dave realized that he didn't even know how to begin tacking this subject with his daughter. he knew very little about Darwin or evolution. all he really  knew - what he felt instinctively - was that if you dismissed God as the Creator, then the whole foundation of faith dissolved. he decided to take a different tack.

'When you went forward in church and became a Christian, Katy...doesn't that mean anything to you anymore? he asked

Katy bit her knuckle.  'I've thought about that  - alot. but how can you trust how you feel in those situations? I mean,  I get emotional when I'm watching a movie  and That's not real.

all I know, is you and Mom expect me to believe what you believe. if I go to church and pretend to be happy about it, we'll get along.  if i don't, you get all serious and make everyone miserable. just like this trip. it's as if you're blackmailing me'.

'Katy, I....

'Do you really love Me, Dad? the Katy you're talking to right now?  because this is the real me. I'm not the little girl you have in your head.

'Wait a minute, don't I  have aright to disagree with your ideas without you accusing me of not loving you?  who's doing the blackmailing here?'

'They're not just My ideas, Dad. they're what I learned in school. they're what everyone believes -even what we saw in the exhibits today. and you can't argue with that.

on that point, she was right, Dave thought grimly, he couldn't argue with That, because he didn't know how to begin to counter what she was saying. his daughter seemed to be throwing away her faith and he had no idea how to stop her. but what he said next came out of a place much deeper than his own frustration and helplessness.
'I'll find out.
'What?
'I'll find out who to argue with it. I'll find out what the story we heard here today is wrong.

*50  she rolled her eyes scornfully.  'Oh come ---

'Or I'll give up my faith, too,  he concluded.

she started, as if he had slapped her. then suddenly she dropped her mock sophistication.  'Oh Dad, I don't want...you know, Everything to change'
'but Everything is at stake here, Katy. that's what you've got to realize. everything is at stake.look, if Christianity is true, then it's not my belief or your mother's belief. it's the truth about Reality, about what is ultimately real.  and somehow i am going to find the facts that will show you it's true'.


Chapter 6 - SHATTERING THE GRID

*51  The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order and harmony which has been imposed on it by God. Johannes Kepler

What hit Dave Mulholland hard in the days that followed his vacation with Katy was the realization that his daughter had soaked up a way of thinking that was totally contrary to all he and Claudia had taught her. and he had discovered this at Disney World, of all places, where each year more than 40,000,000 people visit, waiting in line to be thrilled, dazzled and educated. many families scrimp  all year so they can afford to take their kids to this Magic Kingdom, this great American icon.

and for what? Dave asked himself grimly. to experience this paean to secularism, this altar to the power of human ingenuity and technology? but at least he now understood what had happened o his daughter. she had absorbed the idea that science is the source of truth, while religion is merely subjective opinion, something we tolerate for those weak enough to need that kind of comfort. and for the first time, he realized  that he had been foolishly overconfident.he had allowed his daughter to be exposed to these ideas in school, on television and in her books without ever bothering to teach her how to respond.
perhaps this was not surprising. Dave's own generation had not had to weather such pervasive challenges to Christian faith. for them, religion had been respected, part of the establishment. Dave had never experienced he anguish of doubt. he had always been satisfied with just going to church and holding a set of beliefs that made sense of life.

*52  but now everything had changed. now he needed to defend what he believed. for his daughter's sake, if not for his own.
'These are not just My ideas, Dad, Katy had argued that day at Disney World.
'they're what i learned in school.
they're what everyone believes'.

IS NATURE OUR CREATOR?

Katy was right. the dominant view in our culture  today is radically one-dimensional: that this life is all there is and nature is all we need to explain everything that exists. this is , at heart, the philosophy of naturalism and not only has it permeated the classroom curriculum, but it has also been expressed widely in popular culture, from Disney World to TV nature shows to children's books.

every worldview has to begin somewhere, has to begin with a theory of how the universe began.Naturalism begins with the fundamental assumption that the forces of nature alone are adequate to explain everything that exists. whereas the Bible says, 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth' Gen.  1.1, naturalists say that in the beginning weer the particles ,  along with blind, purposeless natural laws. that nature created the universe out of nothing, through  a quantum fluctuation. that nature formed our planet with its unique ability to support life, that nature drew together the chemicals that formed the first living cell. and naturalism says that nature acted through Darwinian mechanisms to evolve complex life-forms and, finally, human beings, with the marvels of consciousness and intelligence.
naturalism begins with premises that cannot be tested empirically, such as the assumption that nature is 'all that is or ever was or ever will be', to use a line from the late Carl Sagan's popular science program Cosmos. this is not a scientific statement, for there is no conceivable way it could be tested. it is a philosophy. and as we will see throughout the rest of this section, it is the philosophy that supports the entire evolutionary enterprise, from its assertions about the beginning of the universe to the beginning of life to the appearance of complex life-forms.

as much at anyone else, it was Sagan who popularized the naturalistic worldview and entrenched it firmly in the mind of the average American.

*53  the dark hair swept to one side, the Colgate smile, the telegenic personality - it all added up to a powerful influence on the millions of viewers who tuned in to his PBS program Cosmos. week after week, he brought stunning images of exploding stars and sprawling nebulae into homes and classrooms across the nation.
but that's not all Sagan brought. with his engaging manner, he was a televangelist for naturalism,  a philosophy he held with religious fervor. and logically so, for whatever you take as the starting point of your worldview  does function, in effect, as your religion.

Bake Sagan's trademark phrase,  'The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be' (the opening live in Cosmos, his book based on the television series).  here, Sagan is capitalizing on liturgical forms.  ever since the early church, Christians have sung the Gloria Patri: 'Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end'. Sagan is clearly offering a substitute liturgy, a cadence to the cosmos. the sheer fact that he capitalizes the word Cosmos, just as religious believers captitalize the word God, is a dead giveaway  that he is gripped by religious fervor.
in Sagan's TV program and books, he makes it clear that he has no use for the transcendent Creator reveled in the Bible,.  the cosmos is his deity. in one of his many best-selling books, Sagan mockingly describes the Christian God as 'an outsized , light-skinned male with a long white beard, sitting on a throne somewhere up there is the sky, busily tallying the fall of every sparrow'. Sagan regards the cosmos as the only self-existing, eternal  being"  'A universe that is infinitely old requires no Creator'.
on point after point, Sag offers a naturalistic substitute for traditional religion. while Christianity teaches that we are children of God, Sag says that 'we are, in the most profound sense, children of the Cosmos',  for it is the cosmos that gave us birth and daily sustains us. in a passage that is almost certainly autobiographical, Sag hints that the astronomer's urge to explore the cosmos is motivated by a mystical recognition that the chemicals in our bodies were originally forged in space - that outer space is our origin and our true home:  'some part of our being knows this is from where we came. we long to return'.  and the astronomer's 'awe' is nothing less that religious worship.  'Our ancestors worshiped the Sun and they were far from foolish'. for if we must worship something,  'does it not make sense to revere the Sun and the stars?'
like any religion, Sag's worship of the cosmos prescribes certain moral duties for its adherents. the cosmos has created human life in its own image - 'Our matter, our form, and much  of our character is determined by
 *54  the deep connection between life and the Cosmos' - and in return, we have a moral duty to the cosmos.  what is that duty? it is an 'obligation to survive',  an obligation we owe 'to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring'.
Sag's worship of the cosmos even tells us how to be saved. threats to human survival - pollution, war, food shortages - have nothing to do with moral failings. instead,they result from technological incompetence, Sag writes, which is hardly surprising since he believes that humanity is still in its evolutionary childhood. as a result, the solutions may well come from more advanced civilizations somewhere out there, descending  to Earth to save us. for this reason Sag was an avid supporter of efforts to scan the far reaches of space for radio messages. 'The receipt of a single message from space would show that it is possible to live through such technological adolescence', he writes breathlessly, for it would prove that an advanced extra-terrestrial race has survived the same stage and gone on to maturity.
if this isn't a vision of salvation, what is? the cosmos will speak to us. it is there and it is not silent.

in every human being is a deep, ongoing search for meaning and transcendence - part of the image of God in our very nature. even if we flee  God, the religious imprint remains. everyone worships some kind of God. everyone believes in some kind of deity - even if that deity is an impersonal substance such as matter, energy or nature. that's why the Bible preaches against idolatry, not atheism. naturalism may parade as science, marshaling facts and figures, but it is a religion.

this religion is being taught everywhere in the public square to day - even in the books your child reads in school or checks out of the public library not long ago, Nancy picked up a Berenstain Bears book for her young son. in the book, the Bear family invites the young reader to join them for a nature walk. we start out on a sunny morning and after running into the few spiderwebs, we read in capital letters sprawled across a sunrise, glazed with light rays, those familiar words:  Nature is 'all the IS  or WAS  or EVER WILL BE!
sound familiar? of course. it is Sag's famous opening line, now framed in cute images of little bears and bugs and birds - the philosophy of naturalism peddled for toddlers. and to drive the point home, the authors have drawn a bear pointing directly at the reader - your impressionable young child - and saying, 'Nature is you! nature is me! human beings, too, are nothing more that parts of nature.

is there any more poignant example of why Christians need to learn how to argue persuasively against naturalism? it is pressed on our children's

*55 imaginations long before they can think rationally and critically. it is presented everywhere as the only worldview supported by science. and it is diametrically opposed to Christianity.

the Christian must be ready to separate genuine science from philosophy. evolution, as it is typically presented in textbooks and museums, confuses the 2, presenting as 'science' what is actually naturalistic philosophy. indeed, many secular scientists insist that only naturalistic explanations qualify as science.
but why should we let secularists make the definitions? let's be clear on the distinction between empirical science and philosophy and then let's answer science with science and philosophy with philosophy.
this becomes all the more imperative when we realize what we're up against. the moment of Christian questions evolution, he or she is labeled a backwoods Bible-thumper, as ignorant reactionary who is trying to halt the progress of science. like Katy, most schoolchildren today have seen the movie Inherit the wind (or its counterpart on TV) and their imaginations are peopled with blustery,ignorant Christians going toe-to-toe with intelligent,educated, urbane defenders of Darwin. when we question Darwinism in public, we are viewed through the grid portrayed in these media pieces.

our first task, then, before we can even expect to be herd, is to shatter that grid, to break that stereotype, we must convince people that the debate is not about the Bible versus science.  the debate  is about pursuing  an unbiased examination of the scientific facts and following those facts wherever they may lead. we must challenge the assumption that science by definition means naturalistic philosophy.
the real battle is worldview against worldview, religion against religion.on one side is the naturalistic worldview, claiming that the universe is the product of blind, purposeless forces. on the other side stands the Christian worldview, telling us we were created by a transcendent (def - to be above and independent of time, the universe, etc) God who loves us and has a purpose for us. nature itself is covered with His 'fingerprints',  marks of purpose in every area of scientific investigation.our case  is fully defensible, if only we learn how to  make it.
the Christina worldview begins with the Creation, with a deliberate act by a personal Being who existed from all eternity. this personal dimension is crucial for understanding Creation. before bringing the world into existence, the Creator made a choice,a decision:  he set out a plan, an intelligent design.
according to the apostle Paul's writings, this design, which gives the world its form and sturcture, is evident to all. 'what may be known about

*56  God is plain to them', Paul writes,  'because God has made it plain to them'. Rom. 1.19 How? in the form and complexity of the world he made:  'for since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities - His eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made'.  Rom. 1.20 even unbelievers know somewhere deep within that God must exist. therefore, 'they are without excuse'.  in other words, Paul teaches that those who look honestly at the world around them should be able to conclude that it was created by an intelligent Being.

in the chapters that follow, we will look over Dave Mulholland's shoulder in his search for the answers to his daughter's questions. was Sag right, or was the apostle right in teaching that the evidence for creation can be clearly seen by all? did the universe create itself?  did life arise from a sea of chemicals? can you get the intricate complexity of plants and animals without an intelligence to guide the process?
what we will discover may be as starling to you as it was to Dave.


Chapter 7 - LET'S START AT THE VERY BEGINNING

(Design) is the most empirical of the arguments for god(based on) observational premises about the kind of order we discover in nature.  Frederick Ferre

*57  the first question any worldview must answer is how it all started. how did the universe begin? Dave Mulholland was about to discover one of the most exciting breakthroughs in recent scientific research,for in the past few decades, science has completely reversed itself on the question of the origin of the universe. after maintaining for centuries that the physical universe is eternal and therefore, needs no creator, science today has uncovered dramatize new evidence that the universe did have an ultimate origin, that it began at a finite time in the past -just as the Bible teaches.

to grasp just how revolutionary this is, we must understand  that most ancient cultures believed that the universe is eternal - or, more precise, that it was formed from some kind of primordial material that is eternal. the ancient Greeks even argued that the idea of an ultimate beginning was rationally inconceivable.  their  arguments were revived during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance,when classical literature was rediscover. then,in the 18th century, scientists formulated the law of conservation of matter (that matter can be neither created nor destroyed) and it became a potent weapon  in the hands of ardent materialists, who argued that science itself now ruled out any ultimate creation.  'today the indestructibility or permanence of matter is a scientific fact',  wrote a 19th century proponent of materialism.  'those who talk about an independent or supernatural creative

*58  force' that created the universe out of nothing 'are in antagonism with the first and simplest axiom of a philosophical view of nature'.
and there things stood. the idea that the universe had a beginning was reduced to a bare article of religious faith, standing in lonely opposition to firmly established science.

then, in the early 20th century, several lines of evidence began a curios convergence:  the implication from general relativity theory that the universe is expanding; the finding that the stars exhibit a 'red shift', implying that they are moving outward and finally, the realization that the 2 laws of thermodynamics actually make it imperative to believe in a beginning to the universe.

the second law of thermodynamics, the law of decay, implies that the universe is in a process of gradual disintegration - implacably moving toward final darkness and decay. in other words, the universe in running down, like a wound-up clock. and if it is running down, then there must have been a time when it was wound up. in the eloquent inference is that everything had a Beginning: somehow and sometime the cosmic processes were started, the stellar firs ignited and the whole vast pageant of the universe brought into being'.
what's more, the first law of thermodynamics (the conservation of matter) implies that matter cannot just pop into existence or create itself. and therefore, if the universe had a beginning, then something External to the universe must have cause it to come into existence, -something or Someone, transcendent to the natural world as a result, the idea of creation is no longer merely a matter of religious faith;  it is a conclusion based on the most straightforward reading of the scientific evidence. British physicist Paul Davies, though not a professing Christian, say the big bang is 'the one place in the universe where there is room, even or the  most had-nosed materialist, to admit God'.

WAS THERE AN ULTIMATE BEGINNING?

these various lines of evidence coalesced  in the 1960s and led to the formulation of big bang theory, which asserts that the universe began with a cosmic explosion. the new theory hit the scientific world like a thunderclap. it meant that the idea of an ultimate beginning was no longer merely religious dogma. science itself now indicted that the universe burst into existence t a particular time in the remote past.

*59  big bang theory delivers a near fatal blow to naturalistic philosophy, for the naturalistic credo regards reality as an unbroken sequence of cause and effect that can be traced back endlessly. but the big bang represents a sudden discontinuity in the chain of cause and effect. it means science can trace events back in time only to a certain paint; at the moment of the big bang explosion, science reaches an abrupt break, an absolute barrier, in fact, when the theory was first proposed, a large number of scientists resisted it for that very reason. the great physicist Arthur Eddington summed up the feelings of many of his colleagues when hesitated that the idea of a beginning.  is philosophically 'repugnant'. Albert Einstein fiddled with this equations in the vain hope of avoiding the conclusion that the universe had a beginning. Astronomer Robert Fastrow,  and agnostic who nevertheless delights in tweaking the noses of his naturalistically minded colleagues, maintains the science has reached its limit, that it will never be able to discover whether the agent to creation was 'the personal God of the Old Testament or one of the familiar forces of physics.
yet many secularists are still squirming to avoid the clear implications of the theory. some argue that the big bang actually advances naturalistic philosophy  - that it has extended naturalistic explanations back to the moment of the origin of the universe itself. that means that if God exists, he has been pushed back to a shadowy first cause who merely started things off, with  no role to play after that,.  but this is sheer bluster. far from supporting naturalism, big bang theory shows the Limits of all naturalistic  accounts of reality by revealing that nature itself -time, space and matter - came into existence a finite period of time ago.
perhaps the most common strategy among scientists and educators today is simply to ignore the startling implications of the big bang, labeling them 'philosophy' or 'religion'  and shunting them aside. we deal only with science, they say. discussion of the ultimate case Behind the big bang  is dismissed as philosophy is given no place in the science classroom. as a result, schoolchildren never dream what fascinating vistas are veiled from their sight, what interesting questions they are essentially forbidden to ask. this is the  approach Dave Mulholland witnessed at Disney World, when Bill-Nye-the -Science-Guy, with theatrical flourish, directed the audience's  attention to an artistic rendering of the big bang. a thundering wave of light swept over the screen, but not a word was uttered about what came before the primeval explosion or what caused it.

still other scientists try to get around the big bang by tweaking the theory in ways that allow them to insist that matter is eternal after all. for example, Carl Sagan proposed that the explosion that started our universe was

*60  only one of a series - that the universe is expanding today, but at some point the process will reverse itself and begin to contract, until  it is once again a tiny point, which will then explode once again, starting the entire process over. this oscillation will go on forever in endless repetition, like an accordion opening and closing. but Sagan's speculation  runs up against the basic laws of physics:  Even an oscillating universe would use up the available energy in each cycle and it would eventually run down .  the second law of thermodynamics,  the law of decay, shoots down any notion of an eternal universe.
other scientists face the facts of an ultimate beginning, but in an effort to avoid the idea of a creator, they craft notions that are, frankly, illogical. some speak of the self-generation of the universe, overlooking the obvious logical contradiction in such a notion (if  the universe doesn't exist yet, there is no 'self' to do the generating.) others, like Stephen hawking of Cambridge University, probably the best-known  theoretical physicist today, propose that the early universe existed in'imaginary time',  an idea that is for all purposes little more than fantasy. still others have proposed that the universe simply popped into existence - completely uncaused - out of nothing.  but this is to leave the domain of science for sheer magic. one of the most established laws of experience is that something cannot come out of nothing.
naturalists simply have no way to avoid the challenge posed by the big bang without twisting  themselves into impossible logical contortions. the facts clearly indicate that the universe is not eternal  and it cannot originate itself. the implication is that the universe began  at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy. science has begun to sound eerily like Genesis 1: 'And God said, 'let there by light'. (1.3)
these are arguments we can make when we encounter people hostile to Christian faith. one day my wife, Patty, came home from a Bible study and told me how outraged the entire group was over an episode at the local school. one of the women in the group had a 13 year old son who  had received a low grade for giving a wrong answer on his weekly quiz for his earth science class. to the question 'where did Earth come from'  Tim had written, 'Bod created it'. his test came back with a big red check and 20 points marked off his grade. the 'correct' answer, according to the teacher, was that Earth is the product of the big bang.
the women in Patty's Bible study urged Tim's mother to march into the classroom and show the teacher what the Bible says.  'it's right there in Genesis 1, they said,  'god created the heavens and the  earth'.

*61  but as soon as Patty told me the story, I reached fro the phone to call Tim's mother.  'Don't go to the teacher with Bible in hand, I said.
she was taken aback.  'But the Bible shows that the teacher was wrong'.
'as believers, we know that Scripture is inspired and authoritative',  I explained,   but Tim's teacher will dismiss it out of hand. she'll say, 'That's religion. I teach science.

what we need to avoid in such situations is giving the mistaken idea that Christianity is opposed to science. if we are too quick to quote the Bible, we will never break out of the stereotype spread by Inherit the Wind. we should not oppose science with religion; we should oppose Bat science with Better science.
we ought to raise questions such as
What came before the big bang?
what caused it?
if the big bang was the origin of the universe itself, then its cause must be something Outside the universe. the truth is that the big bang theory gives dramatic support to the biblical teaching  that the universe had an ultimate beginning  - that space, matter, and time itself are finite. far from being a challenge to Christian faith, as Tim's teacher seemed to think, the theory actually gives startling evidence For the faith.
and the case for creation is even stronger if we look at the Nature  of our universe.  it is a universe that speaks at every turn of design and purpose.

ARE WE COSMIC ACCIDENTS?

In the days and weeks after coming home from his vacation with Katy at Disney World, Dave Mulholland could hear the phrases from various exhibits reverberating over and over again in his memory, like a CD on replay, each time hammering in a sense of helplessness as he realized he had no good answers.  he mimicked the message from 'the Living Seas' with grim irony: a small sphere, the planet Earth,
'just happened'  to be the right size and
'just happened' to be the right distance from the sun so that life
'just happened' to arise.
and through a process of random mutations and natural selection, we humans 'just happened '  to appear on the scene.

What A Message For Kids To Hear, Dave groaned.  It Tells Them They're Nothing More Than A Cosmic Accident.  Small wonder That, over Time, Language About A loving God Who Created Them And Loves Them Sounds More And More Like A Fairy Tale.

but are all these coincidences really just...coincidences? or did Someone design the universe this way? this was the second question Dave was determined to tackle. he set about studying just as he had in college - by

*62  collecting books and articles on the subject. and what he discovered, to his surprise, is another dramatic shift in recent scientific thought. not only are  that the physical structure of the universe gives striking evidence of purpose and design. they have proposed what is known as the Anthropic Principle,  which states that the physical structure of the universe is exactly what it must be in order to support life.
after the firs spacecraft landed on the moon, one stunning photograph quickly became familiar to all Americans:  a view of the cloud-wrapped Earth, seen just above the horizon of the black and cratered surface of the moon. the contrast was striking our beautiful blue-and -white planet, so hospitable to life, seen against the stark, barren, lifeless lunar landscape.

yet even the moon is a friendly place compared to Venus, where a rain of sulfuric acid falls toward a surface as hot as boiling lead. and even Venus is hospitable compared to the icy crystals that make up Jupiter, with frozen clouds of gas stretching across its surface,giving the planet its striped look.  and even Jupiter might be considered approachable compared to the million-degree temperature inside the stars or compared to the immerse reaches of hard vacuum between them.

from the perspective of the space age, it has become clearer than ever that Earth is unique. it boasts a wealth of characteristics that make it capable of supporting life -  a nearly endless list of preconditions that have been exquisitely met only, as far as we know, on our planet.

how does Earth happen to be so special?  is it just coincidence? Luck! Or was it designed by a loving Creator who had us in mind from the outset?
consider, for example, Earth's orbit.  'The Living Seas'  exhibit is quite right in describing Earth as 'a small sphere of just the right size (that ) lies just the right distance from its mother star'.  if Earth were even slightly closer to the sun, all its water would boil away and life would be impossible  on the other hand, if Earth were only slightly farther away  from the sun, all its water would freeze and the terrestrial landscape would be nothing but barre deserts.
and it's not only the landscape that is affected by the position of our planet. the processes inside our bodies also relay on these hospitable conditions. the chemical reactions necessary for life to function occur within a narrow temperature range. and Earth is exactly the right distance from the sun to fall within that range,  what's more, for all this to happen, Earth must remain about the same distance from the sun in its orbit;  that is, its orbit must be nearly circular - which it is, in contrast  to the elliptical orbits of most other planets in our solar system.

*63  are these finely calibrated distances a product of mere happenstance?  or were they Designed to support life?
for another example, consider the existence of water, that common substance we take for granted. water has a host of unique properties absolutely indispensable for life. for example, it is the only known substance whose solid phase (ice) is less dense than its liquid phase. this is why ice forms on the tops of oceans and lakes instead of on the bottom, allowing fish and other marine life to survive the winter. on the microscopic level, water and molecules exhibit something called teh hydrophobic effect, which gives water the unique ability to shape proteins and nucleic acids in DNA. from a molecular standpoint,  'the various properties of water are nothing short of miraculous', writes Michael Cory in God And The New Cosmology', no other compound even comes close to duplicating its many life-supporting properties.
but earth could not support life unless the cosmos itself had the right physical properties. the anthropic principle draws together a staggering number of 'cosmic coincidences' that make life possible. for example the big bang has to have formed. if it had occurred with too little velocity, the universe would have collapsed back in on itself shortly after the big bang  because of gravitational forces; if it had occurred with too Much velocity, the matter would have streaked away so fast that it would have been impossible for galaxies and solar systems to subsequently form. to state it another way, the force of gravity must be fine-tuned to allow the universe to expand at precisely the right rate (accurate to within 1 part in 10 to the 60th power) the fact that the force of gravity just happens to be the right number with  'such stunning accuracy, writes physicist Paul Davies, is surely one of the great mysteries of cosmology.
take another example: the structure of the atom. everything in the universe is made of atoms, from the stars in the farthest heavens to the cells in the human body - and the atom itself is a bundle of fortuitous coincidences'.  within the atom, the neutron is just slightly more massive than the proton, which means that free neutrons  (those not trapped within an atom) can decay and turn into protons. if things were reversed - if it were the proton that was larger and had a tendency to decay- the very structure of the universe would be impossible.

Why? because a free proton is simply a hydrogen atom and if free protons had a tendency to decay, then everything made of hydrogen would decay.  the sun, which is made of hydrogen, would melt away. water, a liquid

*64  oxide of hydrogen  (H2O) would be impossible. in fact, the universe itself would decay, since about 74% of the observed universe consists of hydrogen.

and why is the neutron larger than the proton? no one knows. there is no physical cause to explain why the neutron is larger. it is simply a fact. so apparently the only 'reason' for the difference in size is that t allows the universe to exist and to support life.
not only do atomic particles have a size, but they also have an electrical charge. what child hasn't delighted in rubbing his feet on the carpet and giving people  a shock by touching them? this annoying practice works because rubbing the carpet knocks off some of the electrons and gives the child a negative charge.
within the atom, electrons have a negative charge and protons have a positive charge. yet, aside from carpet-rubbing pranksters or socks that stick together in the dryer, most of the objects we encounter in daily life have no electrical charge, why not? because the charge of the proton exactly balances that of the electron.
and it's a good thing it does. if the electron  carried more charge than the proton, all atoms would be negatively charged, in that case - since identical charges repel-all the  atoms composing all the objects in the universe would fly apart in a catastrophic explosion. on the other hand, if the proton carried more charge than the electron ,  all atoms would be positively charged - with the same disastrous consequences.
there is no know physical reason, no natural explanation, for the precise balance in the electrical charges of the proton and the electron - especially when you consider that the 2 particles differ from one another in all other respects: in size, weight, magnetic properties and so on. and since there is no natural explanation,no natural law  to account for this extraordinarily precise adjustment, is it not reasonable to conclude that this intricate arrangement is the product of a choice, a plan, a design?

the list of 'coincidences'  goes on and on. it turns out that the slightest tinkering with the values of the fundamental forces of physics - gravity, electromagnetism, the strong and weak nuclear forces -would have resulted in a universe where life was utterly impossible. the anthropic principle states that in our own universe, all these seemingly arbitrary and unrelated values  in physics have one strange thing in common: they are precisely the values needed  to get a universe capable of supporting life.

the term Anthropic Principle comes from the Greek word Anthropos, which means human being and it begins to appear that the laws of physics were exquisitely calibrated from the outset for the creation of human life. Of

*65  course, many scientist shy away from this conclusion because it presupposes a creator and they have been trained to believe that  such a concept has no  place in science. so what do they do about these obvious marks of design and purpose in the universe?  they scramble to explain them away, searching for ways  to account for design in the universe without having to acknowledge a designer. Yet, ironically, all these attempts  to explain away the design turn out to be far less scientific than a straightforward acknowledgment of a creator.
one of the widely held versions of the anthropic principle is the 'many worlds' hypothesis. according to this theory, an infinite number of universes exist, all with different laws and different values for fundamental numbers. most of these universes are dark, lifeless places. but by sheer probability, some will have just the right  structure to support life. the 'fir' universes survive, while the 'unfit' are weeded out. our own, of course, happens to be a universe 'fit' for life.

but how do we know whether these numberless other universes really exist? the answer is, we Cannot know. the idea is purely a product of scientific imagination. even if alternative universes did exist, they would be inherently impossible for science to detect. candid scientists admit that the whole idea is motivated by  a desire to avoid the theological implications of the anthropic principle . Physicist Heinz Pagels says that if the universe appears to be tailor-made for life, the most straightforward conclusion is that it Was tailor-made, created by a transcendent God; it is only because many scientists find that conclusion 'unattractive' that they adopt the theory of multiple universes. Pagels explains. and he dds wryly,  'It is the closest that some atheists can get to God'. in other words, atheists are squirming every which way to avoid the obvious. 

another version is the Participatory Anthropic Principle.  drawing a wild extrapolation from quantum mechanics, this version says that the universe did not fully exist until human beings emerged to observe it. and so, in order to become fully real, the universe decided to evolve human consciousness. in the words of Nobel prize-winning biologist George Wald,  'The universe wants to be known'.

this is indeed a strange picture of the universe - as if it had a heart, longing to be known and a mind, deciding to evolve human beings. yet it seems to be a picture shared by physicist freeman Dyson, who says,  'I find that the universe in some sense must have known that we were coming'. and astronomer George Greenstein echoes a similar refrain:  'If this is the best way to make a universe, how did the universe find that out?
here we have a concept of the universe as a quasi-intelligent being that

*66  can know and be known, that can plot and plan. it is astonishing that scientists will dismiss the idea of a Creator as unscientific, yet turn around and embrace the bizarre, almost mystical concept of a conscious universe.
Scientists are not being forced to these speculative forms of the anthropic principle by the facts; instead, they are driven  by a religious motive - or rather, by an Antireligious motive. so strong is their desire to avoid the conclusion of divine creation that they will resort to irrational notions, such as the existence of millions of unknowable universes or a pantheistic universe that 'knew' we were coming. in the words of Patrick Glynn of George Washington University, the fact that so many scientists are willing to accept 'wild speculations  about unseen universes for which not a shred of observational evidence exists suggests something about both the power of the modern atheistic ideology and the cultural agenda of many in the scientific profession' then Glynn delivers this searing indictment:  'the main-stream scientific community has in effect shown its attachment to the atheistic ideology of the random universe to be in some respects more powerful than its commitment to the scientific method itself'.
Precisely.
the anthropic principle acknowledges that we can identify and recognize the products of design and that many of the features of the physical universe bear the marks of design. in many ways, the scientific method is merely the codification of common sense, and the detection of design is no exception. I remember as a child visiting the 'Old Man in the Mountains',  a tourist attraction in New Hampshire's  White Mountains. at an overlook station, our family would join other eager tourists to see if we could detect, in the outline of the rocks, what looked  like the profile of an old man.  of course, we knew it wasn't really a carving of a man; it was like many other places that are billed as natural wonders - places where, over the ages, the wind and rain have carved out shapes that resemble a face or a bridge or some other familiar object

by contrast, imagine you are driving through South Dakota and suddenly come upon a mountain bearing the unmistakable likenesses of 4 American presidents, looking just as you remember them from your history books. instantly you recognize Lincoln's jutting chin and Washington's high forehead. would you -would anyone? conclude that these shapes were the product of wind or rain  or glacial erosion?  of course not. immediately you  realize that artists with chisels and drills have painstakingly carved these 4 famous faces out of the stone.

we intuitively  recognize the products of design versus the products of natural forces. and in his exciting new book The Design Inference, mathematician

*67  William Dembski has offered an 'explanatory filter' to give logical form to this intuition.  when we try to explain any natural phenomenon, there are 3 possibilities: chance, law or design. if the natural phenomenon is irregular, erratic and unspecified, we conclude that it is a random event. if it is regular, repeatable and predictable, we conclude that it is the result of natural  forces. but if it is unpredictable and yet highly specified, we conclude  that it is designed. the 4 presidents' faces on Mt. Rushmore are irregular (not something we see happening generally as the result of erosion),  yet specified  (they appear preselected to support life). in short, they bear the unmistakable characteristics of design.
according to the anthropic principle, evidence for design is found throughout the physical universe. if we apply Dembski's explanatory filter, we find that many of the major features of the physical universe are irregular (there is no natural law accounting fo them) and highly specified (they appear preselected to support life). in short, they bear the unmistakable characteristics of design.

and if the universe exhibits design, it is logical to conclude that there is a designer. the most obvious inference is that the universe Appears to be designed because it is designed -powerful evidence for the biblical worldview that a loving God created the world.

that answers the question about the ultimate origin of the universe.  but what happened after that? where did living things come from? did life evolve from the merging of molecules in a primordial sea?
Dave knew his search for answers had only begun.


Chapter 8    LIFE IN A TEST TUBE

*69   a little science estranges a man from God. a lot of science brings him back. Francis Bacon

you don't  have to drive to Disney World to indoctrinate your kids in the Gospel according to Evolution. whose toddler these days doesn't know The Land Before Time video series? there's no debating that the little dinosaurs are endearing, but along with the story, each video offers an excursion into evolution. Children sit wide-eyed, watching primal one-celled organisms arise out of the blue-green churning seas - organisms that 'change again and again', until they finally evolve into cute little dinos. it is a delightful, fairy-tale introduction to naturalistic evolution. and once a child's imagination is populated with these bright images,it is nearly impossible for a parent to dislodge them. when the imagination is later bolstered with classroom teaching, Christian parents like Dave face an uphill battle.
so let's peel back the colorful images to look for the cold, sober truth about the origin of life. have scientists created life in a test tube? have they proven that life arose from a primordial soup?

the way scientists try to prove that life arose in the primitive seas is to re-create the same conditions in the laboratory and see what happens. one of he best-known experiments occurred in 1953. newspapers cross the country carried photos of Stanley Miller of the University of Chicago, wearing a white lab coat and heavy square-rimmed glasses. reporting his sensations claim that he had accomplished the first step toward creating life in a test tube.

*70  Miller had mixed simple chemicals and gases in a glass tube, then zapped them with an electrical charge to induce chemical reactions.  the idea was to simulate conditions on the early earth and show that simple chemicals could indeed have reacted to create the building blocks of life. to everyone's surprise, what emerged at the other end of the laboratory apparatus wee amino acids, the building block of protein, an important constituent of living things. the news was electrifying.  few people had dared dream that the elements of a living cell could be produced under conditions allegedly existing  on the early earth. Miller's success seemed to provide dramatic evidence for a naturalistic account of life's origin.
it also set off a domino series of similar experiments, some using heat as in energy source instead of Miller's electrical charge, others using ultraviolet light to simulate light from the sun. most of these experiments have succeeded in producing amino acids and the amino acids have  been reported in one breathless headline after another.
the problem with all this frenetic activity is that no one is asking critical questions about what the experiments really prove. the conventional wisdom is that they support the theory that life evolved spontaneously from simple chemicals in a primeval pond about 4 billion years ago. but do they?

let's start with the amino acids that came out of Miller's test tube. the truth is that these differ in critical ways from those found in living things. Amino acids come in 2 forms, what scientists call left-handed and right-handed form. but when Miller and his colleagues mixed chemicals in the laboratory, they got both kinds - and even 50-50 mix of left-handed and right-handed form. in fact, this is what happens every time anyone mixes the chemicals randomly in the laboratory. there is no natural process that produces only left-handed amino acids. the kind  required by living things. all of this means that the amino acids formed in the test tube are useless for life.

and that's only the first problem. the next step to 'creating life' is to get amino acids to link up and form proteins. in 1958 Sidney Fox, a chemist at the university of Miami, started with already existing amino acids and boiled them in water to induce them to react with one another. the result was protein like chains of amino acids and, like Miller, Fox was promptly inducted into the Modern hall of Scientific Heros.
but serious problems are hidden beneath the hype, because once again, life is much more selective than anything we get from a test tube. the proteins in living things are comprised of amino acids hooked together in a very

*71  particular chemical bond called  a peptide bond. but amino acids were like Tinkertoy pieces:  they're capable of hooking together in all sorts of different ways, forming several different chemical bonds. and in the test tube, that's exactly what they do. they hook up in a variety of ways, never producing a genuine protein capable of functioning in a living cell.

in addition, for a protein to be functional, the amino acids must link up in a particular sequence, just like the sequence of letters in a sentence.  if you scramble the letters in a sentence, you get nonsense;  if you scramble the amino acids in a protein, you get a nonfunctional protein. yet in laboratory experiments, all we get are scrambled, random sequences. there's no natural force capable of selecting the right amino acids and lining them up in the right order. as a result, the proteinlike chains that appear in the test tube are useless for life.
the fact is, the much-touted experiments tell us very little about where real, functional proteins came from. yet this inconvenient fact is rarely mentioned when headlines blare out the news that scientists have succeeded in creating the building blocks of life.

WHEN SCIENTISTS 'CHEAT'

there's more. if scientists really wanted to duplicate what might have happened in a primordial soup  billions of years ago, they would simply mix up some chemicals in a vat, expose then to an energy source (heat or light),  and see what happens. yet no one ever does this. Why not? because it is impossible to bet any important chemical compounds that way.  instead, to get even useless, nonfunctional amino acids and proteins, researchers have to control the experiment in various ways.

for example, in nature, chemicals are almost never found in a pure state. as a result, one cannot predict with confidence which reactions will take place. Substances A and B might react effectively in the laboratory, where isolated and purified forms are used. but out in nature, there re almost always other chemicals C and k - lying about, which means substance a might react with C instead of with B, yielding a completely different result from what the scientist expected.in other words, out in nature there are all kinds  of completing reactions.
so how do scientists avoid the problem of competing reactions? they uncap their bottles  and pour out only pure isolated ingredients. and when the experiment involves more than one step, such as going from amino acids to proteins, researchers start over each step with fresh ingredients.

872  obviously, this is the experiment. nature doesn't have flasks of pure ingredients to pour out at each step of the way.
or consider another typical experiment, one that uses ultraviolet light instead of electricity  to get the chemicals to react. the idea is to simulate sunlight beaming down on a primeval pond on the early earth . there's just one little problem: the longer wavelengths of ultraviolet light are very destructive  and would destroy the very amino acids that scientists are hoping to get.  so what do they do?  they screen out the longer wavelength and use only shorter wavelengths.

but once again, success is bought at the price of rigging the experiment. a real primeval pond would have no screens to protect the fragile amino acids from destructive wavelengths of sunlight. as a result, these experiments don't tell us what could realistically have happened on the early earth; they tell us what could realistically have happened on the early earth; they tell us only what happens when researchers carefully control the conditions.
another device that every origin-of -life experiment resorts to is the use of a trap to protect the end products after they have formed.  Amino acids are delicate and they easily break down into the elements of which they are composed. when electricity or heat is used as an energy source to induce the chemicals to link up and form amino acids, that same energy can also break them back down. hence the researcher has to find some way to protect the delicate chemical compounds.

the solution is to build a trap that removes the amino acids from the reaction site as soon as they form, to protect them from disintegrating. Miller's apparatus was a square of glass tubing with a bulb on top, bristling with electrodes to create sparks and a U-shaped bulge on the bottom, filled with water to trap the amino acids Miller would drain the trap to remove the amino acids from the reaction area so they would not break down again.
to understand why this is so important, imagine you are a child eating a bowl of alphabet soup. when you stir the soup, you are an energy source. stirring slowly, you might cause a few letters to line up and form short words, such as 'T-O or 'A-N-D'. but as you keep stirring, your spoon will quickly cause the letters to scatter again - unless you scoop the words out with your spoon and put them carefully on your plate . that's what the trap does:  it takes amino acids out of harm's way and preserves them.
the trouble is that, once again, nature doesn't come equipped with handy traps to protect the delicate building blocks of life. any amino acids that might form spontaneously in nature would disintegrate just as quickly. a trap is absolutely necessary for a successful experiment, but it just as surely.

*73   makes the experiment completely irrelevant to confirming any naturalistic theory of life's origin.
at every turn, the experiments that have ignited so much excitement turn out to be artificial. as a result, even the most successful origin-of-life experiment  tell us next to nothing about what could have happened under natural conditions. they tell us next to nothing  about what could have happened under natural conditions. they tell us only what happens when a brilliant scientist manipulates the conditions, 'coaxing' the materials down the chemical pathways necessary to produce the building  blocks of life.
so what do these experiments really prove ? that Life Can Be Created Only By An Intelligent Agent Directing, Controlling And Manipulating The Process. the latest scientific findings do not discredit biblical faith; rather, they provide positive evidence that the origin of life requires an intelligent agent, a creator.

NOT A CHANCE

if we need additional confirmation, it comes from a surprising place: from the use of computers in biology. long before the information age, the living cell was thought to be quite simple and it was easy enough to think life arose by chance. Darwin himself thought the cell was a simple blob of protoplasm, and he conjectured that it evolved in a 'warm little point', but as science began uncovering the marvelous complexity of the cell,it became harder and harder to hold on to chance theories.

biologists typically took refuge in the idea of nearly endless time. given enough time, they argued, anything can happen. over millions of years, the unlikely becomes likely, the improbable is transformed into the inevitable. and for a while, biologists got away with this argument - only because the number of millennia invoked were so immense that no one was capable of conceptualizing what that kind of time scale really meant.
but the computer revolution put an end to any chance theory of life's origin. beginning in the 1960s, mathematicians began writing computer programs to simulate every process under the sun and they cast their calculating eyes on evolution itself. hunched over their high-speed computers, they simulated the trial-and-error processes of neo-Darwinian evolution over the equivalent of billions of years. the outcome was jolting. the computers showed that the probability of evolution by chance processes is essentially zero,no matter how long the time scale.

in 1966, at a landmark symposium at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, a group of computer specialists presented their findings to the nation's

*74  biologists. the charge was led by Murray Eden of MIT and Marcel Schutzenberger of the University of Paris.  at first, the biologist were angry at the upstart computer whizzes for invading heir territory. but the numbers could not be denied. and after the symposium, chance theories began to be quietly burned.
as a result, today it is common to hear prominent scientist scoff at the idea that life arose by chance. the famous astronomer Sir Fred Hyle compares it to lining up 0 to the fiftieth power (0 with 50  zeros behind it ) blind people giving each one a scrambled Rubik's Cube and finding that they all solve the cube at the same moment.
what has been put in the place of chance? for the naturalist who assumes life evolved spontaneously, there is only one other logical possibility. if life did not arise by random processes, then it must have arisen under the compulsion of forces in mater itself. hence biologists working in the field today are searching for some  force within matter that directed the process - some impulse that cause life to emerge. the assumption is that life will arise inevitably whenever conditions are right.  a widely used college textbook sums up the approach in its title: Biochemical Predestination,  has since repudiated his own theory. if you look at the experiments, Kenyon explained in an interview, 'one thing that stands out is that you do not get ordered sequences of amino acids...if we thought we were going to see a lot of spontaneous  ordering, something must have been wrong with our theory.  Kenyon has since accepted he idea of an intelligent Designer as the answer to the origin of life.

sadly , too few scientists have this kind of courage. yet it is becoming ever clearer that the experiments fail to support any naturalistic theory of life's origin. what they Do support is the idea of intelligent design. the experiments give positive evidence that life rises only when the raw materials are carefully selected arranged , controlled and organized by an intelligent cause.

the advance of science is not casting up new challenges to Christian faith, as we are so often told. instead,it is uncovering ever more powerful evidence that what Christians believe is true on all levels, including the natural world and is becoming even clearer today as scientists learn more about what is inside the cell - and  especially the structure of DNA.

THE LANGUAGE OF LIFE

*75  we've all heard the term DNA,  thanks to its use in controversial court cases like the o.J..Simpson trial, but few of us really understand what it is . simply put, DNA is like a language in the heart of the dell, a molecular message, a set of instructions telling the cell how to construct proteins -much like the software needed to run a computer. moreover, the amount of information DNA includes is staging: a single sell  of the human body contains as much information as the Encyclopedia Britannica - all 30 volumes - three or four times over. as a result, the question of the origin of life must now be redefined as the question of the origin of biological information. can information arise by natural forces alone? or does it require an intelligent agent?

Scientists committed to naturalism must try to construct an explanation  of life based solely on physical-chemical laws. they must explain the information in DNA  as a product of natural processes at work in the chemicals  that comprise living things. recall Katy's words to her father at Epcot: 'it's chemicals. it's all chemicals.

it's true that DNA  is composed of ordinary chemicals (bases, sugars, phosphates) that react according to ordinary laws. but what makes DNA function as a message is not the chemicals themselves but rather their sequence, their pattern, the chemicals in DNA are grouped into molecules  (called nucleotides)  that act like letters in a message and they must be in a particular order if the message is gong to be intelligible. if the letters are scrambled, the result is nonsense. so the crucial question comes down to  whether the sequence of chemical 'letters' arose by natural cause or whether it required an intelligent source. is it the product of law or design? more than 200 years ago, the English clergyman William Paley framed the classic argument for design by comparing a living organism to a watch. upon finding a watch lying on the beach, no one would say, 'Oh look what the wind and the waves have produced'. instead, we instantly recognize that a watch has a structure that can be produced only by an intelligent agent. likewise, Paley argued, living things have a type of structure that can be produced only be an intelligent cause.
the naturalistic scientist insists that the idea of an intelligent cause has no place in science. but the truth is that several branches of science already use the concept to intelligence and have even devised tests for detecting he work of an intelligent agent. consider forensic science. when police find a body, their first question is, was this death the result of natural causes or foul play  (and intentional act by an intelligent being)? Pathologists perform a battery of fairly straightforward tests to get an answer.

*76  likewise, when archaeologists uncover an unusually shaped rock,thy ask whether the shape is a result of weathering or whether the rock is a primitive tool, deliberately chipped by some ancient hunter. again, certain tests are used to detect whether it is a product of intelligent activity.

when Cryptographers are given  a page of scrambled letters, how do they determine whether it is just a random sequence or a secret code? when radio signals are detected in outre space, how do astronomers know whether is is a message from another civilization? there are rules that can be applied to determine whether the letters or the signals fit the structure of a language.

for example, in 1967 astronomers were startled to discover radio pulses coming from outer space.  'Our first thought, they said, was that 'this was another intelligent race'[ trying to communicate with us and they labeled the signals LGM (Little Green Men). however,, further analysis showed that the pulses formed the wrong kind of pattern for a language, instead of a new life-form, what they had discovered was a pulsar, a rotating  star that mimics a radio beacon.

in everyday life, we weigh natural versus intelligent causes all the time without thinking much about it. if we see ripples on a sandy beach, we assume they were formed by natural processes. but if we see words written in the sand -'John love Mary' - immediately we recognize a different kind of order and we know that a couple of lovers recently lingered there. or consider the children's game of finding shapes in the clouds. as adults, we know the shapes are just the result of wind and temperature acting on the water molecules. but what if we see 'clouds'  that spell out a message?  in the film Reunion in France, set in Nazi-occupied Paris in the 1940s, a pluck pilot flies over the city every day and uses skywriting to spell out the single word 'COURAGE'. had you and i been there, we would never have mistaken the skywriting for an ordinary cloud; even though the words were white and fluffy, we would have been certain that natural forces did not create the message.

in the same way, when scientists proved the nucleus of the cell, they came across something analogous to 'John loves Mary' or 'COURAGE' - the only difference being that DNA contains vastly more information. what this means is that we can now revive the design argument using a much closer analogy than Paley's analogy between living things and watches. the new analogy is between DNA and written messages. are there natural forces capable of writing a book or programming a computer disk or writing a symphony? Clearly not. the discover of DNA provides powerful new evidence that life is the product of intelligent design. it's an argument that is simple, easy to explain and based solidly on experience.

THE MESSAGE IN THE MOLECULE

since DNA contains information, the case can be stated even more strongly in terms of Information Theory, a field of research that investigates the ways information is transmitted. as we said earlier, the naturalistic scientist has only 2 possible ways to explain the origin of life -either chance or natural law. but information theory gives us a powerful tool for discounting both these explanations, for both chance and law led to structures with low information content, whereas  DNA  has a very high information content.
a structure or message is said to have high or low information content depending on the minimum number of instructions needed to tell you how to construct it. to illustrate, a random sequence of letters has low information content because it requires only 2 instructions: 1. select a letter of the English alphabet and write it down and  2. do it again (select a letter and write it down). by the same token, a regular, repetitive pattern of letters has low information content as well. using your computer to create Christ wrapping paper requires only a sew instructions:  1. type in 'M-e-r-r-y C-h-r-s-t-m-a-s and 2. do it again. by contrast, if you want your computer to print out the poem 'The Night before Christmas',  you must specify every letter, one by one. because the process of writing down the poem requires a large number of instructions, it is said to have high information content.

similarly, in nature, both random  patterns and regular patterns  (like ripples on a beach) have low information content. by contrast, DNA  has a very high information content. it would be impossible to produce a simple est of instructions telling a chemist how to synthesize the DNA of even the simplest bacterium. you would have to specify every chemical 'letter',  one by one - and there are literally millions. so DNA  has a completely different structure from the products of either chance or natural law and information theory gives us the conceptual tools to debunk any such attempts to explain the origin of life.
as we noted earlier, most scientists today are looking for some kind of self-organizing force in matter itself to explain life's origin and yet there are currently no real candidates. as a result, most treatments of the subject to analogies, pointing to spontaneous ordering in Nonliving structures, such as crystals. browse thought the library and you'll find many books that use the analogy of crystal formation to explain how life might have started.
but does this analogy work? not at all and information theory cuts through the fog surrounding this subject. whether they are ordinary (like salt and sugar) or exquisite (like rubies and diamonds), all crystals are

*78  examples of repetitive order. the unique structure of any crystal  is the result of what we might think of as the 'shape' of its atoms (or ions), which causes them to slot into a particular position and to layer themselves in a fixed, orderly pattern  in salt, the atoms always for a 6-sided box, whereas sugar atoms always come together in a rectangular crystal slanted on both ends.  'If we could shrink ourselves to the atomic scale'.  writes zoologist Richard Dawkins in The Blind Watchmaker,  'we would see almost endless rows of atoms stretching to the horizon in straight lines - galleries of geometric repetition.
this 'geometric repetition' is precisely the problem, for it means crystals carry very little information. it's as if someone said, 'pick a shape' and 'do it again'.  it the DNA molecule were really analogous  to a crystal, it would consist of a single pattern  repeating again and again, like Christmas wrapping paper, so crystal formation gives us not clue whatsoever to the origin of DNA.

another attempt to find a naturalistic answer to the origin of life comes from the new field of Complexity Theory. on their computer screens, researchers 'grow' marvelous shapes that resemble ferns and forests  and snowflakes. this is being touted as the answer to the spontaneous origin of order.
is this new field of research finally going to uncover a law that can account for the spontaneous origin of life itself?  the verdict is already in and it is no. the truth is that the ferns and swirls constructed by complexity theorist on their computer screens represent the same kind of order as crystals. in the words of Stuart Kauffman of the Santa Fe Institute, the patterns are constructed by the repeated application of only a few 'astonishingly simple rules'. in other words, like crystals, these structures can be specified with just a few instructions, followed by 'do it again'.

the conclusion is that there are no known physical laws capable of creating a structure like DNA with high information content. based on both the latest scientific knowledge and on ordinary experience,  we know only one cause that is up to the task: and intelligent agent. only an intelligent person can type out 'The Night before Christmas' or devise a computer program or compose a musical score. and only an intelligent cause could create the information contained in the DNA  molecule.

many Christians are nervous about invoking God to answer any scientific question, even the origin of life .  we're afraid of being accused of resorting to the 'God

*79  ignorance - only to have a natural explanation turn up later and embarrass us. this fear is understandable, given the fact that Christians often have been cast into the same category as primitives who attribute thunder to the raging of their gods. but there are times when Christians ought to turn  the tables on the critics. there are times when it is more rational to accept a supernatural explanation.
we know from science itself that there are some things nature cannot do. we know that we will never fulfill the alchemists' dream of chemically transmuting lead into gold. we know that a parent of one species will never give birth to offspring of another species. to persist  in seeking natural laws in such  cases is as irrational as any primitive myth of the thunder gods. science reveals consistent patterns that allow us to make negative statements about what natural forces cannot do.

empirical evidence makes it clear that natural forces do not produce structures with high information content. this is not a statement about our Ignorance - a 'gap' in knowledge that will be filled in later by a natural explanation. rather, it is a statement about what we Know - about our consistent experience of the character of natural process will be found to explain DNA is supremely irrational. the elusive process that naturalists hope to find would have to be completely unprecedented, different in kind from any we currently know. surely This is an argument from ignorance.

when it comes to the origin of life, science is squarely on the side of creation by an intelligent agent. we have nothing to fear from the progress of science. and parents like Dave have solid answers to give their questioning teens.


*81  CHAPTER 9 -  DARWIN IN THE DOCK

 As long as Darwinists control the definitions of key terms (such as science) their system is unbeatable, regardless of the evidence.  Phillip Johnson

since coming home from Disney World, Dave Mulholland had been conscientious in his search for answers. with the help of his pastor and several friends, he had found a handful of books that focused on the issues. he could now tell Katy what the big bang really means, - how, instead of disproving that God created the world, the big bang theory actually gives  scientific evidence for an ultimate beginning  to the universe and points toward a transcendent source. he could put into words, without too much trouble, how the anthropic principle  draws together overwhelming evidence for design running through the physical universe at every level. he could even field most of Katy's questions about where life came  from - how laboratory experiments often 'cheat' to get even the flimsiest results and how the discovery of DNA gives positive evidence for a creator.

look, Katy, he had said to her. 'Just think of your own experience. have you ever seen a message written in the sky or on a rock by some kind of natural force?
Hmmm, she replied noncommittally.
Dave grabbed a book at random off his cluttered desk and flipped it open to a page of densely printed text. 'anyone who says some natural force in the chemicals 'wrote' the DNA code - will, that's like saying the chemicals in the paper and ink wrote the words on this page'.

he was gaining confidence and at times Katy dropped her defensive

*82  attitude and seemed genuinely interested in what he was learning. but today she was back to her old combative mode.
she tossed her head. 'Oh, I don't have any problem with God being at the start of it all, she said airily. 'Maybe he did kick everything off, you know, back at the very beginning'.

Dave smiled inwardly. he knew this admission represented progress, even though Katy refused to show it.
'but everyone knows that once life was here, it evolved just as Darwin said it did. i saw it in my textbook at school.
it was her turn to grab a book. she rustled through her backpack and pulled out a heavy biology textbook, opening it to a full spread of colorful, eye-catching photos showing several breeds of dogs and horses as sell as a vast variety of orchids and roses. here, the caption proclaimed, is 'evolution in action'. evolution happening before our very eyes.
Dave took the book from her hands and felt his stomach tighten he hadn't covered these issues yet. and those colorful photos certainly were impressive.
Katy gazed at him triumphantly. 'It's right in the book, Dad.'

Dave didn't answer. his eyes had moved down to the text to find out exactly what his daughter was learning. Katy waited a few moments, then walked out of the room, leaving him sitting with the textbook still open on his lap. Dave clenched  his hands. God, he prayed, No Wonder She Keeps Fighting Me -Fighting You. Everything She Gets At School Is Saying That Nature Can Do It On Its Own, That You Are Irrelevant.

the tactic used in textbooks like Katy' is rarely a direct attack on religion. Instead, God is quietly but surely nudged into a position of irrelevance, where there's simply nothing left for Him to do. consider this typical example from the widely used college textbook Evolutionary Biology:  by coupling undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection. Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous'.

the same message is aimed at high school students as well. in a 1995 statement, the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) asserted that all life is the outcome of 'an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable , and natural process'. the words 'unsupervised' and 'impersonal' mean that God is not to be tolerated even in the role of directing and guiding the

*83  evolutionary process. life is declared to be the outcome of material processes acting blindly by chance.
clearly, Katy's father is not the only one in a bind. all Christians need to know how to respond to the challenge posed by Darwinian naturalism. fortunately, a few basic concepts will help us cut through the rhetoric and enable us to think more clearly. the best argument gains Darwinism has been know for centuries by farmers and breeders and it can be stated in a simple principle: natural change in living things is limited. or, stated positively: ORGANISMS STAY TRUE TO TYPE.

take the pictures in Katy's textbook. they tout the variation in dogs and horses and roses as 'evolution in action'. the Darwinist seems to overlook the obvious fact that the dogs are all still dogs, the horses still horses, the roses still roses. none of the changes  has created a novel kind of organism. Dog breeding has given rise to varieties ranging from the lumbering Great Dane to the tiny Chihuahua, but no variety shows any tendency to leave the canine family.

the magnificent Tyler Municipal rose Garden in Tyler, Texas, showcases some 500 varieties of roses of nearly every shade and hue. but despite intensive breeding, they are all still roses. none of the examples cited in biology textbooks are evolving to a new level of complexity; they all simply illustrate variation around a mean.
Darwinism cannot deny that all observed change is limited; what the theory suggests is that over time, these minor variations add up to create major changes - the vast changes necessary to go from a primeval one-celled organism to bees and butterflies and little boys. this is the core of Darwinian theory - and yet, ironically, it is also the easiest part of the theory to discredit. even Charles Darwin's own work breeding pigeons demonstrates the limits of biological change.

in Victorian England, pigeon breeding was extremely popular and when Darwin returned from his famous sea voyage to the Galapagos Islands. he took up pigeon breeding. in the skillful hands of a breeder, the pigeon can be transformed into a fantail, with feathers  like a Chinese fan; it can become a pouter, with a huge crop bulging under this beak; it can become a Jacobin, with a 'hood' of feathers on the back and sides of its head resembling the hoods worn by Jacobin monks. yet despite this range of diversity,  all pigeons are descendants of the common rock pigeon, the ordinary gray birds that flock to our city parks. and despite the spectacular variation in tails and feathers, all the pigeons Darwin observed remained pigeons. they represent cyclical change in gene frequencies but no new genetic information.
how did Darwin devise a theory of unlimited change from such

*84  examples of limited change?  he took the changes he had observed and extrapolated them back into the distant past - which, of course, he had Not observed. if the common rock pigeon can be so greatly transformed within a few years at the hand of a breeder, he asked, what might happen to the same pigeon in nature over thousands, even millions, of years? given enough time, change would be virtually unlimited and the pigeon might even be transformed into a completely different kind of bird.
it was a bold speculation, but no one should be misled into thinking it was more than that. neither Darwin nor anyone else has ever actually witnessed evolution occurring. it is a conjecture, an extrapolation going fr beyond any observed facts. now, there's nothing wrong with extrapolation per se, as long as we keep in mind that it is only that, not observable fact. and to make a reasonable extrapolation, we must have good grounds for believing that the process being extrapolated will continue at a steady rate.
and therein lies the fatal flaw in Darwin's theory. centuries of experiments show that the change produced by breeding does Not continue at a steady rate from generation to generation. instead, change is rapid at first, then levels off and eventually reaches a limit that breeders cannot cross.

consider one historical example. beginning in 1800, plant breeders started trying to increase the sugar content of the sugar beet, with excellent success. over 75 years of selective breeding, they increased the sugar content of beets from 6% to 17%.  but then they could go no further. although the same intensive breeding was continued for another half century, the sugar content never rose above 17%. at some point, biological variation always levels off and stops.

why does progress halt? because once all the genes for a particular trait have been selected, breeding can go no further. breeding shuffles and selects among existing genes in the gene pool, combining and recombining them, much as you might shuffle and deal cards from a deck. but breeding does not create new genes, any more than shuffling cards creates new cards. a bird cannot be bred to grow fur. a mouse cannot be bred to grow feathers. a pig cannot grow wings.

what's more, as breeders keep up the selection pressure, the organism grows weaker until it finally becomes  sterile and dies out. this is the bane of modern farming ; Our highly bred cows and chickens produce more mild and eggs, but they are also much more prone to disease and sterility. there is a natural barrier  that no  amount of breeding is able to cross.
moreover, when a organism is no longer subject to selective pressure, it tends to revert to its original type. left to themselves, the offspring of the fancy pigeons that so charmed Darwin will revert to the wild rock pigeon.

*85  so Darwin was simply mistaken in his extrapolation. whether in the breeding pen or out in nature, the minor change produced by shuffling genes is not an engine for the unlimited change required by evolution. the natural tendency in living things is not to continue changing indefinitely but to stay close to the original type.
the concept of mutations was popularized for the younger set a few years ago by the Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles and today virtually every sci-fi movie features mutants. but what exactly is a mutation? since a gene is like a coded set of instructions, a mutation is akin to a typing error - a changed letter here, an altered punctuation mark there, a phrase dropped or a word misspelled. these typing errors are the only source of novelty in the genetic code.
but already there is an obvious problem. if you introduce a typing error into a report you are writing, it is not likely to improve the report. an error is more likely to make nonsense that to make better sense. and the same is true of errors in the genetic code. most mutations are harmful, often lethal, to the organism, so that if mutations were to accumulate, the result would more likely be Devolution that evolution.
in order to make this theory work, neo-Darwinists must hope that some mutations, somewhere, somehow, will be beneficial. and since the evolution of a single new organ or structure may require many thousands of mutations, neo-Darwinists must hope that vast numbers of these rare beneficial mutations will occur in a single organism. the improbabilities  are staggering.

if we take neo-Darwinism into the laboratory and test it experimentally, the difficulties only multiply. the handiest way to study mutations in the laboratory is with the help of the ordinary fruit fly  - the kind you see hovering around overripe bananas in the kitchen. since this tiny fly reaches sexual maturity in only 5 days, the effects of mutations can be observed over several generations. using chemicals or radiation to induce mutations, scientists have produced flies with purple eyes or white eyes; flies with

*86  oversized wings or shriveled wings or even no wings; fly larvae with patchy bristles on their backs or larvae with so many bristles that they resemble hedgehogs.

but all this experimentation has not advanced evolutionary theory in the slightest. for nothing has ever emerged except odd forms of fruit flies. the experiments  have never produced a new type of insect. mutations alter the details in Existing structures - like eye color or wing size - but they do not lead to the creation of New structures. the fruit flies have remained fruit flies. like breeding, genetic mutations produce only minor, limited change.
furthermore, the minor changes observed do not accumulate to create  major changes - the principle at the heart of Darwinism. hence, mutations are not the source of the endless, limitless change required by evolutionary theory. whether we look at breeding experiments or lab experiments, the outcome is the same: Change in living things remains strictly limited to variations on the theme. we do not see the emergence of new and more complex structures.

the same pattern holds throughout the past, as we see in the fossil record. the overwhelming pattern is that organisms appear fully formed, with variations clustered around a mean and without transitional stages leading up to them. the fossil record as a whole gives persuasive evidence against Darwinism.

mastering these basic facts gives us the tools to think critically about the examples typically used to support evolution. take Darwin's famous finches, whose variation in beak size helped inspire his initial theory. a recent study designed to support Darwinism found that the finches' beaks grow larger in dry seasons, when the seeds they eat are tough and hard, but grow larger in dry seasons, when the seeds they eat are tough and hard, but grow smaller again after a rainy season,  when tiny seeds become available once more. this is evolution happening 'before (our_eyes',  the author of the study concluded. but in fact,is is precisely the opposite. the change in finch beaks is a cyclical fluctuation that allows the finches to adapt and survive, points out Phillip Johnson in Reason in the Balance. in other words, it's a minor adjustment that allows finches to...stay finches. it does not demonstrate that finches are evolving into a new kind of organism or that they originally evolved into a new kind of organism or that they originally evolved from  another organism.

the same holds for all the frequently cited 'confirmations'  of evolution, such as organisms that develop a resistance to antibiotics and insects that develop resistance to insecticide. even more disturbing, some of the most famous examples have been exposed as hoaxes - most recently, the black -and-white peppered moths in England. standard textbooks assert that during the Industrial Revolution, when the tree trunks were darkened

*87  by soot, a light-colored variety of the moth became easier for birds to see and were eaten up, while a darker moth flourished. this is touted as a classic illustration of natural selection, the theory that nature preserves those forms that function better than their rivals in the struggle for existence. but recently it was discovered that photographs showing the light moths against the darkened tree trunks were faked.  peppered moths fly about in the upper branches of trees and don't perch on the trunks at all. even more recently ,  biologist Theodore Sargent of the Univ. of Massachusetts admitted that he glued dead samples of the moths onto the tree trunks for a NOVA  documentary. the respected journal Nature says the moth example, once the 'prize horse in our stable' to illustrate evolution by natural  selection, must now be thrown out.
no scientific finding has contradicted the basic principle that change in living things is limited. Luther Burbank, regarded as the greatest breeder of all time, said the tendency for organisms to stay true to type is so constant  that it can be considered a natural law - what he called the law of the Reversion to the Average. it's a law , he said, that 'keeps all living things within some more or less fixed limitations.
despite what the textbooks say, Darwin did not prove that nature is capable of crossing those 'fixed limitations'. he suggested only that it was theoretically possible  - that minor changes might have accumulated over thousands of years until a fish became an amphibian, an amphibian became a reptile and a reptile became a mammal. but after more than 150 years, it has become clear that Darwin 's speculation flies in the face of all the results of breeding and laboratory experimentation, was well as the pattern in the fossil record.
the simple words from the first chapter of Genesis still stand firm:  'and God made every living thing  to reproduce 'after their kind' (see Gen. 1.11-2, 21,24-5) NASB)

IRREDUCIBLE COMPLEXITY

the late Christian evangelist Francis Schaeffer used to offer an argument against evolution that was simple, easy to grasp and devastating suppose a fish evolves lungs. what happens then? does it move up the next evolutionary stage?

of course not, it drowns.

living things cannot simply change piecemeal  - a new organ here, a new limb there. an organism is an integrated system and any isolated.

*88  change in the system is more likely to be harmful than helpful. if a fish's gills were to begin mutation into a set of lungs, it would be a disaster, not an advantage. the only way to turn a fish into a land-dwelling animal is to transform it all at once, with a host of interrelated changes in the skeleton, the circulatory system and so on.
the term to describe this kind of interdependent system is irreducible complexity. and the fact that organisms are irreducibly complex is yet another argument that they could not have evolved piecemeal, one step at a time, as Darwin proposed. Darwinian theory states that all living structures evolved in small, gradual steps from simpler structures - feathers from scales, wings from forelegs, blossoms from leaves and so on. but anything that is irreducibly complex cannot evolve in gradual steps and thus its very existence refutes Darwin's theory.

the concept of irreducible complexity was developed by Michael Behe, a Lehigh University professor of biochemistry, in his 1993 book Darwin's Black Box. Behe's homey example of irreducible complexity is the mousetrap. a mouse trap cannot be assembled  gradually, he points out. you cannot start with a wooden platform and catch a few mice, add a spring and catch a few more mice, add a hammer and so on, each addition making the mousetrap function better. no, to even Start catching mice, all the parts must be assembled from the outset. the mousetrap doesn't work until all its parts are present and working together.
many living structures are like the mousetrap. they involve an entire system of interacting parts all working  together . if one part were to evolve in isolation, the entire system of interacting pars would stop functioning and since, according to Darwinism, natural selection preserves the forms that function better than their rivals, the nonfunctioning system would be eliminated by natural selection - like the fish with lungs. therefor, there is no possible Darwinian explanation of how irreducible complex structures and systems came into existence.

interestingly, Darwin himself grasped the problem and even admitted that it could falsify his theory.  'if it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly  have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, he wrote, 'my theory would absolutely bread down'.  today we can confidently say that his theory Has broken down, for we now know that nature is full of examples of complex organs that could not possibly have been formed by numerous slight modifications - that is, organs that are irreducibly complex.

take the example of the bat. evolutionists propose that the bat evolved

*89  from a small, mouse like creature whose forelimbs (the 'front toes') developed into winds by gradual steps. but picture the steps: as the 'front toes' grow longer and the skin begins to grow between them, the animal can no longer run without stumbling over them and yet the forelimbs are not long enough to function as wings. and so , during most of its hypothetical transitional stages, the poor creature would have limbs too long for running and too short for flying. it would flow along  helplessly and soon become extinct.
there is no conceivable pathway for bat wings to be formed in gradual stages. and this conclusion is confirmed by the fossil record, where we find no transitional fossils leading up to bats. the first time bats appear in the fossil record, they are already fully formed and virtually identical to modern bats.

a classic example of irreducible complexity is the human eye. an eye is no use at all unless all its parts are fully formed and working together. even a slight alteration from its current form destroys its function. how, then, could the eye evolve by slight alterations? even in Darwin's day the complexity of the eye was offered as evidence against his theory and Darwin said the mere though of trying to explain the eye gave him 'a cold shudder'.
Darwin would have shuddered even harder had he know the structure of cells Inside the eye. contemporary Darwinists such as Richard Dawkins have tried to solve the problem by tracing  a pathway to the evolution of the eye, starting with a light-sensitive spot - is irreducibly complex, requiring a chain reaction of chemical reactions, starting when a photon interacts with a molecule called 11-Cis-retinal, which changes to Trans-retinal, which forces a change in the shape of a protein called rhodopsin, which sticks to another  protein called transducin, which binds to another molecule...and so on. and where do those cupped  cells that Dawkins talks about come from? there are dozens of complex proteins involved in maintaining cell shape and dozens more that control groups of cells. each of Dawkins's steps is itself a complex system, and adding them together  doesn't answer where these complex systems came from in the first place. it's as if we asked how a stereo system is made, and someone answered,  'By plugging a set of speakers into an amplifier and adding a CD player and a tape deck'. Right. the real question is how to make those speakers and amplifiers in the first place.
the most advanced, automated modern factory, with its computers and robots all coordinated on a precisely timed schedule, is less complex than the inner workings of a single cell. no such system could arise in a blind,
*90  step-by-step Darwinian process. the most rational explanation of irreducibly complex structures in nature is that there are products of the creative mind of an intelligent being.

on all fronts, scientists are being forced to face up to the evidence or an intelligent cause. ever since big bang theory was proposed, cosmologists have had to wrestle with the implications that the universe had an absolute beginning - and therefore a transcendent creator. the discovery of the information contend in DNA  is forcing biologists to recognize an intelligent cause for the origin of life. so , too, the fact of irreducible complexity is raising the question of designing in living things.

science cannot tell us everything we might wish to know about this intelligent cause, of course. it cannot reveal the details of God's character and it cannot explain his plan of salvation. these are tasks for theology. but a study of the design and purpose in nature does clearly support the existence of a transcendent creator - so clearly that, as the apostle Paul writes in the Ne Testament, we stand before him without excuse.  (see Rom.  1.20)
since the scientific evidence is so persuasive, why does the scientific establishment cling so tenaciously to Darwinian  evolution? why is Darwinism. still the official creed in our public schools? because  the real issue is not what we see through the microscope or the telescope; it's what we adhere to in our hearts and minds. Darwinism functions as the  cornerstone propping up a naturalistic worldview and therefore the scientist who  is committed to naturalism before he or she even walks into the laboratory is primed to accept even the flimsiest evidence supporting the theory. the most trivial change in living things is accepted as confirmation of the most far-flung claims of evolution, so that minor variation in finch beaks or insecticide resistance is touted as evidence that finches and flies both evolved ultimately from the slime by blind, unguided natural processes.

the core of the controversy is not science; it is a titanic struggle between opposing worldviews - between naturalism and theism. is the universe governed by blind material forces or by a loving personal being? only when Christians understand this  - only when we cease away the smoke screens and get to the core issue - will we stop losing debates. only then will we be able to help our kids, like Katy, face the continual challenges to their faith.

CHAPTER 10 - DARWIN'S DANGEROUS IDEA

*91  Consider the situation of Christian parents, not necessarily fundamentalists, who suspect that the term evolution drips with atheistic implications. the whole point of (the more consistent Darwinists) is that the parents are dead right about the implications and the science educators who deny this are either misinformed or lying.  Phillip Johnson

do evolution and religion really conflict: for public relations purposes many Darwinists veil their antagonism toward religion. for example. Harvard paleontologist Stephen J. Gould,  though a prominent critic of design theory, insists he is not irreligious. science and religion cannot conflict, he says because they deal with different things: science is about facts, while 'religion struggles with human morality'.
even many Christians have fallen for this tactic, with the result that we are often unprepared for  the intellectual battles we face in a secular culture. for though Darwinism is a scientific theory and must be answered with scientific evidence, it is more fundamentally a worldview  - or, more precisely, a crucial plank in the worldview of naturalism. and unless we engage it on that level, we will remain ineffective in answering its challenges.
one evolutionist who is boldly up-front about this underlying worldview is biologist William Provine of Cornell University. he declares forthrightly that Darwinism is not just about mutations and fossils; it is a comprehensive philosophy stating that all life can be explained by natural causes acting randomly - which implies that there is no need for the Creator. and if God did not create the world, he notes, then the entire body of Christian belief collapses.

Provine preaches his message on college campuses across the country, often flashing the following list on an overhead projector to hammer home

*92  what consistent Darwinism means:
'No life after death;
no ultimate foundation for ethics;
no ultimate meaning  for life;
no free will.
 the only reason anyone still believes in such things, Provine says, is that people have not yet grasped
the full implications of Darwinism.

his ideas may sound radical, but Provine is being brutally honest. he recognizes that the biblical teaching of creation is not just a theological doctrine; it is the very foundation of everything Christians believe.
on the other side of the debate, Berkeley law professor Phillip Johnson travels around the country arguing Against Darwinism, yet he agrees wholeheartedly with Provine on the far-reaching implications of the theory. these implications often  emerge when Johnson speaks before secular audiences .  as he writes,  'I have found that any discussion with modernists about the weaknesses of the theory of evolution quickly turns into a discussion of politics, particularly  sexual politics'. Why? because modernists 'typically fear that any discrediting of naturalistic evolution will end in women being sent to the kitchen, gays to the closet and abortionists to jail.

in other words most people sense instinctively  that there is much more at stake her than a scientific theory - that a link  exists between the material order and the moral order. though the fears Johnson encounters are certainly be exaggerated, this basic intuition is right. our origin determines our destiny. it tells us who we are, why we are here, and how we should order our lives together in society. our view of origins shapes our understanding  of ethics, law, education - and yes, even sexuality. whether we start with the assumption that we are creatures of a personal God or that we are products of a mindless process, a whole network of consequences follows and these consequences diverge dramatically.
take ethics. if a transcendent God created us for a purpose, then the most rational approach is to ask., what is that purpose and how must we live in order to fulfill it? the answer is found in divine revelation; its more a commands tell us how we  can become the people God created us to be. so Christian morality is not subjective, based on our personal feelings; it is objective, based on the way God created human nature. Skeptics often dismiss  Christianity as 'irrational', but if we were indeed created, then the truly irrational course is to ignore the Creator's moral rules.

by contrast, naturalism claims that God did not create us; rather, it is we who created the idea of god. he 'exists' only in the minds  of those  who believe in Him. if this claim is true, then the most rational course is to dismiss religion as wishful thinking and to base morality squarely on what is real  - on scientific knowledge. and science tells us that humans are products of evolutionary forces, that morality is nothing more than an idea that

*93  appears in our minds when we have evolved to a certain level. consequently, there is no ultimate objective basis for morality; humans create their own standards. since the only objective reality that exists is the natural world , and it is in constant evolutionary flux. our ideas about right and wrong are constantly changing as well. the result is radical ethical relativism.

or consider the subject of law. traditionally, a nation's laws were understood to be based on a transcendent moral order (based in turn on divine law).  the belief was that 'men do not make laws . they do but discover them. Laws...must rest on the eternal foundation of righteousness'. these words may sound as if they came from the pen of a 16th century divine, but they were written in the early 20th century by our 30th president, Calvin Coolidge.

yet if Darwinism is true, there is no divine law or transcendent moral order and there is no final, authoritative basis for law. the influential legal theorist Oliver Wendell Homes, an avowed Darwinian, taught that laws are merely a codification of political policies judged to be socially and economically advantageous. law is reduced to a managerial skill used in the service of social engineering - the dominant view in the legal profession today.

in education, Darwinism has molded not only the content but also the methodology of teaching. the key figure is John Dewey,  who sought to work out what Darwinism means for the learning process. if human beings are part of nature and nothing more, he reasoned, then the mind is simply an organ that has evolved from lower forms in the struggle for existence - just as wings or claws have evolved - and its value depends on whether it works, whether it enables the organism to survive, Dewey rejected the traditional belief that an idea is an insight into an objective reality,  to be judged by whether is is true or false. instead, he argued that ideas are merely hypotheses about what will get the results we want, and their validity depends on whether they work.  Dewey's pragmatic philosophy is the source of much of the relativism that has gutted both academic and moral education today.

Darwinism is even a key source of postmodernism, which dismisses the idea of universal truth as a tool of oppression wielded by 'Dead White Males'. because Darwinism eliminates the transcendent, postmodernism  draws the inevitable conclusion that there is no transcendent truth . each of us is locked in the limited perspective of our race, gender and ethnic group. the 'search for truth'  that supposedly motivates education is a sham; there is only the black perspective, the feminist perspective, the Hispanic perspective and so on.  any claim to universal truth is considered an attempt to impose the perspective of one group on all the others.

despite its flamboyant skepticism toward objective truth, ironically,

*94  postmodernism rests on an assumption that Something is objectively true - namely, Darwinism.

if tying Darwinism to postmodernism seems a bit of a stretch, listen to the personal odyssey of the influential postmodernist guru Richard Rorty, now at Stanford university. in an autobiographical essay, Ror reveals that he was once attracted to Christianity. but finding himself 'incapable' of 'the humility that Christianity demanded.' he turned away from God -only to discover that a world without God is a world without any basis for universal truth or justice. Ror then determined to work out a philosophy consistent with Darwinism.  like Dewey, he accepted the Darwinist notion that ideas are problem-solving tools that evolved as means of adapting to the environment. 'keeping faith with Darwin, Ror writes, means understanding that the human species is not oriented 'toward Truth', but only 'toward its own increased prosperity. truth claims are just tools that 'help us get what we want'.  (Which means, of course, that Rorty's own ideas are just tools for getting what he wants -including the idea of postmodernism. thus, postmodernism refutes itself.)

Darwinism thus forms the linchpin to the fundamental debate between Christianity and naturalism in virtually every subject area. since modern culture has given science authority to define the way the world 'really is', Darwinism  provides the scientific justification for a naturalistic approach in every field. as British biologist Richard Dawkins puts it, Darwin 'mad it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist".
many Christians shrink from drawing such a stark contrast between theism and Darwinism. they hope to combine Dar's biological theory with belief in God - suggesting that God may have used evolution as his method of creating. yet Dar himself insisted that the 2 are mutually exclusive. for natural selection acts as a sieve, sifting out harmful variations in living things and preserving helpful variations. but if  God were guiding evolution, he would ensure that each variation was beneficial from the start. natural selection would be, in Dar's own words, 'superfluous'.  the whole point of his theory was to identify a natural process that would mimic intelligent design, thus making Design superfluous.
Dar is typically portrayed as a man forced to the theory of natural selection by the weight of the facts. but today historians recognize that he was first committed to the philosophy of naturalism and then sought a theory to justify it scientifically. early in his career, he had already turned against the idea of creation and developed a settled conviction that, as he put it, 'everything in nature is the result of fixed laws'. in other words, the

*95  deck was already stacked in favor of a naturalistic account of life before he actually uncovered any convincing facts.
indeed, nature became virtually a substitute deity for Darwin.  'As regards his respect for the laws of Nature,  wrote his son William,  'it might be called reverence if not a religious feeling. no man could feel more intensely the vastness and the inviolability of the laws of nature.  with his attitude akin to religious worship, it is not surprising that Charles Darwin eventually attributed godlike creative powers to natural selection.
modern Darwinists insist that evolution is so obviously supported by the facts that anyone who dissents must be ignorant or dishonest. but Dar was more candid. he knew quite well he had not proved his theory of natural selection. he described it as an inference, grounded chiefly on analogy. it can be judged only by how useful it is, he wrote, how well 'it groups and explains phenomena.

likewise, many of Dar's earliest and most ardent supporters were quick to spot the scientific weaknesses in his theory, yet they chose to champion it because they saw it as a useful means of promoting naturalistic philosophy. Herbert Spencer, the first person to extend evolution into every discipline, from ethics to psychology,  explained frankly that he felt an enormous internal pressure to find a naturalistic alternative to the idea of creation.  'The Special Creation belief  had dropped out of my mind many years before,k he wrote,  and i could not remain in a suspended state: acceptance of the only conceivable alternative was peremptory'.  (def - leaving no opportunity or refusal)moreover, Spencer admitted, once you accept the philosophy of naturalism, some form of naturalistic evolution is an 'inevitable corollary' - regardless of the strength of the scientific evidence.

Thomas Huxley christened himself 'Dar's bulldog' and fought fiercely for the cause and yet by his own admission, he never thought Da's theory amounted to much scientifically. he, too, rallied to the cause for philosophical reasons. long before his encounter with Dar, Huxley had rejected the biblical teaching of creation and was actively looking for an alternative.  Hux declared that Dar 'did the immense service of freeing us forever from the dilemma - refuse to accept the creation hypothesis and what have you to propose that can be accepted by any cautious reasoner?  apparently Hux was willing to champion Any naturalistic theory, even one he found scientifically flawed, as long as it provided an alternative to creation.

the historical data makes it clear that the contest over evolution in the 19th century was philosophically 'rigged'. Darwinism won not so much because it fit the evidence but because it provided a scientific rationale.

*96  for naturalism. if the world is governed by uniformly operating laws, as Hux said, then the successive populations of beings 'must have proceeded from one another in the way of progressive modification'.  the operative word here is 'must'. once you accept philosophical naturalism, then something very much like Darwinism Must be true, - regardless of the facts.

Dar's early opponents likewise understood what was at stake. in 1874, Princeton theologian Charles Hodge published an essay asking 'What is Darwinism?' and he answered bluntly that it is tantamount to atheism. 'Natural selection is selection made by natural laws, working without intention and design', Hodge wrote. and 'the denial of design in nature is virtually the denial of God'.

in our own day, one of the most explicit statements of the philosophical motivation behind Darwinism comes, surprisingly enough, from Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin. in an article arguing for the superiority of science over religion (which he groups with things like UFOs and channeling), Lewontin freely admits that science has its own problems. it has created many of our social problems (like ecological disasters) and many scientific theories are no more than 'unsubstantiated just-so stories'. nevertheless, 'in the struggle between science and the supernatural' we 'take the side of science'. Why" 'because we have a prior commitment to materialism.

note carefully those last few words. Le is admitting that the hostility to religion that is fashionable in the scientific establishment is not driven by the  facts but by materialistic philosophy.

and there is more. fro Le says even the methods of science are driven by materialistic philosophy. the rules that define what qualifies as science in the first place have been crafted by materialists in such a way as to ensure they get only materialistic theories. Or as Le puts it, 'we are forced by our A Priori (def - from a general law to a particular instance) adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations'.

this is a stunning admission. the authority of science rests primarily on its public image - on the impression that its theories rest firmly on a foundation of empirical facts. but Le has pulled back the curtains in oz to reveal the wizard's strings and levers. the truth is that much of Darwinism is not science but naturalistic philosophy masquerading as science. so an honest debate between Darwinism and Christianity is not fact versus faith but philosophy versus philosophy, worldview.

we must be clear about what is at stake here. as long as Darwinism  reigns in our schools and elite culture , the Christian worldview will be considered the madwoman in the attic - irrational and unbelievable. that's why

*97  we can no longer allow naturalists to treat science as a sanctuary  where their personal philosophy reigns free from challenge.

WHO IS 'THIS GUY'?
In William Steig's Yellow &Pink,  a delightfully whimsical picture book for children, 2 wooden figures wake up to find themselves lying on an old newspaper in the hot sun. one figure is painted yellow, the other pink.
suddenly, Yellow sits up and asks, 'Do you know what we're doing here'.

so begins a debate between the 2 marionettes over the origin of their existence.

Pink surveys their well-formed features and concludes, 'Someone must have made us'.

yellow disagrees.  'I say we're an accident', and he outlines a hypothetical scenario of how it might have happened. a branch might have broken off a tree and fallen on a sharp rock, splitting one end of the branch into 2 legs. then the wind might have sent it tumbling down a hill until it was chipped and shaped. perhaps a flash of lightning struck in such a way as to splinter the wood into arms and fingers. eyes might have been formed by woodpeckers boring in the wood.

'with enough time, 1000, 1,000,000, maybe 2,500,000 years. lots of unusual things could happen,  says Yellow.  'Why not us?'
the 2 figures argue back and forth.
in the end, the discussion is cut off by the appearance of a man coming out of a nearby house. he strolls  over to the marionettes, picks them up and checks their paint. 'Nice and dry', he comments and tucking them under his arm, he heads back toward the house.

peering out from under the man's arm, yellow whispers in pink's ear, 'Who is this guy?'

that is precisely the question each one of us must answer and it's no storybook fantasy. it is deadly serious. beyond the public debates and rhetoric, beyond the placard waving and politicizing, at the heart of every worldview are the intensely personal questions:  who made me and why am I here?

every world view has to begin somewhere - God or matter, take your

*98  choice. everything else flows from that initial choice. this is why the question of creation has become such a fierce battleground today. it is the foundation of the entire Christian worldview. for if god crated all of finite reality,  then every aspect of that reality must be subject to him and his truth. everything finds its meaning and interpretation in relation to God. no part of live can be autonomous or neutral, no part can be sliced off and made independent from Christian truth. because creation includes the whole scope of finite reality ,  the Christina worldview must be equally comprehensive, covering every aspect of our lives, our thinking, our choices. both friends and foes of Christianity realize that everything stands or falls on the doctrine of creation.

Christians often seek to evangelize others by starting with salvation - John 3.16 and the gospel message. and for an earlier generation, that approach worked. most people had some kind of church experience in their background, even if they did not have strong personal beliefs. but in today's post-Christian world, may people no longer even understand the meaning of crucial biblical terms. for example, the basic term Sin makes no sense to people if they have no concept of a Holy God who created us and who therefore has a right to require certain things of us. and if people don't understand sin, they certainly don't comprehend the need for salvation.

consequently, in today's world, beginning evangelism with the message of salvation is like starting a book at the middle - you don't know the characters and you can't make sense of the plot. instead, we must begin with Genesis, where the main character, God, establishes Himself as the Creator, and the plot' of human history unfolds its first crucial episodes. and the scientific evidence supporting these opening episodes is powerful, as Dave Mulholland discovered in his person odyssey.


first, cosmology has discovered the shattering truth that matter is not eternal after all, as  naturalistic scientist once confidently assumed. the universe began at a finite period of time - which in turn implies that something Outside the universe must have set it going.

second, there are the staggering 'coincidences' that make the universe fit for life. from the molecular properties of water to the balance of electrical charges in the proton and electron, the entire structure of the physical universe. is exquisitely designed to support life on Earth.

Third, laboratory experiments touted as proof  that life can arise spontaneously by random natural forces turn out to prove nothing of the sort. instead, they provide positive evidence that life can be created only by an intelligent agent controlling, directing and manipulating the process. the discovery of  DNA gives explosive new force to the argument for design. if

*99  we rely on experience - and, after all, science is Supposed to be based on experience - the only known source of information is an intelligent cause.
Fourth, Darwin did not succeed in demonstrating that life developed by means of mindless, undirected natural forces. experiments with breeding and mutations have shown that his fundamental assumption - that living things can vary endlessly  - is fatally flawed. today, the most advanced investigations into the heart of the cell confirm that the irreducible complexity of living thins can be explained only by intelligent design.
the continued dominance of Darwinism has less to do with its scientific validity that with a commitment to naturalism. naturalism, in turn, has spread like a toxic oil spill into fields as diverse as ethics, law, education, postmodernism - to name just a few. as a result, Darwinism has become the cornerstone for a comprehensive philosophy that stands in stark opposition to Christianity.

ROAD MAP TO REALITY

every worldview is a propose map of reality, a guide to navigating in the world. one effective test of any truth claim, therefore, is to ask whether we can live by it. if you follow a map but still find yourself splashing into rivers or crashing off cliffs, you can be quite sure something is wrong with the map. by the same token, if you live according to a certain worldview but keep bumping up against reality in painful ways, you can be sure something is wrong with the worldview. it fails to reflect reality accurately.
let's apply this test to the naturalistic worldview of the well-known science popularizer Carl Sagan, whom we have referred to several times in this section. Sag literally canonized the cosmos, openly plugging his personal philosophy on his popular television program. and far from repudiating this transformation of science into religion, the scientific establishment richly rewarded him , even awarding him the National Academy of Science's public Welfare medal in 1994.

one consequence of Sag's religion of the cosmos was that he was actively committed to the cause of animal rights. and quite logically so. for if humans evolved from the beasts, there can be no intrinsic difference between them. it would be just as cruel and immoral to kill a cow as to murder a person. 'In my writings, Sag said in a Parade magazine article,  'I have tried to show how closely related we are to other animals,  how cruel it is to gratuitously inflict pain on the.  as a result, he was adamantly opposed to

*100 using animals for medical research. for if animals have the same value as humans, how can we justify expending their lives to save humans?

but on this issue, Sag bumped up against reality in a very painful way. in 1994, he discovered that he had myelodysplasia, a rare blood disease. with possibly just months to live, he was told that his only chance for survival was an experimental bone-marrow transplant. but there was one catch. the procedure that might save his life had been developed by research n animals - the kind of research Sag passionately oppose.

Sag faced an excruciating dilemma:  Should he remain true to his naturalistic philosophy and reject the marrow graft as something acquired by immoral means? or should he agree to undergo the medical treatment in hope of saving his life, though it meant acting in contradiction to his moral convictions?
Sag didn't take long to reach a decision: he underwent three bone-marrow treatments, which did extend his life for a time (though he ultimately succumbed to the disease and died in 1996). at the time sag wrote the Parade article, he was still, in his words, 'very conflicted' over the choice he had made. he recognized clearly that his decision to accept the treatment was a practical denial of his naturalistic worldview. but when he came up against reality, he abandoned his naturalistic road map and whether he admitted it or not, implicitly shifted to the biblical road map, which says that humans do have a value transcending that of plants and animals.

Christianity is not merely a religion, defined narrowly as personal piety and corporate worship. it is also an objective perspective on all reality, a complete worldview. only Christianity consistently stands up to the test of practical living. only Christianity gives us an accurate road map. only Christianity matches the way we must act if we are to live humanely and rationally in the real world.

creation is the first element of the Christian world view, the foundation on which everything else is built . it is the basis of human dignity, for our origin tells us who we are, why we are here and how we would treat one another . the questions of human life have become the most pressing issues of our day, as 2 men discovered in a very personal way on a battlefield on the other side of the globe.

Chapter 11 - A MATTER OF LIFE

Vietnam, 1968

from their hovering position 1500 feet above the ground, the men in colonel Yarborough's Command & Control (C&C) helicopter kept watch at the end of an anxious day. for the past 2 weeks, their Ghostrider division had been shuttling in troops and supplies for a big push in the central highlands at Plei Merong. the atmosphere was tense, the territory unsecured. during reconnaissance, as Yarborough's crew had hovered over the area for the first time, they had spotted a stockpile of empty rocket crates not more than 300 yards from the present landing zone. the enemy could be anywhere.

as the C&C copter circled slowly over the jungle, the crew watched another helicopter rotor into position above the steep hillside landing zone, hovering close to the ground to pick up support personnel returning to base. the men on the C&C copter could see men scurrying below, disappearing in and out of the scrub trees and bushes. the technical dragonfly wigwagged, impatient to leave.

Kaboom!
Suddenly the air burst with rockets puffs of white smoke from small firearms rose in dozens of places over the hillside. the copter near the ground recoiled left, as if stabbed in its side. a curling plume of gray scorpioned the back rotor and the machine began to pitch wildly. the smoke grew black and full.

as the wounded machine continued to yaw and have, Ken McGarity watched the scene from his right-gunner position in the C&C copter. he

102 saw the other helicopter fall, slamming down onto the landing zone, its main rotor shattering. he spotted 2 helmets  pop out, then another, the three men ran for cover, one of them on fire.

the black smoke from the hit copter mushroomed, obscuring Ken's view. rockets continued to shoot up through the smoke, though they didn't have the range to reached the C&C copter.

we're going down! Screamed the C& C pilot. he shouted and waved at Ken to watch his side as they spiraled down.
Ken took his gun off its stand and knelt in the doorway, his right foot out on the skid. he leaned out as far as he could, straining to see. he had to know where their own men were before he could lay down a blanket of fire.
the colonel pushed his way to the open door, beside Ken, ready to throw out an extinguisher for the burning soldier on the ground. their C&C copter  had cleared the high bamboo and would soon be down to the scrub trees, but Ken still couldn't see where their guys were hiding. he couldn't see the enemy either.
soon they were right over the landing zone. why didn't the colonel throw out the extinguisher? they weren't supposed to be here more than 7 seconds. they had been here at least 20.  THROW THE THING.
 no one saw the B-40 rocket coming.
half the ship exploded on contact. Ken was catapulted into the air and fell from the height of the scrub trees on the bare ground....
when he regained consciousness,Otto Mertz, a buddy from the first downed copter, was dragging him through the mud to safety.
'My legs! Ken  screamed,
'They're broken, someone said.
his arms had been crossed over his chest. They Must Be Broken, Too, Ken thought.

he passed in and out of consciousness several times before he was finally hoisted onto  a medevac helicopter. when he was secured into a transport stretcher, a woman's voice asked, 'What's your name?
'McGarity, he said. 'Ken McGarity. Am I hurt bad?

'We're going to take care of you, the nurse shouted as the thrashing blades lifted them away.

when the wounded men arrived at the Army's 71st Evacuation Hospital at Pleiku on Sept 21, 1968, Dr. Kenneth Swan was surgeon of the day. the 33 year old doctor had been in Vietnam only a month.

*103  2 men had died at Plei Merong. all the others could be classified as 'walking wounded',  having sustained only minor injuries - all except the soldier identified as Army Specialist 4 Ken McGarity. the man was covered with dirt and bloodied mud. one leg hung  by a thin strip of skin; the other was broken so badly that the femur protruded from what was left  of his thigh. shoelace tourniquets had stopped the arterial bleeding, but the wounds were plastered with mud and sticks. both arms were badly fractured and one testicle had been blown away. blood oozed from both eyes and the left eyeball was shattered. the injuries to the eyes indicated shrapnel wounds, which could mean brain damage.
as Swan assessed the devastation before him, he had 2 choices. he could classify the soldier as 'expectant', medicate him and leave him to die or he could devote the full resources of the hospital to treating him. which call should he make?
by all rights, this soldier should have bled to death already. he had been in the field almost 2 hours before  being airlifted out. but he was not only  alive, he was conscious.

'How am I doing? the man asked.
'You're in the hospital.
'I feel like i left my legs back on the helicopter. they're broken, aren't they?


Dr Swan knew the soldier's joke was closer to the truth, but the short exchange helped Swan make up his mind. as a Christian, how could he refuse to treat a man who was talking to him?


'We're going to take care of you, he promised.
X ray s revealed  what the surgeon already knew:  the soldier's legs had to come off. as Swan worked on the amputations - both legs above the knew - he coordinated the activities of the team of doctor he had called in. the orthopedist treated the shrapnel wounds in McGarity's arms, Swan amputated the ragged stump of the soldier's right pinkie finger. a urologist worked to limit the damage of the 'shrapnel vasectomy'.
then, in a final delicate and involved surgery, the neurologist performed a craniotomy, cutting through the top of the soldier's forehead and lifting away the skull  so that he could extract the shrapnel from the brain's frontal lobes - damage that might have a lobotomizing effect. or worse.

for 8 hours, the surgeons stood in their muddy boots on the

*104  concrete floor and did the best they could to repair Ken McGarity. a civilian photographer from Casualty Care hovered  about - much to the surgeon's irritation - recording the soldier's wounds for a research study. in the background, providing a bizarre rhythmic accompaniment, the adjacent air base took incoming mortar fire.
when the surgeries were completed, Dr. Swan felt his team had done well. their patient had a chance.
 the next morning, however, Swan's commanding officer sat down with him in the mess hall and grilled him about the case. why had he decided to treat the recent casualty so  aggressively?

'there was no other way to treat his injuries, Swan replied, surprised at the question.

the superior looked him squarely in the eye.  'Look, Ken, why send blind, double amputees with significant brain damage back to their parents? 'what were you thinking?

Swan found himself responding from his gut. 'I was trained to Treat the sick. it's not up to me who lives and dies. that's God's decision.
'as the surgeon on duty, it Was up to you, said his commanding officer.  'the next time you make a call, ask yourself what kind of life you're condemning someone to'. he pasted. 'Of course, he may die yet. He sounded grimly hopeful.
several days later, Rick Marti, a fellow enlistee from Alabama, stopped in the ICU  to visit Den McGarity. his friend's head was swathed in a giant bandage. his broken arms were restrained in tight wraps that allowed their wounds to be freshly dressed. a single sheet covered his bandaged leg stumps, each of which had swollen to the size of his waist.

'hey buddy, he said. 'It's Rick Martin.

'Look  at this, man - my legs are broke, my eyes must have bot sandblasted, too.

the nurse had told Rick that Ken did not yet understand the severity of his injuries. but hearing how wrong Ken's impressions were, Rick became distraught, almost angry.  someone had to tell the guy the truth.
'No, man, Rick said. he paused a moment, gathering courage. 'Your legs aren't broke. they were amputated.
'Really?
 'Yeah. You lost your legs.
'How about my eyes?

*105  'I'm sorry. you're going to be blind
'My arms feel like they are going to be okay. they're just broken.
Ken was silent for so long that Rick wondered if the drugs had lulled him back to sleep.

'Okay, then, Ken said finally. 'okay.
rick didn't know what to make of his friend's resignation; he figured it was probably the morphine talking.
'I want you to do something for me, rick, ken said. 'I really need you  to do this. write my mom and dad and tell them that I got my legs broken and that sand blew in my eyes. but tell them I'm going to be all right. I don't want them to know haw bad it is. Will you do that?

'Sure, said Rick. 'Sure.
'You got a cigarette, man? Ken asked
'Yeah, he said, but i don't think we'd better light up in here with all this oxygen around, we'll probably blow the place up.
'Get me out of here then, Ken said.
'I'm not sure...
'Just load me in a wheelchair and take me out.
Rick scooped Ken up, the guy felt as light and frail as rick's 9 year old brother.

outside, on the hardpan ground surrounding the ICU, Ken tilted his head back and took deep breaths.
'Feel that, Rick? he asked.  'Feel the wind? it feels good on my face.
Rick lit a cigarette and put it in Ken's mouth. he took a couple drags,  then Rick took the cigarette back.
'I'm alive, Ken said.
'You're darn right, said Rick, starting to feel an odd glimmer of enthusiasm. 'You're smoking.

'the wind feels good, Ken sad again.  he took a full breath. then another. then a shuddering came over him. 'I'm going to pass out now, Rick'.
Okay. I've got you, buddy.

a month later, the chaplain's assistant, another young man from Ken McGarity's hometown of Phenix City, Alabama, brought Dr. Kenneth Swan a piece of news. 'Thought you would like to know, McGarity made it back he's at Walter Reed.
Kenneth Swan should have been happy to hear those words, but he was

*106  not. he envisioned the damaged soldier living in a veterans hospital, heavily medicated against the violent rages or psychotic  delusions brought on by brain damage. he saw the man half-curled in a wheelchair, stretching his next and muttering in a drugged rage. these images burned in the surgeons's imagination, where they would remain for 20 years.


by the time Ken McGarity reached Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC,  there weeks after being wounded, the nightmares had started. as additional surgeries were performed to repair the ligament damage in his right arm and his amputation wounds, pain exploded  at every level of his consciousness.
in his dreams he saw North Vietnamese regulars running down the middle of the base's airstrip...the bodies were being picked up after Tet...he leaned out of the copter once more, desperate to identify his won men... he was running down a road in the middle of a firefight wearing only a T-shirt, fatigues and boots. 'Never go anywhere without your weapon! his sergeant barked. 'Never!  a rocket exploded and he woke screaming, covered with sweat.

the nurse whispered, 'We let you sleep through your last meds. we won't do that again'. she gave him another shot of morphine.
he wanted to tell her that he was afraid to sleep. then the morphine took over once more.

in McGarity's rare moments of lucidity, something else scared him - as much or more than his nightmares, though in a completely different way. when he had re-upped for his second tour in Vietnam, requesting reassignment to helicopter duty from his relatively safe post in the 75th Engineering Battalion, he had gone home for a month's leave. while there, one evening he drove out by the lake to be alone with his thoughts.
at first he relaxed, lying back in the long grass, watching the stares come out. but soon the sky's immensity seemed to tilt, levering until it threatened to topple on him. suddenly he was straining to breathe against a pressing sense of fear.
what was he afraid of?
Death.
that was the thought smothering him. he didn't want to die. anything but that. he was too young to leave this world that he was just beginning to discover.
he sat up, as if throwing open his own coffin and lifted his arms up to

*107  the skies. 'god, if you are there and will be with me, let me know, he prayed.  'Giv me a sign.
what sign?
in an instant, he made the deal. 'You can take my eyes, You can take my arms, my legs, my mind, but leave my life'.  did he know what he was offering? he thought he did. suffering didn't scare him. death did.
so when Rick Martin had first told Ken that he had lost his legs and his sight, Ken's mind had instantly flashed back to that deal he'd made with God. when he had said okay to Rick, it was really God that ken had been talking to.
now, lying in Walter Reed Army medical Center, it was clear that God was real. God had heard him and had taken almost everything he had offered - but had left him his life. even in the midst of his living nightmare, Ken McGarity realized that his life was a gift from God. God had not taken his life. why Not? And Where Do I  God From Here? What Dose God Want From Me?

when Ken arrived at Hines Veterans Administration Hospital outside Chicago to begin his rehabilitation on the blind ward, orderlies wheeled his 80  pound body into the hospital. in transport, he had sweated out every toxin his infection-riddled body could produce.

'He sure needs to be cleaned up, said the nurse during his intake.

'I don't know what i'm supposed to do with him, complained the psychiatrist. why didn't they let this guy die?
why did people assume that because he was blind he was also deaf, Ken wondered. they not only spoke past him, they talked as if saving his life had been a mistake.

on the blind ward at Hines, however, Ken discovered a new power. he didn't have to do anything he didn't want to do. he had always been independent to a fault. now he could play out his rebellion with abandon.
medical personnel told him he needed to begin learning how to live his new life. he needed to exercise his arms, develop his upper body strength. but ken only wanted the pain to do away. so he decided he would just lie in his bed and let them take care of him  until the pain diminished enough for him to think about such things as upper body strength.

but he hadn't allowed for Nurse Early. she never handed his water cup to him; she always placed it on the table that pivoted in front of him. she wanted him to learn to feel for a glass without knocking it over.
once, he became so frustrated that he knocked the glass across the

*108  room with a sweep of his right forearm. he heard the splat of water and the skip and bounce of the plastic cup with supreme satisfaction.
but Nurse Early came back every day. during the morning hours, she stretched his arms, working first for mobility, then strength, letting him use a half-pound dumbbell.

'Give me more weight, he demanded. he wanted to exercise like a man. Early wouldn't allow it, so he quit lifting her half-pounder.
their running battle continued for weeks. secretly, Ken liked the nurse's perfume. just to know a woman was nearby, just to smell her scent - he liked that.

one day, feeling particularly lousy, Ken refused to attend occupational therapy.  'I ain't no basket weaver! he complained.
'Oh yeah? said Early and plopped him down hard in his wheelchair.  'You are going to occupational therapy! she said. 'and I'll tell you what else you are going to do. you are going to act like a soldier. your injuries don't entitle you to anything more than the United States congress is willing to pay for. and it's not paying me to pity you!'
she kept up this harangue during the struggle of getting him belted into his chair and wheeling him out of the ward. she kicked the door open for emphasis. then, she hung a fast right into a room that smelled of freshly washed towels and linen.
'we're in the laundry room Ken, she said, 'we're along'.  now her voice was calm, lower. 'I want to tell you something'.
You've Told Me Enough Already, he thought.

'I know you're hurting, she said ,  her voice warming with compassion. 'I know that's why you don't want to do any of this. but you have to try. you have to try now while it still hurts. when the pain's gone, the opportunity's gone. you won't be able to regain any mobility if much more time passes. Ken, put all that stubbornness to use. i know you can do anything you put your mind to. from now, it's just going to take a whole lot more effort. you're going to have to find your won way to do things. but yo can. You will. if you were a quitter, you would be dead by now. I need you to show me the courage that kept you alive.
'Nurse Early? said Ken
'What?
'What size do you want your stupid basket?

Ken's ward contained all the worst cases. he didn't need his eyes to know that. he was the only one among the half-dozen in the room who could

*109 scoot himself out of bed into a wheelchair.  still, he and his ward mates found ways to entertain themselves. on Friday nights, they called a fried chicken delivery service and ordered in buckets and beer.
one Friday afternoon they were kidding each other, feeling high, anticipating their big night of chicken and suds, when Dave Crowley suggested, 'Hey, Ken, why don't you get us some munchies? you can get in that chair now. go on down to the PX and buy out the store.

'Yeah, what else can we do with our money? said another.
Ken had never been able to turn down a dare.  'I'll do it, he said.
he was in his wheelchair and nearly past the nurse's station when the nurse on duty called,  'Where are you going, Ken?
'To the PX.  going to get my friends some munchies'.
'that's good, she said absently, as if talking to a 3 year old who said he was flying to the moon.
Ken kept rolling. he would show them all.
by the time he reached the end of the first hall, he  was wondering how he would ever make it. he waited until he heard the familiar scraping slide of a doctor's surgical booties.
'Can you tell me how to get to the PX, sir? Ken asked.
'Turn left here, then down this corridor,  a right at the next, 2 more,  another left, another right and then you had better ask again.
'Okay, thanks.'
powering his wheelchair with his left had and scraping the wall for guidance with his right, Ken worked his way past door jams, heating ventilators, abandoned IV stands and laundry carts. several steep ramps gave him more than a thrill and he wondered how he would ever wheel his chair again  on his way back.
he remembered instructions for one or two corridors at a time, then asked again. finally, he turned into an open space and smelled hamburgers and fries. a few more hand-pumps and he hit a table and chair and knew he had arrived.
but how would he make his way along the cafeteria rail?
how would he know what was in front of him?
he was swiveling his head around, trying to take in as much as he could through his useful senses, when he heard someone talking close by.
'Soldier?
was the person speaking to him?
'Soldier?
'yes, sir?
'I'm Colonel McDermott. are you supposed to be here?
'I'm doing rehabilitation on the blind ward,sir, my buddies asked if i

*110  would go to the PX and get them some munchies. I'm the only one who can get in a chair, so i came down'.
'that ward's up on level 9, isn't it?
'Yes, Sir.
'Level 9. that's a long way. did somebody bring you down?
'no, sir. I came down by myself/
'What's your name, soldier?
'Specialist 4 Ken McGarity, sir, I was a door gunner with the Ghostriders.

Would you like me to help you find your snacks?
'Yes, sir. Appreciate it, sir. I was wondering how i was going to manage.
'you don't mind if I wheel you through the line, do you?
'No, sir. it's a long way down from level 9.
'How are you going to get that bag up to level 9 with you. private? the colonel asked.
'Easy. Ken tucked his change in the front pocket of his hospital gown, then grasped the top of the grocery bag between his teeth. he couldn't hold the bag in his lap because his leg stumps were too short to balance anything. he took a big breath through his nose, prepared to roll.
'Private McGarity? said the colonel.
Ken let loose of the bag to answer. 'yes, sir?'
'I'm saluting you, private.
'yes, sir.
suddenly,the quiet was broken as applause rang out around him.
'Carry on, said the colonel.

outside the PX, Ken powered up the first ramp, a new energy in his hands and arms. HE COULD DO IT.  he had found his way down here; now all he had to do was to find his way in life. Nurse Early had said he could do anything he put his mind to. now, for the first time, he was sure that he could. he hadn't realized how tightly his doubts and fears had been gripping him, trying to suffocate the life that remained.
Relief teared in his eyes. he was truly going to make it!

20 years later, in 1989, Peter McPherson, a young freelance Journalist, called Dr. Kenneth Swan, then a professor of surgery at the

*111 University  of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. McPherson was writing about trauma care, and Swan was an ideal candidate to interview. besides his experience in Vietnam, he was chief of surgery for trauma car at his university hospital; he also remained in the army reserves as a full colonel.
'Dr.  swan, what was the toughest case of your career? the young journalist asked. a 20 year old memory, long suppressed, rose to the surface of Swan's mind. it was the memory of a soldier wounded so badly that Swan's colleagues had thought him better off dead.

'What ever became of the guy? asked McPherson after he heard the story.
'He made it back to the States,  said Swan. 'That's all I know.

When Peter McPherson's article appeared, dozens of readers wrote letters to the editor, wanting to know what had become of the young soldier. McPherson called Kenneth Swan and suggested that they find out. neither was sure he would like what they might find.

their search became almost an obsession  that carried them through many dead ends and bureaucratic runarounds. but 2 years later, in July of 1991, Dr. Swan finally learned that his former patient, Kenneth McGarity,  was now living in Columbus, Georgia; that he had a wife and 2 daughters, had completed his high school education,attended Auburn Univ.  and had learned to scuba dive.

'You must have the wrong guy, Swan said to the person at the Veterans administration. 'My patient had brain damage. he was a double amputee. how would he ever learn to scuba dive?

'Doctor, this is your patient. if you want to call him,go ahead'.
when  Swan placed the call, an upbeat Southern male voice answered. It was Ken McGarity.
Swan explained about Peter McPherson, the story, his search.  "I would like to meet you,  he concluded.
'Fine,  said McGarity.  'You can fill in a lot of holes for me, Dr. Swan. there are a lot of things i would like to know about that day.
so it was that on Sept. 25, 1991, almost 23 years to the day since their fateful encounter in Pleiku,  Dr. Swan and ken McGarity  met outside the McGarity home in Columbus, Georgia, accompanied by McPherson and a photographer. when McGarity extended his had in greeting, Dr. Swan recognized his own work, the amputated right pinkie finger. in that instant, he felt a bond with this man. and in the long conversation that followed,  he was able to offer Ken McGarity reassuring answers to a host of troubling concerns. like survivor's guilt. maybe he should have

*112  been left to die, as so many had suggested to him. perhaps there had been someone who needed medical attention more.
'No, no, Swan reassured him. treating Ken had not meant denying treatment to anyone else.

the Dr . Swan raised his own troubling questions. had it been worth it? what Ken happy to be alive?

'I'll tell you something, Ken said to the doctor.  'being blind in a wheelchair has its proles. i won't deny that. but really, it's not so bad, Dr. Swan. I would be dead if it weren't for you!

Peter McPherson's story was published in the Washington Post and soon ABC's 20/20,  the New York Times, Good Housekeeping and even the Times of London came calling.

the mass media ate up the story on its most superficial terms - after 20 years, doctor finds worst-case patient living a full and happy life. what an inspirational tribute to the indomitable human spirit!  but real life is always more complicated than it appears and it  certainly was for Ken McGarity. at the time of Dr. Swan's visit, ken, his wife, Theresa and their girls were living through  the most difficult part of Ken's healing.
in 1989,2 years before Dr. Swan met the McGaritys, Theresa had had a nervous breakdown and had been hospitalized. the 2 girls, Alicia and Elizabeth , had gone to live with Theresa's parents.  when Theresa came out of the hospital, she knew she had to confront ken about the problems that had been building since their marriage in 1971, problems that had contributed to her own illness. to do so, she had to return to the place she had once considered her dream house - a place where Ken now lived alone, a sickened ghost of the man she had married.

when she crossed the threshold, the familiar scent and atmosphere hit her with the chilling effect of a mausoleum's dead air. she knew she couldn't bear to stay here for more than a few minutes, but what she had learned in the hospital told her that she needed to do this, especially if she and ken were going to have the slightest chance at a future.
'Theresa?
Theresa! Ken called, bumping his way out of the bedroom. 'Theresa, you're back. come here and let me kiss you.
she bent down, but gave him only her cheek to kiss. then she stepped away. 'I'm  not back, ken. Not yet.
'They want to keep you longer at the hospital?
'No. I'm getting better. but I'm not really going to be well until you get

*113  the help you need. and our marriage isn't going to work until you get the help you need.
'The help I need?
'Ken, Theresa said, you have post-traumatic stress disorder.
but Ken was so frightened of becoming  a sedated zombie in a VA hospital that he drove Theresa out of the house rather than admit the truth. he knew he was addicted to Valium and alcohol.  though neither delivered any relief from his anxieties. so he continued to live alone, desperate and despairing, haunting his back bedroom - his cave of refuge.

his fears went into a feedback loop: he didn't want to end up a zombie in a hospital, but if he sought help now, the doctors would put him exactly where he didn't want to be. he saw no way out, so he kept delaying, refusing to make a decision, refusing to take action.

he prayed, screaming out to God to rescue him. once again, God answered.but this time, God declared clearly what was required of him.
You Want Your Wife Back? God asked.  You Want Your Daughters Back?
more than life itself, he told the Lord.
The You're Going To Have To Fight For Them, Ken.  You're Going To Have To Get Help.

Ken remembered how it all started. he hadn't become an addict and a recluse all at once,although he had known something was wrong almost from the moment he came home from the hospital. he had lasted only 10 days with his parents before he knew he had to move out. he heard them whispering about him, talking past him, arranging what he would do and when. so he announced he was getting his won place and within a day he had rented a 1-bedroom apartment.his younger brother  had been a big help, bringing his friends around to visit and taking Ken out joyriding,to the movies, to bars. someone always wanted to hear the war stories of a garrulous, hard-drinking vet.

his mother came over occasionally to cook for him. the rest of the time Ken ate out of cans. he could survive on his own. the only  problem, he couldn't sleep. away from his buddies and the booze,alone in his bedroom, the darkness closed in,like a circling sniper.  he heart every sound. the cars passing his apartment building. moths fluttering against the floodlight close to his window. worse, the occasional airplane passing overhead sent him diving out of his wheelchair to the floor in sudden panic.
to save his sanity, he established a perimeter against the darkness. his

*114  bed was his bunker and he kept his rifle beside him. sometimes he spent hours working its bolt action, the oil mechanism precise and secure. sometimes he hypnotized himself to sleep that way. but the nightmares wouldn't stop.
after he met and married Theresa in 1971, he improved for a time. she could not understand why he kept a gun y his side at night. first she moved it out of the bed and set it beside the nightstand. then under the bed, finally, she persuaded him to put it in the closet.

Theresa's mother was a strong Christian and at her encouragement, the newlyweds started attending  church regularly. married life cut way down on Ken's time hanging out in the bars, as well as his drinking at home with his buddies. physically and emotionally, he began to feel much better. he even slept, with only the occasional nightmare throwing him into Theresa's arms.

a year after their wedding, despite Ken's partial 'shrapnel vasectomy', Theresa came home with the news that they were going to be parents. after Alicia's birth,holding his perfect newborn daughter in his arms, Ken experienced the deepest possible joy. six years later,he felt the same as Elizabeth came into the world.
bolstered by Theresa's love, his delight in his daughters and his increased sense of security, Ken studied hard ad passed a high school equivalency exam,then began taking classes at auburn univ. he learned how to scuba dive, trusting the instructor enough to hold his hand go down into the waters. nothing seemed impossible - as Nurse Early had told him, he only had to find his own way of doing things.
but after about 10 years of marriage, Ken began to go downhill,his moods grew dark and irritable, punctuated by violent rages his wife and daughters became afraid of him after he threw a few punches their way and they moved out.
despite the nightmare their life became,Theresa never abandoned ken.after she came home from the hospital and first confronted him about his post-traumatic stress disorder, she kept coming back to the house periodically to check on whether he had changed his mind about therapy.

finally, after a year of separation from his family, Ken broke. 'I want you back hon, he told her. 'I want the kids back.i know this is what God wants me to do. i'm willing. but i just don't want to get help from the VA.
Theresa knew that he meant it; she could hear it in his voice. she had gone back to college herself,majoring in counseling and with access to psychological treatment resources,  she soon found a psychiatrist qualified to treat ken as an outpatient.

*115  'Why do you think you feel a need  to have a safe area around you Ken's counselor asked.  'To 'keep the perimeter clear', as you say?
they had arrived at this question only after 2 months of therapy sessions. now Ken knew the answer.

the day the B-40 hit me, my whole world exploded. i suppose I'm trying to keep that from happening again.
'Exactly.

the publicity generated by Ken's meeting with Dr. Swan caused other vets to get in touch with him, to share their own war stories and their problems as civilians. ken realized hie was not alone in his struggles. many others had suffered post-traumatic stress disorder.

he was especially pleased to hear from guys in his old Ghostrider helicopter unit, like Otto Mertz, the soldier who had dragged him to safety in the midst of the firefight . as they renewed their friendship, ken discovered that Otto was a strong Christian and Ken spilled out the story of his prayer out by the lake and about waking up to find that it had happened - that God had taken his eyes and legs. he confessed that he had been running from God ever since, from god's sheer, terrifying power and the wrath of His judgment.
'Why does God seem to be wrathful? Otto asked.'If you look at your life and see all the wonderful things you've got, don't you have to say that he's a loving God?

Ken was brought up short . he had to acknowledge that God had given him a wonderful wife, 2 lovely daughters and freedom from financial worries. God ad preserved his life and had been nurturing it all along, despite his many failings.
from that point on, Ken began to accept this loving God as the Lord of his life.  he no longer wanted to run from God; he wanted  to run toward Him,  into His embrace. while Ken had known God before, he was finally fully at peace with Him.
how thankful Ken was that God,through Dr. Swan, had not left him to die that day at Pleiku.

Chapter 12  - WHATEVER HAPPENED TO HUMAN LIFE?

*117  I see no reason for attributing to man a significance different in kind from that which belongs to a baboon or a grain of sand.  Oliver Wendell Holmes

life is a miracle , a sacred gift from God. nobody knows this better than Ken McGarity. admittedly he did not live 'happily ever after'.  yet despite his pain and handicaps, Ken is thankful to be alive. he knows how precious life is.
what is the meaning of human existence?
why are we here?
what is the value of human life?
the most vexing cultural issues  of our day - abortion,assisted suicide, euthanasia, genetic engineering  - all turn on questions about what it means to be human, about the value of human life and how life should be protected. which, in turn, center on the question of our origin.

Christina believe that God created human beings in his own image. and because human life bears this divine stamp, life is sacred, a gift from the Creator. he and he alone can set the boundaries of when we live and when we die. against this, as we saw in earlier chapters, is the naturalistic belief that life arose  from the primordial sea through a chance collision of chemicals and that over billions of years of chance mutations, this biological accident gave rise to the first humans. millions of people today accept this basic  that life arose from the primordial sea through a chance collision of chemicals and that over billions of years of chance mutations, this biological accident gave rise to the first humans. millions of people today accept this basic presupposition that we are little more than grown-up germs- just as Dave and Katy saw at Epcot - which logically leads to the conclusion that a person has no greater significance than a baboon, as Oliver Wendell Holmes so bluntly put it.

these 2 worldviews are antithetical and this antithesis lies at the

*118  very heart of our present cultural crisis. the question of where life comes from is not some academic argument for scientists to debate. our understanding of the origin of life is intensely personal. it determines what we believe is our very reason for living. it determines who lies and who dies. this is why ethical questions surrounding human life have become the great defining debate of our age.
the Christian's commitment to life cannot be dismissed as some 'love affair with the fetus',  as critics have charged,or as a desire to impose a repressive Victorian morality. instead, the Christian is driven by a conviction, based on biblical revelation, about the nature of human origins and the value of human life. that's why, confronted with a mangled soldier clinging to like, Dr. Kenneth Swan did not consult some ethics book or debate abstract principles. having been brought up in a culture stepped in the judeo-Christian tradition that human life has intrinsic value because it was mad in the image and likeness of God, he simply did what came naturally. he saved the man's life.
but what was once a culture of life is today being overtaken by what John Paul II calls a 'culture of death', a naturalistic ethic sweeping across the entire spectrum, from the unborn to the old and infirm, from the deformed and disabled to the weak and defenseless. relentlessly pursuing its won logic, this culture of death denies that the human species is superior to all other biological species and it ends by threatening like at every stage. it has advanced so far that assisted suicide (euthanasia) is now a protected constitutional right in one state, paid for by the state's Medicaid program and infanticide is being openly advocated by respected professors and scientists, with hardly a ripple of public shock or dissent.
surely this is hyperbole, you may say. alarmist rhetoric. well, let's take a look at how the most fundamental convictions upon which Western civilization has rested for 2 millennia are being replaced b a naturalistic ethic of pragmatism and utilitarianism.

IT'S MY BODY, ISN'T IT?

the shift from a culture of life to a culture of death has been like a shift in the tectonic plates underlying the continents - as sudden as an earthquake, when measured against the long view of history. it occurred largely in the 1960s, although as with so much else in american life, the fault lines were evident centuries earlier, in the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment.

*119  the beginning point might be fixed in the 17th century, when French mathematician Rene Descartes resolved to doubt everything that could possibly be doubted.  after intense inner questioning. Descartes concluded that he could doubt everything except the fact that he doubted, everything except his mental experience. this conclusion led to his famous statement:  'I think, therefore i am'. with this, Descartes unleashed the revolutionary idea that the human mind, not God, is the source of certainty; human experience is the fixed point around which everything else revolves.
ironically, Descartes was a sincere Christian, a devout Catholic, to the end of this life. but there is nothing Christian about his philosophy. by establishing the human mind as the judge of all truth, his philosophy eventually rendered God irrelevant. and sincere traditional notions of morality and social order are largely derived from Christianity, these moral conventions likewise crumble when God is dismissed as irrelevant or nonexistent.
the death of God means the death of morality. this logic was pressed by a decidedly odd prophet - Friedrich Nietzsche,a
German who peered into the soul of our century and later want insane. 'Whither is god? Nietz asked in 1889.  'i will tell you, We Have killed Him - you and I. all of us are his murderers! he was incensed that the majority of Westerners had not yet fathomed the devastating consequences of the death of God. he wanted them to understand that if they gave up belief in God, they must also give up biblical ideas of morality and meaning.
this is exactly what the 20th century has done. if we were not created by God - and therefore are not bound by His laws - if we are simply the most advanced of the primates, why shouldn't we do whatever we choose? in the 1960s,  the Age of Aquarius, such views exploded into popular consciousness, aided by inhibition-freeing drugs. sexual liberation would  be the means to create a new, open, egalitarian society where 'nobody can tell us what to do with our bodies'. as Christian apologist Peter Kreeft says in his brilliant satire 'The World's Last Night', we have a society today in which the 'one intrinsic good, self-justifying end, self-evident value, meaning of life and non-negotiable absolute is sex'.
what makes this view possible, notes Professor Robert George of Princeton, is a radical dualism between body and soul, a dualism that can also be traced back to Descartes, who reduced the body to little more than a machine operated by the mind. it follows that the  body is not really 'me', but something separate from my real self - an instrument to be used, like a car or a computer, for whatever purposes i choose. therefore, what i do with my body, whether I use it for physical pleasure or even discard it if it becomes inconvenient, has no moral significance.

*120  carried to its logical conclusion, this view implies that sexual acts between unmarried people or partners of the same sex or even complete strangers have no moral significance. since  the body is reduced to the status of a mere instrument of the conscious self, it can be used for any form of pleasure and mutual gratification as long as there is no coercion. even disposing of physical life is of no greater moral consequence than discarding an old set of ill-fitting clothes.

this logic is what caused the Supreme Court to decide in Roe V. Wade (1973) that a human fetus is not a person and can therefore legitimately be destroyed Justice Harry Blackmun, who wrote the majority opinion, acknowledged at the time that if a fetus were a person, then its right to life would be guaranteed under the 14th Amendment (which instructs the states that they may  not deprive 'any  person of life, liberty  or property'). in order to uphold the right to abortion, the Court had to argue that though the fetus is ideologically human, it is not a legal person. what's more, if the justices acknowledged that the fetus changed from a nonperson to a person at any stage of pregnancy, then abortion would become an unlawful deprivation of life - in short, murder. the Court ruled that the fetus is a nonperson with no rights  at all at any stage of pregnancy. only the mother is a person,  with a 'right to privacy'.
Roe v. Wade was the leading edge of a powerful social movement, fueled by sexual politics, to free the individual from the yoke of allegedly repressive moral restraints. 'Choice' over what to do with one's own body became the defining value of the 1970s and 1980s - all the while ignoring the fact that choice in itself cannot possibly be a value and that value depends on What is chosen.

A CULTURE OF DEATH

abortion has always been about more than abortion. it is the wedge used to split open the historic Western commitment to the dignity of human life. in 1973,  when pro-life proponents warned that Roe was taking us down a slippery slope to all manner of horrors, they were mocked as alarmists. later events proved them prescient.
with the 'Baby Doe' case in 1982, in Bloomington, Indiana, the relentless demand for choice crossed the great divide - from the living fetus in the womb to the living baby outside the womb - and America moved from abortion to infanticide. Baby Doe was born with a deformed esophagus, making it impossible for him to digest food. doctors proposed a fairly

*121  simple operation, a procedure that had proven to be 90% successful. but the parents refused to grant permission for the operation, even thought they knew this meant certain death for their newborn infant. their own doctor concurred. the reason? Infant Doe was also born with Down's syndrome.

2 Indiana courts declined  to intervene and 6 days later Baby Doe had starved to death. Columnist George Will, who himself has a Down's syndrome child, declared flatly, 'the baby was killed because it was retarded.
in the flurry of controversy over Baby Doe, something shocking came to light: Handicapped infants were quite routinely being allowed to die. as early as  1975,  a poll of pediatric surgeons revealed that 77% favored withholding food and treatment in the case of defective babies. and in an Oklahoma hospital it was discovered that the pediatric staff weighed 'quality of life' in deciding whether to treat handicapped children or let them die.  among their considerations of 'quality' were race and family income.
even earlier, of course, the philosophical groundwork for eliminating defective babies was being laid by the abortion debate. in the 1960s, the American Medical Association  (AMA) had passed a resolution endorsing abortion when 'an infant (may be) born with incapacitating physical deformity or mental deficiency'. several states had also already passed laws allowing abortion in such cases. when such a law was passed in new York, a commentator at WXBS  radio hailed it, saying, 'abortion...is one sensible method of dealing with such problems as over-population, illegitimacy and possible birth defects.
the first public official to declare abortion a positive public health policy was Arkansas State health Director Joycelyn Elders, later surgeon general of the US. abortion she said, has 'an important and positive public health effect', reducing 'the number of children afflicted with severe defects. Abortion was no longer treated as a wrenching tragedy, a decision reached with agonizing reluctance. instead , it was a positive good - a means for improving the species.
to support her position, Elders cited a study showing that the number of Down's syndrome children born in Washington State in 1976 was '64% lower than it would have been without legal abortion'.  what Elders did not say is that most people with Down's syndrome are only moderately retarded and grow into adults who are capable of holding a job and living independently. and if the birth parents cannot cope , there is a waiting list of couples eager to adopt these children. yet today, they are being targeted for elimination.

*122  because people with Down's syndrome have an extra chromosome, the condition can be diagnosed before birth by amniocentesis. insurance companies also cover abortion. but the same companies will not pay the $100,000 or more that is required to sustain the first year of the baby's life. how many couples facing such a choice can withstand the economic pressure? not many. studies show that 90% choose abortion - often under pressure from doctors.

for any 'unwanted' or 'defective' baby who may manage to slip through this front line of defense, there is always the ultimate solution. Francis Crick, who along with James Watson won the Nobel prize for the discovery of the double helix structure in DNA, advocates that all newborns be screened to determine who should live. all who fail to reach a certain level on the Apgar test, used to determine the health of newborns, would be euthanized.
Steven Pinker of MIT, who has replaced the late Carl Sagan as the nation's great science popularizer, is injecting these views into the mainstream. he is central casting's perfect choice for the job: glib and genial, just professorial enough to carry authority but friendly enough not to be threatening. Pinker is the most prominent proponent of evolutionary psychology, the latest version of sociobiology, which reduces living things to products of their genes.
the reason evolution has produced the human mind, Pinker claims, is merely to protect the genes and 'maximize the number of copies  of the genes that created it'. applying these concepts to the issue of infanticide, Pinker argues that the newborn is basically a gene carrier and that before bonding with their newborn children, parents have always 'coolly assessed' the 'biological value of a child (the chance that it will live to produce  grandchildren ),' based on its health and the parents' own resources. when mothers kill their own newborns, Pinker said, we must'understand' their actions, remembering that 'the emotional circuitry of mothers has evolved' by natural selection to include 'a capacity for neonaticide' in cases where the mother feels she lacks the resources to raise the child. in short, while denying that he supports the practice, Pinker suggests that infanticide is built into our 'biological design'  and we cannot blame people for doing it.

the rationale for all of this is, again, a dualism between body and person. rights belong only to persons, so if someone can be reduced to a nonperson, then he or she has no rights. peter Singer, newly appointed Ira DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton, openly advocates permitting parents to kill disabled babies on the basis that they are 'nonpersons' until

*123  they  are rational and self-conscious.  as nonpersons, he says, they are 'replaceable', like chickens or other livestock. and Singer does not stop there. he goes on to advocate killing incompetent persons of any age if their families decide their live are 'not worth living'.  (this is the unspeakably inhumane brand of ethics that students in some of our nation's most prestigious schools are now learning. and what will happen when these elite students move into positions of power?)

the baby in the womb, having been reduced to the status of a nonperson, is then demonized in pro-choice literature as a hostile aggressor against the mother and abortion  is dressed up as self-defense. northeastern university professor Eileen McDonagh claims that the fetus 'massively intrudes on a woman's body and expropriates her liberty', justifying the 'use of deadly force to stop it', analogous to cases of rape, kidnapping or slavery.
clearly, anyone who threatens our cherished right to do whatever we please with our bodies must be stopped, by whatever means necessary. arguing that the fetus is a violent and dangerous intruder and justifying the use of deadly force to repel it, are the functional equivalent of having Susan Smith justify the drowning of her children with the defense that they were interfering with her freedom to be with her new lover.
and yet many well-meaning Americans, including Christians , have bought into the 'choice' argument. they don't see that abortion, infanticide and euthanasia are all part of the same package. the logic that supports abortion as a 'useful social policy' to prevent the birth of defectives' or to reduce welfare and crime, applies with equal force at all stages of life. if the body is merely an instrument of the self, if it has no inherent dignity, then we  are free to dispose of it at will - or others are free to dispose of it for us.
the abortion lobby understands very well that all these issues are interconnected, which is why feminist organizations fight relentlessly to defend even partial-birth  abortion - a gruesome, barbaric procedure that the AMA has denounced and that even its practitioners have acknowledged is not medically necessary. this is also why the abortion lobby fights so furiously against any diminution of abortion rights - even minor limits such as parental notification. a school must obtain a parent's consent before giving a child an aspirin, but the abortion lobby fights tooth and nail against any statue requiring parental consent for abortion. why do pro-choicers oppose even modest limits? because they understand that abortion represents a worldview conflict: God and the sanctity of life versus the individual's moral autonomy.  they can give no quarter.

but once the principle of autonomy and choice is established, there is no way to maintain any higher value for life. a few years ago, a former

*124  inmate whom I had discipled and who had then gone on to become a gifted young pastor, took his won life. I  was shattered when I received the news. in addition to grief, I blamed myself. I should have seen it coming, should have done something.
a friend, seeing my distress, sought to comfort me. 'Don't blame yourself, Chuck,' she said, gently gripping my arm, and don't judge. it was, after all, His live.
His life His choice! the well-intentioned remark drove me deeper into despair, because this middle-aged woman was reflecting the beliefs of a majority of Americans.

Opinion polls show consistent and growing public support for euthanasia - in the name of patients' rights and compassion, of course. in fact, one of the organizations aggressively promoting euthanasia is named Compassion in Dying. even Dr. Kevorkian,  who put his 'patients' to death ignominiously in cheap trailers or motel rooms and then dumped the bodies at local hospitals, evaded prosecution again and again before finally being convicted and imprisoned.

in 1997, Oregon became the first state to legalize assisted suicide, enacted by public referendum. so far, challenges to the law have been successfully rebuffed in the states of Washington and New York, referenda were passed barring the practice, but challenges to both were successfully sustained in lower courts. to grasp the connection between abortion and euthansia, one need only look at the way these lower courts argued in favor of assisted suicide.

the judges in both cases relied on a 1992 decision, Planned parenthood v. Casey (discussed more fully in chapter 39). in this decision, the Supreme Court, while upholding modest state restrictions on abortion,  attempted to place the alleged constitutional right to abortion created by Roe v. Wade on a more secure legal footing. its dictum defined liberty as the right  to make 'intimate and personal choices...central to personal dignity and autonomy....(It) is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning , of the universe and of the mystery of human life.

in the Washington assisted-suicide case, Federal District Judge Barbara Rothstein echoed Casey's definition of liberty, after all, what could be more 'intimate and personal' than the choice of whether to live of die? hence Rothstein argued that assisted suicide 'constitutes a choice central to personal dignity and automomy'. the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals sustained her (Although the Supreme Court eventually set this decision aside, it offered largely pragmatic reasons for not permitting assisted suicide at this time.)

*125  the Ninth Circuit Court decision sustaining Rothstein was written by Judge Reinhardt, a liberal activist, who, in his 109 page opinion, included a chilling footnote: in cases where patients are unable to give informed consent, a surrogate may be appointed to act for them in consenting to assisted  suicide. with a stoke of the pen, the court crossed the divide - from suicide to euthanasia, from voluntary death to involuntary death. this represented the first  time a US court has ever endorse the private use of lethal force (outside the context of abortion),  a move that undercuts the very essence of the American social contract in which individuals agree to renounce the use of lethal force in return for the state's preserving order. as moral theologian Russell Hittinger says, this is no longer the right to die; it's the right of some Americans to kill other Americans.

the line between assisted suicide and euthanasia has become a legal fiction. legislatures or courts may slow the process here or there, but the train is out of the station and roaring down the tracks. and even if euthanasia is not yet secure as a constitutional right (except in Oregon), its practice is on the increase.
we must be clear, however, that the Christian is not morally obligated to save life by all measures and at all costs. many Christians believe that it is morally acceptable to withdraw life support when the technology is merely sustaining life artificially. many also believe that it is morally acceptable to refuse extreme intervention or heroic measures to resuscitate a patient who is beyond recovery but without a biblical view of human life, the distinction between refusing heroic measures and actually helping to hasten death can quickly become blurred.
in the end, these issues all hinge on the way a culture views human life. if human life bears the stamp of the divine Maker, it is infinitely  precious. but if human life is simply a product of biology or nature, a utilitarian unit, then utilitarian values become the dominant determinant. get the dying, the infirm, the disabled, the non-productive out of the way of the living.

when 2 assisted-suicide cases were being heard in the US Supreme Court, protesters gathered on the front steps of the building. most of them were disabled Americans, many in wheelchairs and many carried signs that proclaimed 'We're Not Dead Yet'.  these protesters know that if the Court legalizes physician- assisted suicide, it will create tremendous pressure on the handicapped to take that option and stop being  a burden on society. looking at life through the eyes of a quadriplegic who requires vast sums of

*126  money and human resources for support, or through the eyes of a Ken McGarity, we see with laser-beam focus the deadly logic of a worldview that degrades life.
the supremely tragic irony in all of this is that a supposedly exalted view of human reason has led to such a degraded view of human life. when Descartes declared,  'I think, therefore I am', he  had no idea his slogan would lead to a culture in which what i am is determined by what Other people think.

BRAVE NEW BABIES

Descartes also did not anticipate where this degraded view of human life would lead us.

Aldous Huxley's prophetic novel Brave New World opens with a visit to a laboratory where rack upon rack of glass bottles clatter across conveyor belts. each bottle contains a carefully fertilized human egg immersed in amniotic gel. predestined for a specific purpose, ranging from the alphas (the intellectuals) to the gammas (the manual laborers). defects are eliminated, and most females are neutered.
in the story,  this remarkable process creates an ideal species capable of living in complete harmony and stability, a species free of all antiquated encumbrances such as family and child rearing . to ensure the unfettered pursuit of happiness, free sex is encouraged and an all-purpose drug called Soma is readily available. Life is perpetual bliss. when it becomes burdensome or inconvenient, it is gently and mercifully ended.
Huxley's vision was not some bizarre fantasy. he was expanding on ideas then being soberly discussed among his friends in the intelligensia. Eugenics - the idea of improving the human race thought selective breeding - did not originate in Hitler's laboratories.  it originated in the 1920s and 1930s among respectable and sophisticated men and women in places like London, Philadelphia and New York.
on the horizon of today's brave new world looms the specter of genetic engineering, the ultimate attempt to create a race free of defects. hardly any obstacles remain in the path of this final expression of human autonomy. in March 1997,  when Dolly, the first cloned sheep, was introduced to the world, scientists and doctors hailed the experiment as the daughter of a new era, promising great medical and commercial benefits. at a hastily called hearing in the US Senate, scientist assured he legislative body that no one would attempt to clone human beings. everyone nodded... until one

*127  brash, outspoken  liberal senator shocked those gathered by asking the logical question: 'Why not?'
why not indeed?  if life is simply the result of a chance naturalistic process  - molecules colliding and combining in a primordial soup - why shouldn't we control our own genes or create new life forms? we are simply adapting a natural process to its most advantageous use.

achieving Brave New world technology is only a matter of time. research called EG - for extracorporeal gestation - is now under way at the Juntendo University in Tokyo and Temple University in Philadelphia and is intended to create an artificial womb for severely premature babies. if the research is successful, the same technology will surely  be developed further, until the artificial womb can house a fertilized egg.  there is almost no stopping the technological imperative:  If something Can  be done, it Will be done. then, with the role of biological parents rendered superfluous, humanity can take another important step along the road to total autonomy.

truly our capablilities have exceeded our ethical and moral grasp.

though most Christian ethicists support assisted reproduction if used only to help restore natural function, the problem comes when we do things never done in nature - for example, genetic combinations impossible in nature. the technology of in vitro or in vitro fertilization also makes possible a host of morally dubious practices, such as the harvesting of fetal tissue for medical purposes,  the disposal of fertilized eggs that are capable of becoming fetuses and surrogate parenthood, which has already opened a Pandora's box. we hear of a woman who is impregnated by her son-in-law and gives birth to her daughter's child. a female Episcopal priest has the sperm from 3 men mixed (so she will not know who the father is), is impregnated, and gives birth. gays and lesbians mingle at gatherings they call 'Sperm -Egg Mixers',  where they examine one another with an eye toward selecting good genes. 2 lesbians may contract with a gay  man for his sperm for artificial insemination, or 2 men may contract with a lesbian whom they chose to be a surrogate mother.

there is little let in our culture to restrain or even slow the process. in Britain, a prestigious committee under the leadership of Dame Mary Warnock, professor of moral philosophy at Cambridge, was organized to provide moral guidance on these questions. but Dame Warnock herself says that in these issues 'everyone has a right to judge for himself'.  and who could possibly object?

the answer, of course, is anyone who is truly human.even in Huxley's Brave New World, the great dramatic moment comes when the protagonist.
 *128  appropriately  called 'the savage',  who was born the old-fashioned way, escapes the world of endless pleasures in pursuit of his natural parents.
something within us stirs ceaselessly  in search of meaning and purpose and connection. Christians know this something as the soul, or the Imago Dei - the image of God within us. because of the doctrine of creation, we know life has worth. we know it is rooted in something beyond the test tube or colliding atoms, even as many voices around us say otherwise.

Chapter 13 - IN WHOSE IMAGE?
 it is not natural to see man as a natural product, it is not seeing straight to see him as an animal. it is not sane. it sins against the light , against the broad daylight of proportion, which is the principle of all reality.

can anyone really live with a completely naturalistic view of human life, that human beings are just primates? some people in Denmark thought so.
in 1996, the Copenhagen Zoo announced anew exhibit. in a glass-walled cage in the primate house, a pair of Homo Sapiens would be on display. since people can observe Homo Sapiens just about anywhere, at any time. the exhibit seemed a strange choice.but zookeeper Peter Vestergaard had a specific agenda. the exhibit , he said, would force people to 'confront their origins, ' causing the  to 'accept' that 'we are all primates'. after all he added, humans and apes share 98.5 % of the same chromosomes.
yet what an amazing difference  that 1.5% seems to make. while their hairy neighbors were busy staring at the ceiling, swinging from bars and picking lice from each other's pelts, the caged Homo sapiens were also free to leave their cage whenever they encountered the primitive urge for a movie, a candlelight dinner or a night at the opera. unlike their animal neighbors, the humans on display refused to heed the call of nature in public, and when Lehmann was asked whether he and his female partner would display 'intimate behavior ' in front to the spectators, he sniffed, 'That's not interesting.

*130  a few weeks later the exhibit was terminated and both Homo sapiens departed the monkey house. were they any the wiser for their experience? one would hope so. I suspect they were forced to recognize that they were qualitatively different from the apes in the surrounding cages.

the short-lived experiment certainly made a point - though not the one the zookeeper intended. naturalistic philosophy holds unwaveringly to the proposition that we are descended from apelike creatures, making us primates in the highest stage - at least so far - of the evolutionary process. yet the test of any worldview is whether  it conforms to reality, to the way things rally are. and the reality is  that humans are fundamentally different from animals. the truth is In us, put there by the divine stamp of the Maker and as hard as we may want to, we cannot dislodge it. in fact, every attempt to deny the truth about our nature is doomed.
only the Judeao-Christian view of life conforms to reality, to the nature and character of the  human condition as we actually experience it. only the biblical view creates a sustainable and rational and truly liberating basis for human life. this becomes abundantly clear when we examine Christianity and naturalism from several perspectives: compatibility with the scientific evidence, human dignity, the ultimate meaning in life, our destiny and service to others.

Which worldwide corresponds with the scientific evidence? respect or human life at all stages is supported by growing scientific data showing that even before birth, the fetus is fully human.Sonogram pictures show the unborn child clearly responding to stimuli and due to advances in neonatology, doctors now consider the baby in the womb a real patient. medicine is performing diagnostic and therapeutic wonders on unborn babies, including surgery. the growth of scientific knowledge 'is causing us to regard the unborn baby as a real person long before birth, sayed Mike Samuels in American Family Physician. the pro-life position is supported by empirical, rational arguments that are accessible to everyone.
Robert George of Princeton Univ.  has pressed these arguments among the nation's leading scholars, including well-known deconstructionist Stanley Fish of Duke University. in 1998,  George was invited to debate Fish at a meeting of the American Political Science Assoc. :  the date would be about the nature of the evidence for and against abortion.in earlier writings, Fish had dismissed arguments against abortion at based on 'religious conviction' alone, while suggesting that the case for abortion is based on 'scientific facts'. George's position held that, on the contrary, the arguments against abortion are based on scientific data that a fetus is indeed human.

George sent his paper to Fish in advance and then the 2 joined 200

*131  other scholars who ha gathered for the debate. but the event was cut short at the start when Fish rose, threw his own paper on the table and announced, 'Prof George is right and he is right to correct me. Today the scientific evidence favors the pro-life position.

the audience sat in stunned silence.

Which worldview provides the strongest basis for human dignity? Scripture tells us that 'God created man in His own image, ....male and female He created them' (Gen. 1.27) this is a breathtaking assertion. humans actually reflect the character of the ultimate Source of the universe. how could anyone even theoretically conceive  of any more secure basis for human dignity?

the Christian worldview also tells us that humans have an eternal destiny, which likewise bolsters human dignity. throughout history, most cultures have had a low view of the individual, subordinating the individual to the interests of the tribe or state. and if Christianity were not true, this would be quite reasonable. 'If individuals live only 70 years, said C.S. Lewis,  'then a state or a nation or a civilization, which may last for 1000 years is more important than an individual. but if Christianity is true, then the individual is not only more important but  incomparably more important, for he is everlasting and the life of a state or a civilization, compared with his, is only a moment'.  this explains why Christianity has always provided not only a vigorous defense of human rights but also  the sturdiest bulwark against tyranny.
and because we all stand on equal ground before God, Christianity gives a sound basis for social and political equality. each individual stands directly accountable before the Creator, writes Abraham Kuyper ;  there are no intermediaries, no spiritual  hierarchies between us and God. it follows, then, that we 'have no claim whatsoever to lord (it)over one another and that we stand as equals before God and among men. consequently, the Christian worldview 'condemns not merely all open slavery and systems of caste, but also all covert slavery of women and of the poor'.

multiculturalists insist that all cultures are morally equivalent. but this argument blurs over genuine differences.for in a culture that truly upholds the God-given dignity of individuals, widow s are not burned on their husband's funeral pyre (as they are in India),  people are not sold into slavery (as they are in the Sudan and elsewhere)and life is not sacrificed to satisfy ancestors or an angry god (as still happens in some primitive cultures). no, for all of the faults of its adherents - and there have been many  -Christianity has accorded  men and women dignity unlike any other belief system in the world.
since the Enlightenment, secular thinkers in the West have sought to

ground human rights in human nature alone, apart from biblical revelation. the French Revolution was fueled by rhetoric about the 'rights of man'. yet without a foundation in the Christian teaching of creation there is no way to say what human nature is. Who defines it?  Who says how it ought to be treated? as a result, life is valued only as much as those in power choose to value it. small wonder that the French Revolution, with its slogan 'Neither God nor master', quickly led to tyranny and the guillotine.
when the 39 misguided members of the Heaven's Gate cult took their lives, broadcasting magnate Ted Turner dismissed the tragedy with the cynical comment:  'it's a good way to get rid of a few nuts. there's too many people anyway'. his comments succinctly, if callously, sum up the beliefs of growing numbers of Americans who have succumbed to the notion that there is nothing special about human life, that we are all simply part of nature.
in that naturalistic world view it is only logical  to place the goal of population control above the dignity of human life and to resort to any means available to reduce the human population in order to preserve Mother Nature from being depleted  and despoiled. from this perspective, humans are often seen as aggressors against a pristine nature. of course, Christians believe we are responsible to protect God's creation, to be good stewards and to exercise dominion. but naturalists go far beyond responsible environmentalism to outright reverence. in the movie The River, an all-American farm family sits around the dinner tale and the young children recite the blessing,which turns out to be a prayer to nature:  'Thank you earth, thank you sun, we are grateful for what you have done. amen'.

the same logic drives the animal rights movement, as it denigrates human life in its efforts to make teh human species equal with all others. these attempts often turn nasty, with animal rights activists throwing paint on women wearing furs; nasty and destructive, strapping explosives around tree trunks to blowup loggers and save the spotted owls; nasty, destructive and sometimes silly, raiding restaurants to liberate lobsters.
when animal rights proponents discover the inherent irrationality of their own belief system, as they sometimes do, this debased view of human life can produce a kind of schizophrenia.  such is the case when 2 trendy causes collide. animal rights groups like PETA  (people for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), popular among Hollywood stars, militantly oppose animal research, to the point of sometimes raiding  and vandalizing laboratories and kidnapping laboratory animals. but animal research,which was essential to developing the polio vaccine and hosts of other lifesaving breakthroughs, is also crucial to AIDS  research, another favored cause in

*133  Hollywood. so AIDS  activists  now find themselves eagerly supporting animal research, even while their political allies smash laboratories.
the naturalistic view of human life is simply not rationally sustainable, yet the cultural elites cling to it with slavish devotion. some years ago,  an editorial in California medicine stated that the traditional Judeo-Christian ethic 'is being eroded at its core and may eventually be abandoned'. the anonymous editorialist welcomed the shift from a 'sanctity of life' ethic  to a 'quality of life' ethic ,  arguing that 'it will become necessary and acceptable to place relative rather than absolute values  on such things as human lives,  the use of scarce resources and the various elements which are to make up the quality of life or of living which is to be sought.
it's hard to imagine anything more terrifying than living in a culture where human life is made relative to lesser values, such as material resources. the principle we see at work here is that any culture that kills God inevitably ends up worshiping some other deity - and will gladly sacrifice even life itself in the service of this new deity.
Which Worldview Gives A Sense Of Meaning And Purpose? one of the arguments often used for abortion is that children should not be brought into a world where they are destined to suffer poverty or abuse. likewise, a common argument for euthanasia is that the gravely ill have no purpose for living. these view seems persuasive only because the purpose of life has been reduced to something woefully shallow, a simplistic sense of happiness as emotional fufillment, career success, or wealth. many modern Americans have lost any sense of a higher destiny. their lives have no aim or goal.

it is as if a friend were to suggest that you load your family in the van and start out on a trip. no destination in mind, no time constraints, no limit to your choice of recreation.  'Take as long as you wish and return whenever you choose, your friend urges.  'It's all yours. You're  free. Go'.

'You're crazy, you say. 'Why would I want to take my family on some aimless journey?

Yet that is exactly what modern humans are told to do in today's world. :  make our lives into aimless journeys; follow our whims and impulses.to be sure , the voices of the culture dress it up a bit. they celebrate the joys of autonomy,  our right to create our lives and even our selves, our endless choices and conveniences, our freedom from all the quaint conventions and legalisms of a less enlightened era.whether it be the chatter of the elite, the steady torrent of TV, or the politicians' babble, we constantly hear that personal choice is the only thing that will produce 'happiness'- the most sacred goal of American life. we are cast free, only to drift helplessly, like

*134  someone embarking on a journey with no destination  and no answer to the oldest philosophical question of all:  what is the purpose of life?
I've seen examples of this in many places. my wife and i live in an area of Florida that, a few years ago, began attracting upscale retirees;  presidents of auto companies, comptrollers of major corporations and high-powered barons of Wall Street, who settle into their luxurious gated communities, surrounded by manicured golf courses, fine restaurants and swaying palms. they enjoy the American dream come true: no worries,no work and golf every day.

many of them follow a predictable pattern. like a man I'll call Charlie.  freed from the pressures of work, Ch eagerly trots off to the gold course every morning , ends up on the 19th  hole for a few relaxing drinks and then arrives home in time to scan the Wall Street Journal and take a short nap. at 5 o'clock Charlie gets out his charteuse sports jacked with matching checked pants, part of anew wardrobe he purchased at a local, pricey men's shop. no more navy pinstripes for Charlie. then it's off to the club for a cocktail party thrown by his neighbors.  (we'll call them the Hewitts. )

different neighbors host the party each night, either at their home or at the club. after 6 weeks or so, the cycle comes back to the Hewitts and around they go again.

after a cycle or 2, Charlie begins to detect a certain sameness to the conversation. people grumble about taxes, share tidbits about the new neighbors, complain about the yard people or the plumber, compare their grand edifices...and, of course, comment on the weather.

'It's a good one today, eh, Charlie?
'Oh yeah, but getting muggy.
Charlie  even finds his enthusiasm for golf waning somewhat, which is strange because he's loved golf all his life. and he finds that when he skims the Wall Street Journal. he sometimes experiences a wave of nostalgia for the good old days when he had to read it - and when it often quoted him. he misses striding into the office every morning to begin a new day.

it's usually only 6 months, a year at the most, before the disillusionment sets in. Charlie is no longer interested in talking about books or current events; the banal cocktail chatter has hollowed out his brain. besides,he's drinking too much and his memory is slipping. he's short-tempered and easily angered,particularly by incompetent plumbers and yard people.  when someone swings a car door open recklessly and dings his new Mercedes, he gets really depressed.he begins to wonder how many golf games he has left before he dies. in fact, thoughts like that begin to wake him up in the middle of the night.

*135  sadly, I know a lot of Charlies - once vital, productive people who have deteriorated into heavy -drinking bores. they long for a sense of fulfillment and dignity that no amount of pleasure can provide .
the fact is, men and women cannot live without purpose. the Westminster Shorter Catechism asks:

WHAT IS THE CHIEF END OF MAN?  '
TO GLORIFY GOD AND ENJOY HIM FOREVER.
 it's a staggering  thought that we can know and glorify and enjoy the sovereign God, fulfilling his purpose  through our lives. this all-consuming purpose gives life meaning and direction in all circumstances.
this explains why quadriplegic Joni Eareckson Tada can live so joyfully even though she is confined to a wheelchair. like Den McGarity, she has know great pain and suffering and distress;  but she also knows she has a purpose and her work with handicapped people has touched the live of millions. I've been with Joni many times and have never seen her anything but cheerful and bent on encouraging others. she is far more fulfilled than many people who are in robust health or surrounded by material abundance.
pleasure, freedom,happiness, prosperity - none of these is ultimately fulfilling because none can answer that ultimate question of purpose. what is the purpose of human life? knowing that we are fulfilling, God's purpose is the only thing that really  gives rest to the restless human heart.

WHICH WORLDVIEW PROVIDES A SENSE OF ASSURANCE ABOUT OUR ULTIMATE DESTINY? every view of human life is shaped by 2 great assumptions:  our origin and our destiny - where we came from and where we are going. the latter asks, Is this life all there is? is death the end of all our deepest aspirations and longings?
the existentialists pointed out that if there is nothing beyond the grave, then death makes a mockery of everything we have lived  for; death reduces human projects  and dreams to a temporary diversion,with no ultimate significance. but if our would survive beyond the grave,as the Bible teaches, then this life is invested with profound meaning. everything we do here has a significance for all eternity. the life of each person,whether in the womb or out,whether healthy or infirm, takes on an enormous dignity.
this is why death has always been surrounded by rituals and religious rites,for it is death that reminds us of our own mortality and forces us to ask disturbing questions about the meaning of our own life. i recall how this struck me in April 1994  at the funeral of Richard Milhous Nixon, 37th president of the US.  a man whose career profoundly defined my own life before my Christian conversion. even after Watergate and my own prison term,I visited him often,for the truth is, I

*136  admired Nixon. he was a decent and caring man, at heart a true son of his Quaker mother, with  an idealist's passion for peace. more important , he was a friend. for me,the funeral was especially poignant and painful.
for 3 days, thousands of visitors, oblivious to the cold rain, surrounded the Nixon Library in San Clemente, California, filing past the coffin in silent tribute. on the afternoon or the funeral service, the area  was cordoned off for blocks around, as limousines brought in the great and near great from every continent. the library parking lot had been turned into a open-air sanctuary, with 1500 chairs arranged in rows, marked off strictly according to protocol. present were 4 former presidents and the incumbent president,cabinet members and presidential staff, diplomats and foreign dignitaries and most members of the Congress of the US.
as military pallbearers marched the coffin bearing the body of Richard Nixon to its resting place,the crowd fell silent and stared somberly at the proceedings,the silence broken only by the roar of jets overhead.
it had rained that morning,but as t crowd waited, evanescent shafts of light filtered earthward through the dark clouds. minutes passed.the stillness became eerie. I looked around and saw that everyone was simply staring at the coffin.all the power in the world sitting there, mesmerized by a coffin - forced in those moment to come face-to-face with the one reality about which all their power could do nothing:  their own mortality. it was  vivid picture of the great human quandary.

then, standing before that audience,with millions more watching on TV, Billy Graham preached one of the greatest and most timely messages that I have ever heard him preach.he preached about Christian hope, a hope that no other world belief system offers.

for the secularist, death is like stepping off a cliff into a black abyss of nothingness. the Muslim faces a fearsome judgment and for many Eastern religions, the prospect is equally grim:  after death, the law of karma decrees that people must pay the penalty for what they have done in this life,being reincarnated according to their past deeds.  but for the Christian, assured of eternity with the Lord,'To die is gain. Phil. 1.21
WHICH VIEW OF LIFE PROVIDES THE MOST CERTAIN MOTIVE FOR SERVICE AND CARE OF OTHERS?
this is a crucial question,  for any society in which citizens care only for themselves cannot long endure. such a group cannot even be called a society. rather,it is a collection of self-centered individuals, destined to implode when their selfish pressures reach a certain point, which is exactly what we are moving toward in our own self-absorbed culture.

Scripture commands believers to love our neighbors as ourselves (Matt. 19.19)  to care for widows and orphans (James 1.27),  to be a Good

*137  Samaritan  (Luke 10.30-7),  to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned  (Matt. 25. 36). but where does this compassion, this compulsion to care for others, come from?

the answer is that if we know we  are created by God, then we should live in a state of continuous gratitude to God. Gratitude, said G. K. Chesterton, is the mother of all virtues. Gratitude for every breath we breathe, every moment we have to enjoy the wonders of his creation and all that is ours - family, work , recreation. Gratitude that the Son of God took away our sins and paid our debt on the cross. compelled by this gratitude,we desire to love Him and live as He commands.  'This is love for God:  to obey His commands.  (I John 5.3)
people often ask me why I've continued to work with prisoners for more than 25 years,to go back to prison , to frequent places rampant with disease, violence and massive depressing. my answer is simple: out of gratitude for what Christ did for me, I can do nothing less.

Obedience to Christ 's commands changes our habits and disposition. that's why, through the centuries, so many of the great humanitarian causes have been led by Christians,from abolishing the slave trade to establishing hospitals and schools. at one point in the early 19th century in America, there were more than 1100 Christian societies working for social justice. today, two of the world's largest private organizations caring for the hungry are Christina agencies; Catholic Relief Services and World Vision. and the Salvation Army alone does more for the homeless and destitute in most areas than all secular agencies combined.
to be sure, well-meaning secularist can show compassion, give generously to charities and offer help to the downtrodden and the needy. as creatures  made in the image of God,all human beings practice some of the virtues . but the critical question is, What motivates them? as sociobiologists have so persuasively argued, if humans are a product o natural selection,  then even the most caring acts are performed, ultimately, because they advance our own genetic interests.kindness is a disguised form of selfishness. what this means is that even the most conscientious secularists have no rational basis for being compassionate; they act on solely subjective motives - which could change at any given moment.
of course, Christians often fail to follow their own convictions. but when believers are selfish, they are acting contrary to their own beliefs. by contrast,when secularists are compassionate, they are acting contrary to the internal logic of their own worldview.

there is also no basis for compassion in alternative world views like Eastern pantheism.while visiting a prison in Trivandrum, India, some

*138  years ago, I saw firsthand what the Hindu cast system does to human dignity.our team was welcomed warmly to the old colonial-era structure by a group of well-dressed corrections officials and we were immediately surrounded by a cordon of Indian guards in summer dress khaki uniforms; knee-length shorts, red epaulets on their shoulders and swagger sticks tucked under their arms. as they marched us toward the flower-bedecked center platform, i could almost hear the strains of the 'Colonel Bogey march'.
in the field before us were at least 1000 inmates, most of them 'untouchables'. their sweaty, dark skin contrasted with their white loincloths,their only clothing.they rested submissively on their haunches,their eyes fearfully darting from side to side. these men were not only condemned to this horrid institution,where they were caged in squalid holes with no toilets or running water,but even worse,they were totally dehumanized,  treated as outcasts. no Hindu who lived by his own beliefs could care one whit for them.
i spoke that day through a Hindi translator,sharing my own testimony and the gospel of Jesus Christ. when I talked about forgiveness for sins, i saw many eyes open wide, startled. this was a radical thought. in Hinduism there is no forgiveness.whatever wrong one has done in this life must be repaid in one's next incarnation according to their own law of karma. as a result, on consistent Hindu would practice charity, for that would interfere with the law of karma.

a new life in Christ?  their sins washed away?freedom?  the inmates were astounded by these ideas. 1000 pairs of eyes riveted on me intently, many of them glistening with tears.

after the prayer of invitation,I startled the guards and dignitaries by jumping down off the platform and walking toward the crowd,thrusting out my hand to the first man i could reach. it was pure impulse; i sensed that i should let the men know that i wanted to touch them.

suddenly, like a flock of birds, men rose to their feet and circled around me.for the next 20 minutes, I shook every hand i could. most of the men just reached out and touched; i felt hands all over my arms and chest and back. they were desperate to 'touch',  to know that the love God offers is real. they kept swapping positions with one another, until virtually all had made some kind of physical contact with me.
later, these men went back to their grim cells. no one can say how many of them submitted to Christ that night, but at lest one message got through - that in Christianity they are not untouchable.

*139  the Christian worldview compels us, in a way no other worldview can,to genuinely care for one another.

the high view of human life offered by Christianity is not a veneration of mere biological life. the Christian understands that our real hope is in the spiritual realm, so that some things are more important than biological life.  obedience to God is one of those things . like a scarlet thread, such obedience winds its way from the lions' den to the cross to Chines house churches to services held underneath trees in the barren regions of southern Sudan. justice and truth are values far dearer than biological life.
the naturalistic  view of life pervades every area of Western culture, but nowhere with greater effect than among young people. at every turn, they are bombarded with hedonistic, elf-gratifying messages. day in and day out, they are bombarded with  the message that life is all about toys and pleasures and satisfying very hormonal urge.

yet deep within each of us is a truth that cannot be suppressed, even under such a relentless assault.  t is in our very nature, the way we are created,  no matter how hard we may try to suppress it. and it bursts out in the most unlikely places - even at a presidential press conference.

in 1993, Bill Clinton boldly seized an opportunity to identify with the young people of our country by holding a question and answer session on the MTV network with a group of high school students. the show is best remembered as the occasion when students asked the president whether he wore boxer shorts or briefs.  but not all the questions were so trivial.

near the end of the session, an 18 year old from Bethesda, Maryland, raised her hand. 'Mr. President,  said Dahlia Schweitzer,  'it seems to me that singer Kurt Cobain's recent suicide exemplified the emptiness that many in our generation feel. how do you propose to...teach our youth how important life is?
Clinton's answer was what one would expect from a skilled politician and a child of the sixties. he told her that young people need improved self esteem; they need to feel that 'they're the most important person in the world to somebody.
but Kurt Cobain Was important to somebody - to lots of somebodies. he was a star. yet he still felt the emptiness' that young Dahlia was talking about;  nothing in his personal worldview could teach him 'how important life is'.
...obviously,  the question is not something that can be addressed by political measures or by our culture's dominant worldviews.  as the existentialist philosopher Albert Camus argued, if God is dead, then 'there is (only) one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy'.

Yet Augustine offered an answer that is as true today as it was 1600 years ago:  'You made us for Yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in You'.  only when we find God can we halt this restless search, because the very essence of our nature is the imago Dei - the image of God -implanted in us by the Creator.
why have we dealt at such length with creation and the question of origins?  because  the most important implication of creation is that it gives us our basic understanding of who we are; our view of origins determines our view of human nature. the dignity of human life is not only a burning issue of our day, it is intensely personal to me.
I know all the theological arguments and believe I can hold my own in any rational debate. but when all is said and done, i find the ultimate answer to the question of life in the smiling face of my grandson Max.

Chapter 14 - GOD MAKES NO MISTAKES

*141 Max is a handsome 8 year old with dancing blue eyes and a shock of blondish hair that tosses about as he bounces up and down in his favorite spot in our home - my office chair.  'Grandpa's chair, Grandpa's chair', he squeals with delight, his face breaking  into a broad smile.

Max and I see each other a lot and our times together are, to put it mildly, intense. sometimes we go to  super McDonald's, the ones with the playland of slides and brightly colored boxes of plastic balls. no matter how may children are sliding and jumping among the balls, max is always having the best time. if the other kids leave, he will continue jumping up and down, chanting, 'More kids, more kids'.

everyone notices max. not only because he is so adorable, but because he is different. he is set apart by his sometimes moody, impenetrable, stares, his failure to respond.

Your see, Max is autistic.
Max arrived by way of a frightening and difficult delivery requiring an emergency cesarean section. so there was special joy in the Colson family when our daughter, Emily, came through the surgery and Max arrived safely, appearing to be a robust and healthy baby boy.  but soon we notice that Max was not behaving as expected. he was colicky and irritable. he would scream loudly and he seemed especially bothered by unfamiliar noises. he didn't crawl when he should have and was late walking. then
142  there were the distant stares and the periods of withdrawal. we denied what was becoming evident for as long as we could, confidently assuring each other that he would grow out of it.

I confess that i preyed hard for some miraculous intervention. I also asked the tough questions. how could God let this happen to me beloved daughter's only child? It Isn't Fair, I told God many times. and at first i found it difficult to enjoy Max as much as I did our other grandchildren. I couldn't bounce him on my knee or get him to look at me. often he would scream when i picked him up.

but as he got a little older, we noticed something else. max  has a special  capacity for love.

Patty and I usually ask our grandchildren to accompany us when we make our annual delivery of Angel Tree gifts at Christmas. so when max was only 2, he was with us as we headed out into the country to visit a family who lived an hour from our home. as we drove, Emily and patty and I  talked about the 2 little girls we wee going to see. their father was in prison and their mother was away working,  so they were living with their grandparents. we vowed that when we got there, we would try as hard as we could to let these 2 girls know how much they were loved. all the while, Max sat in his car seat, sucking his thumb, his expression fixed in the distant, unconnected stare characteristic of his condition.
the grandparent were waiting in front of their home, a large trailer set back on  a wooded lot. as we walked through the open door, Max, usually painfully shy with strangers, suddenly pulled free of Emily's hand and ran  across the living room straight for the two little girls. he awkwardly embraced the younger one, a cute 4 year old  with long blond pigtails and then held his cheek against hers, smiling. he did the same  thing with her 6 year old sister. then, still smiling, he retreated to his mother's side.
Max had never done anything like this before.  my only explanation is that he understood what we were talking about in the car - and he was determined to deliver the love for us.

one of the many great paradoxical truths of the Christina life is that the greatest adversity  often produces the greatest blessings. I've certainly discovered in my own life the truth of James 1.2:  'Consider it pure joy, my brothers,  whenever you face trials of many kinds'. and I've seen the truth of it in my daughter's life. max was one  of the stresses, we now surmise, that led to Emily's ending up as a single parent. but if she was discouraged by all this, she never showed. and max has changed my daughter from a lovely young girl into a mature Christian woman who sees her son as a gift from God.
on Max's 6th birthday, Emily wrote me a touching letter.  'God

*143  created Max exactly the way He intended Max  to be, she wrote, 'Max was not a mistake in the way he was made. God had a definite purpose when he created Max as he did. i did not presume to know what god had or has in mind for his purpose and i may never know all the intricacies of God's purpose fro max. what i do know is that Max is perfect in the way God created him'.

Max hears things differently from other people, sees things differently, tastes things differently and enjoys life differently. yet his 'joyous spirit and exuberance for life' are a great gift.'i've learned to look past the disability and see the individual, Emily wrote,  and now Max has become my greatest blessing.
Max is a blessing to others as well. 'Max has an ability to affect people's lives more than anyone else I know, Emily continued. 'When Max enters a room full of people it's like dropping a spoon into a blender - everyone stops and reacts,just when people's lives are running along smoothly, everything blending as it should, in comes Max, this sweet, energetic, beautiful child who doesn't fit into their recipe. everyone reacts in some way, good or gad. but eventually they become aware of their own actions and feelings, and this profoundly affects them.it is a wonderful experience for m to see someone who has not felt comfortable with max take the chance and reach out to him.

Emily summed up her experience with these words:  'God knew when He created Max that he would need extra help in this world, so god keeps His hands cupped around max. He doesn't let him go. I know that wherever max is, God is holding him gently in his hands. how could a child who is held by god be anything but a gift?'
the fact is that Max has touched more lives than any other little guy i know. yet max is exactly the kind of child that the modern eugenics crowd would snuff out in the womb - or, if his 'defect' couldn't e detected there, then on the delivery table. or even, if Francis Crick had his way, in the first weeks  of life.
the dreadful truth is that the culture of death has taken a firm grip on the minds and hearts of otherwise responsible people in every walk of life. but when it comes to max, these people are going to have to deal with my daughter first - and with me. Christians need to form a frontline defense of the Maxes of this world.
the real problem with this would is not deformity in the body; it's deformity in the soul. in a word, it's sin. anyone who harbors and idealistic

*144  urge to improve the human race ought to look not to eugenics but to means for healing the sinful heart.
yet the very notion of sin is unpalatable to the modern mind. as a result, many of the brightest Western thinkers have constructed a great myth to avoid facing the truth about sin and guilt. and ironically, this myth, more than anything else, has brought unimaginable havoc and misery into  this century.

PART 3: THE FALL:  WHAT HAS GONE WRONG WITH THE WORLD?

CHAPTER  15 - THE TROUBLE WITH US

*147  Certainly nothing offends us more rudely than this doctrine (of original sin),  and yet without this mystery,  the most incomprehensible of all, we are incomprehensible to ourselves. Blaise Pascal

the first and most fundamental element of any worldview is the way it answers the questions of origins - where the universe came from and how human life began.  the second element is the way it explains the human dilemma. why is there was and suffering, disease and death?  these questions are particularly pressing for the Christina worldview, for if we believe that the universe came from the hand of a wise and good Creator, how do we explain the presence of evil? or, to paraphrase the title of Rabbi Kushner's best-seller, why do bad things happen to good people? if God is both all-loving and all-powerful,why doesn't He use His power to stop suffering and injustice?

no question poses a more formidable stumbling block to the Christian faith than this and no question is more difficult for Christians to answer.
yet the biblical worldview does have an answer and it accounts for universal human experience better than any other belief system. Scripture teaches that God created the universe and created us in His image, created u  to be holy and to live by His commands. yet God loved us so much that he imparted to us the unique dignity of being free moral agents - creatures with the ability to make choices, to choose either good or evil.to provide an arena in which to exercise that freedom,k God placed one moral restriction on our firs ancestors: he forbade them to eat of the true of the knowledge of good and evil. the original humans, Adam and Eve, exercised their free

*148  choice and chose to do what God had commanded them not to do and they rejected His way of life and goodness, opening the world to death and evil. the theological term for this catastrophe is the Fall.
in short, the Bible places responsibility for sin, which opened the floodgates to evil, squarely on the human race -starting with Adam and Eve, but continuing on in our own moral choices. in that original choice to disobey God, human nature became morally distorted and bent so that from then on humanity has had a natural inclination to do wrong. this is the foundation of the doctrine that theologians call Original sin and it haunts humanity to this day. and since humans were granted dominion over nature, the Fall also had cosmic consequences as nature began to bring forth 'thorns and thistles',  becoming a source of toil, hardship and suffering. in the words of theologian Edward Oaks , we are 'born into a world where rebellion against God has already taken place and the drift of it sweeps us along'.
the problem with this answer is not that people find it unclear but that they find it unpalatable. it implicates each one of us in the twisted and broken state of creation.yet just as sin entered the world through one man, eventually implicating  all humanity, so redemption has come to all through one man  Rom. 5.12-21. righteousness is available to all through belief in Christ's atoning sacrifice.

the Christian view of sin may seem harsh, even degrading, to human dignity. that's why in modern times, many influential thinkers have dismissed the idea of sin as repressive and unenlightened. they have proposed instead a Utopian view that asserts that humans  are intrinsically good and that under the right social conditions, their good nature will emerge. this utopian view has roots in the enlightenment, when Western intellectuals  rejected the biblical teaching of creation and replaced it with the theory that nature is our creator -that the human race arose out of the primordial slime and has lifted itself  to the apex of evolution. the biblical doctrine of sin was cast aside as a holdover from what Enlightenment philosophers disdainfully called the Dark Ages, from which their own age had so triumphantly emerged. no longer would people live under the shadow of guilt and moral judgment; no longer would they be oppressed and hemmed in by moral rules imposed by an arbitrary and tyrannical deity.
but if the source of disorder and suffering is not sin, then where Do these problems come from? enlightenment thinkers concluded that they must be the product of the environment:  of ignorance, poverty or other undesirable social conditions and all that it takes to create an ideal society is to create a better environment: improve education,enhance economic

*149  conditions  and re engineer social structures. given the right conditions, human perfectibility has no limits. and so was born the modern utopian impulse.

yet which of these worldviews, the Biblical one or the modern utopian one, meets the test of reality? which fits the world and human nature as we actually experience it?

one can hardly say that the Biblical view of sin is unrealistic, with its choices and inflict harm and suffering on others. not when we view the long sweep of history. someone once quipped that the doctrine of original sin is the only  philosophy empirically validated by 35 centuries of recorded human history.
by contrast,  the 'enlightened' worldview has proven to be utterly irrational and unlivable. the denial of our sinful nature and the utopian myth it breeds, leads not to beneficial social experiments but to tyranny.  the confidence that humans are perfectible provides a justification for trying to make them perfect...No Matter What it Takes.and with God out of the picture, those in power are not accountable to any higher authority. they can use any means necessary, no matter how brutal or coercive, to remold people to fit their notion of a perfect society.
the triumph of the Enlightenment worldview, with its fundamental change in presuppositions about human nature, was in many ways the defining event of the 20th century, which explains why the history of this era is so tragically written in blood. as William Buckley trenchantly observes: Utopianism 'inevitably...bring on the death of liberty.

the reasons for this will emerge in the heart wrenching story that follows. to some people, at least initially, this might seem to be a story of misguided do-gooders or a crazy cult. but bear with us, for it is much more than that. it is a cautionary tale, revealing how easy it is to succumb to the great utopian myth, with all its horrifying consequences.

Chapter 16 - A BETTER WAY OF LIVING

151  A Lawyer's Office, An Francisco,  1977

the day Meg Broadhurst walked into my law office and said, 'I want you to help me get my child back,  she immediately had my attention.
'Has your husband abducted your child? I asked
No,it's more complicated than that, my son, Jason, is at Synanon.

having lived for the past 20 years in the Bay Area, I had heard of the organization called Synanon,  mostly as a drug -rehabilitation program. although the group had started out in Los Angeles in the late 1950s, they now had a center in Oakland and another up in Tomales Bay, an hour and a half north of the city.
as a family court lawyer, I had heard a lot of strange stories, but the one Meg told me took  the prize. at first, after she admitted her own history of alcohol and drug abuse,  I wondered whether she might be delusional, could this really be happening less than 2 hours from San Francisco?

as much as Meg tried to conceal it, she had a desperate air about her - and a frightfully dark tale to tell. but let her tell her story....

Meg's Story
Okay, I'll be honest with you. i got my family involved in Synanon. but first you need to know a little about me and my husband, Jack.

*152  I met Jack  at one of my parents' parties in Malibu. he wasn't like the surfers i had been hanging around with. he worked in real estate and he had something more on his mind than shooting the curl on the north coast of Oahu. when we started dating, he treated me as if i expected more from him than drinking sangria and groping in sleeping bags. his style appealed to my serious side - the part that took me to UCLA to study English. that's where I was at the time, when I wasn't hanging out at the beach. the idea that  I could date a man who had ambitions and who thought of the future - and please my parents at the same time - came to me like an epiphany. I could date Jack Broadhurst.  I might even marry Jack Broadhurst.
Jack was always telling me how free I was.  maybe I was too young for my age, but he was definitely too old for his and as we fell in love, it brought out his little-boy side. i think he married me out of gratitude for that. and i married him because I didn't see how else I would ever get my life organized.  the rich kids I grew up with thought life would be one endless summer, but something kept telling me that couldn't be real. besides, I admired Jack. he put on a suit, coped with the real world and acted...well, like a man.
when we got  married, we moved into this amazing place in the Malibu Colony. so there I was, still a senior at UCLA, but living in a house on the beach and driving a Porsche.  our first year was so much fun. I didn't have anything to do but study for my classes and cook dinner for my husband. when he came home,  w ate, smoked dope, drank wine and enjoyed each other .
but after I graduated. Jack, wanted to out more, especially to Hollywood parties where he could meet future clients for his high -end real estate business. I hated those parties and the only way i got through them was to do a few lines of cocaine in the bathroom and then keep drinking tequila. I plated the spacey surfer chick while Jack was off in the corner trying to score a one-nighter. by then, you see, Jack and I had settled on an 'open marriage' - he could sleep around and I could 'use'.

the problem was that when I drank, I didn't stop. and with enough money and enough Bloody Mary and Margarita mix, I really didn't have to  - except to get a buzz from the Peruvian powder. not until the night Jack found me crashed on the floor of someone's bathroom.

that's when we moved to San Francisco and jack started selling commercial properties downtown.  I Really didn't know what to do with myself on Nob Hill, but I knew I couldn't drink or use, so I spent my time in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and tried to do the organic health thing. I wanted to be an earth mother , or at least a regular mother and that's when  we had our son, Jason my little boy that i want you to get back for me. my baby was so

*153  wonderful and such a handful and I went back and forth  between loving him to death and wanting  to escape all the diapers and drudgery.
then I heard about these  Game Clubs - a kind of AA  meeting run by a group called Synanon. people in AA didn't exactly know what to do with someone like me who was attracted to both alcohol and drugs, but Synanon did.
Synanon's Game Club  was like an AA  meeting except that you could say anything you wanted. you didn't have to talk just about yourself. you could attack people for lying about their addiction or rationalizing their behavior - giving them a 'haircut', it was called. no comments were off-limits in the Game.
Once I started talking at the Game Club, I just could not shut up and those sessions were wild. I loved inviting Jack there and hearing people just blister him for his uptight, businessman ways. and it was amazing, you know, because he actually liked it, too. somehow when he was inside the Game , he was able to tell me things  about our relationship that he never could say otherwise. he needed to know that i really loved him, for one thing. and by that time, I did.

I guess having a kid was changing both of us and I wanted us to be a real family - to love each other and be good parents to our child. I remember the night I told Jack in the Game,  'No more open marriage. no more sleeping around. I don't want that anymore'.  the other Synanon Game Club members really affirmed what I was saying. they could see  how much I wanted our marriage to work.
when we went home that night, Jack called me into Jason's room. as we looked at our five year old son sleeping so peacefully, all curled up and snug, Jack Whispered to me, 'I take thee, Meg, to be my lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold...'  he gave the whole speech, all the vows, the  traditional ones that we hadn't even used at our wedding.
after that ,  Jack and I became so tight. it was as if we fell in love all over again, only this time better, much better. and it was because of Synanon.
then we heard that Synanon had formed live-in communities and people like us from the Game Club were beginning to move into them, especially the Tomales Bay facility.  the idea really appealed to me, but I never thought Jack would do it. he was Mr. Money. his idea of a high was taking a building with a bad leasing percentage and selling it within a year for twice what he paid. he could do it, too. Jack knows when a property is basically sound and just needs window-dressing upgrades and he knows when a bad,  old building is just a bad, old building. I have to admit he's a genius at what he does.

*154  but Jack was starting to talk about wanting something more out of life, too,  and one day he said  tome,  'You want to move to Synanon?  I mean, like permanent;u

I couldn't believe he was serious. but he was.
the head of the San Francisco Game Club had told him that Syanon was interested in recruiting Gamers for executive positions. they needed someone like Jack to help them develop their properties. he would have to do the pots and pans for about a week, like all new members of the community, but then they would move him back into the work he loved.

'Meg, he told me. 'why don't we move to a community where we can concentrate on us and on Jason? if there's really a better way of living, maybe we ought to try it'.

I never thought I would hear those words come out of Jack's mouth. first the renewed wedding vows and now this! I agreed and within three months, we moved to Tamales Bay. that was in March of 1973,  and that,s when this whole story really gets started.

the first time I saw Tomales Bay, I thought, I'm Going To Be Living In A Japanese Landscape Painting! It's beautiful.
Synanon's property there  overlooks  the Water and up until a couple of years ago, Tomales was the organization's corporate headquarters. that's moved to Badger now, but the warehouse at the center of Synanon's main business, Advertising Gifts and Premiums (ADGAP), is still at Tomales.  the place is like a little self-enclosed city. there are about 500 people still living there, and it has medical clinics, a barbershop, sewage treatment plants, a move theater, artists' studios - everything.

when Jack and I arrived, i thought Charles Dederich, the founder of Snyanon, was some kind of guru. he invited Jack and me to have a private conference with him, and we were so excited to meet with the old man himself. we had seen him before, of course, in the Game Temple, the special building devoted to the AA -like sessions at Tomales. but we had never met him in person .

the first meeting, he totally blew us away.  he put his arm around Jack and said,  'Now I know what you're asking yourselves. have we made the right choice, moving in here with all these drunks and head-cases? Meg had a problem, I understand, but obviously she's now highly functional. so you're asking, is this the right thing for our family?
'I'll tell you why you came here, Jack. you know what's inside you. you know that there's a desire to live as you've never lived before and somehow yo just can't get to do it in the world outside Synanon. you know you're alive inside the Game Club in a way you never are outside it.

*155 'let me tell you why that is. it's because the thing inside you, you r real self, is total energy. it drives toward life in its highest sense. it's restless and it stays restless until it find fulfillment.

then Ded quoted his favorite lines from Ralph Waldo Emerson, the same ones we would always quote at the outset of every Game: 'as long as a man willingly accepts himself, he will continue to grow and develop his potentialities.  as long as he does not accept himself, much of his energies will be used to defend rather than to explore and actualize himself.
'here at Syn  you're going to have a chance to accept yourself and use your energies to grow, to be positive, to become a self-actualized person, Ded said 'Why can't you do that on the outside? because our whole society fosters various forms of character disorders. when Syn first got started back in Ocean Park in 1958, I thought the problem was addiction. but the real problem is character disorder and it's something everyone suffers from - you, Jack, as much as Meg, even though she was the one with the  addiction. you're addicted to other things. like money and other women - right? there's no shame in it.  we're all messed up because of the society we've been raised in.

'but here at Syn you can tap your inner resources  toward absolute fulfillment because you can see through  your own disguises in the Game. we can help you be free from all those hang-ups, all those crusty old ideas of right and wrong that shackle your inner self. we're going to set you free from those outdated rules and conventions  that hem you in, so you can finally be your true self. you're going to be free from all your character disorders and together we can make a healthy community and show the whole world a better way of living.
I remember after that meeting, Jack said,  'That man's a genius. no ones ever seen through me like that.
for awhile our life at Syn was everything we dreamed of. we worked  10-day shifts, which is called 'being in Motion', and then we had 10 days for 'Growth', which meant we could go horseback riding, take a swim in Syn's reservoir, said on the bay, watch movies, use the libraries, do crafts. we didn't
 have much money, but we didn't need it.
when people joined, they often gave all their money to Syn .  that's how much they believed in what Syn was doing. we all got a regular allowance from the organization - pocket money that we called WM  (Walking Around Money). and since we had free use of all Syn's facilities, we lived as if we we were rich.
there wasn't any crime there, either. we could leave our possessions right out in the open and not lock any doors. the whole place was run with

*156  only 2 rules: no violence and no drugs and that included alcohol and cigarettes. so we had all these people, most of them former addicts and lots of them former criminals and yet the place was completely peaceful . Ded kept talking about starting new 'Synanon cities' all around  the country so we could spread this peaceful new way of life to everyone. we were exited about being involved in such a noble mission.
Jack and i worried at first when people in the Game suggested that we put Jason in the community's boarding school. he was only 7. but we found out that it was common fro parents to hand over their kids to the community schools when the children were as  young  as  6 months old. the leaders told us it was much healthier for a child to be loved by the whole community where everyone functions as the child's extended family. that sounded good and anyway, we saw Jason every night. at least we did at first, until they started night nurseries. we also turned over all of Jason's clothes to the school because the kids there didn't own their clothes; they just took them out of communal bins.

but with other people taking care of Jason, Jack and I did get to spend more time together. that's what really hooked me - the chance for Jack and me to be happy together.

I really became a Syn fanatic the night Ded  started 'Gaming' Jack about  his latest fling. you see, I thought Jack had stopped that kind of thing when he recited the wedding vows that night. but he hadn't we were all in the Game Temple - Ded in his bid chair at the front, wearing his overalls and plaid shirt and his wife, Betty, next to him in one of her long, flowing gowns.

'I want to introduce Jack Broadhurst, Ded said to the guests who came to watch. 'Jack's a square. he comes to us from a successful real estate business. he sold it when he decided to join syn and invested ?100,000 in our corporation. brought his wife, Meg and his son, Jason, her, too. I just appointed Jack the director of our Land Development Division'.  they Ded asked,  'You like  your new job, Jack?

'What I like, Jack said,  is being  part of Synanon Corporation. I think it's the est investment anyone can make, not only with their money but their lives as well.
Ded heaved his weight around, away from jack.  'The man really knows how to blow smoke, doesn't he?  then Ded asked me, 'Meg, do you know exactly why Jack is so pleased with being a big director?
I knew right away where Ded was headed. so did everyone else.
'Hav you met Trina? he asked.
'She's Jack's new secretary,  i said, playing innocent.

*157  'Trina, Ded said, stand up for us.
I had to admit she was pretty. Trina had these striking Italian features, oval eyes, full lips. she was wearing a halter top and miniskirt, and stood as if she was posing for Vogue or something, with one knee bent in.
'tell me, Trina, said Ded, before you came to Synanon, what did you do?

'I was on the rad,  she said.
'As a rock groupie, right?
'I provided personal services, she said after a pause.
'Personal services? said Ded.  'we can call it that if you like, sweetheart. but what it means is, you make your self available for whatever 'personal services' the band members wanted  and in returen ,  they supplied you with LSD, meth and qualudes.  Right?
she crumpled  and sat down.  'Look, I;m not proud of the way  i lived, she muttered.  'None of us are, Ded said.  'tut what I want to know is this:  Why does my new land development director think Your're qualified to be his secretary?
'Hey, Chuck, there were only so many in the applicant pool, Jack said, jumping in.
Ded bolted around to face Jack.  'Hey, Mr. director, he said mockingly .  'I saw to it - i saw to it Personally  - that you had a legal secretary with 12 years experience in your candidate pool. and yet you hired Trina instead. now just why did you do that?
everyone in the Game Temple started to hoot and holler. you can't believe the obscene things people scream out in there.
'Okay, Okay, bellowed Ded to calm everyone down. 'the point is, Jack's not going to bring his middle-class, hit-on-the -secretary act here. he was given a responsible position and the first thing he's done has been totally irresponsible. I think maybe it's  back to washing kitchen pots for Jack.

that stopped Jack's cheating on me. he finally became Mr. Faithful. at least as long as Ded wanted him to be. but that part of the story comes later.another good thing that happened in Syn was that I became a teacher. they let me teach in the boarding school at Tomales, and I even became head of humanities for the junior high and high school students. finally people were taking me seriously. and I liked teaching  because it allowed me to be closer to Jason since all the schools were in one combined operation.

*158  I remember back in high school, one of my boyfriends said to me, 'You are such a scumptious muffin'.  that was me all right,  'the scrumptious muffin' girlfriend,the trippy wife - I played all these side-dish roles. nobody knew that I had graduated from UCLA  with honors. but in syn, I finally stopped feeling  as if I had  to hid my brains. I guess  it's because I was pretty straight compare to everybody else there. for one thing, I  hadn't been a prostitute, like almost half of the women there had been, including Ded's wife, Betty.
the Syn schools had been modeled after a sixties-style free school, like Sumerhill, but by the time I started  teaching, they ad become rather traditional prep-school institutions. except for one thing: we taught the kids to do their own version of the Game. they would tear into each other for things like not doing their homework or slacking off on their chores. I thought that was good because it meant the kids kept each other in line. the only thing that bothered me about the school was that Ded's picture hung on the walls everywhere. it was spooky, like Lenin's picture hanging everywhere in the Iron Curtain countries. and after a while, there  was even an expectation that we would teach the kids that they owed their whole lives to Syn - that their first allegiance wasn't to their parents  but to the organization.
in fact, many things began to change after Jack and I had been there about 2 years.  a lot of it was because of the lawsuit.
you see, by that time Ded  had lost interest in helping druggies; he was much more interested in selling Syn  to the world as a new kind of ideal society. e had become an evangelist for the Syn way of life. the problem is, we were still making a lot of our money bey selling corporate  give-aways  that presented us as a drug-rehabilitation center . so the San Francisco Examiner did an expose calling Syn a 'racket'. Synanon's lawyers turned around and sued the newspaper's parent company, the Hearst Corporation, for using underhanded tactics in gathering their evidence and we won. Hearst had to pay big bucks.
but the negative publicity hurt the organization and Ded decided he would have to redefine its mission. his chief counsel, Dan Garrett, came up with what they thought was a great idea:  they would declare syn a legal religion.they saw all kinds of advantages:  it was better for taxes and they didn't have to keep trying to bolster the 'success rate' wit addicts. the success rate really wasn't too good anyway.most addicts didn't do well if they left Syn, so most of them were staying on.  but if  Syn were a religion, that no longer mattered. as Garrett used to say,  'Nobody graduates from a religion'.  besides, being a religion meant everyone would have to be a

*159  lot more committed and 'obey the tenets of the faith' Garrett actually wrote that in a memo.

in the Game, we spent hours discussing the idea of becoming a religion  and I had a hard time believing what some people said. they said Chuck was a 'god ' to them and Betty was a natural 'high priestess'.  for years, recruits had been welcomed with the slogan 'abandon all  and follow Chuck',  but I had taken that as a joke. now I realized that a lot of the old-timers really looked up to Ded as a Christ figure. we even had a Game where everyone decided Chuck could be called 'Savior'.

honestly, I didn't know quite what to think. I guess Syn Was like a religion for me in a lot of ways. for instance, in the Game, people frequently rehearsed their life histories  - it was called 'telling your rotten story' - talking about how hopeless and useless life had been  before we joined Syn.  the histories were just like some religious testimonials. but things  were going overboard, in my mind. Ded wrote a book to define the group's beliefs; it was called The Tao Trip Sermon. he even wrote a prayer that we were supposed to recite - the Syn Prayer. Betty got into the act, too, telling people that we were like a seminary, like priests in training and that we had to accept the Syn dogma 'without any mental reservations' - that we were to 'just say 'amen' ' to any directive Chuck passed down.

those were her exact words.  she was even starting to Talk like a high priestess. and anyone who wasn't willing to accept Syn as a religion was promptly  excommunicated.

The Game was really changing, too.instead of being open and real about what we thought,we started getting pressure to 'Game affirmatively'.  that meant once Chuck  or Betty or their insiders had insinuated the Syn line on anything, everyone was supposed to line up and agree with them. and if we criticized some policy, everyone would jump on us and talk about how grateful we should be for everything Chuck had done for us.
in fact, the group would start dragging up people's pasts, telling them what a mess their lives were before they came to Syn and how Ded had saved them. 'And This is how you repay him?  the group would ask. the pressure was so bad that often the people being attacked would actually start agreeing with the accusations; they would even bring up new faults to confess to the group and start accusing themselves.
by this time, too, Ded had hooked up an in-house radio network called 'the Wire',  that was broadcast into every building, every workroom, even the bathrooms, so that every member of Syn could hear Ded's thoughts on any subject, any time of the day. you hardly had a moment to

160  think for yourself. everyone was constantly listening for Chuck's opinion on anything that happened so they could e  on the 'right' side.
but that want the worst of it. next came the loyalty tests. like shaving our heads. Syn  had various forms of punishment that were meted out when we broke the rules and one of the punishments was having our head shaved. then, suddenly, it was made clear that Everyone had to get shave - permanently - as a kind of proof of their commitment. this was in 1975,  and  i was still so much a part of things, I got buzzed without much protest. but some of my friends were really upset about losing their hair. Betty tried to make them feel better by telling them, 'You cannot be ugly. You are Syn.  you wear the badge of the Religion.
but Syn was still getting a lot of bad publicity.  the article in the San Francisco Examiner had tipped off other reporters and donations began drying up. so Ded decided he would simply reduce the population, par it down to those who were absolutely loyal to him he launched another  loyalty test, what he called a 'little emotional surgery'. he started talking about how couples with children placed a great burden on the community. he told us that raising each child cost syn  up to $200,000 and how, if we saved that money, we could help juvenile delinquents.  'the world is already over-populated ', he would say.  'Why should Syn members go on breeding when they could selflessly help save children who were already in this miserable world?
so Chuck ordered all the pregnant women to have abortions.  that's when I really started to pull back and wonder about Syn there were about 5 pregnant women there at the time and one was my best friend,  Jean, one of the other teachers. she had wanted a child for the longest time, and she had finally gotten pregnant when she was almost forty years old. she was about 5 months along when Chuck made his pronouncement and she really didn't want an abortion. she held out  for a while,  but everyone  kept Gaming her about her loyalty to Syn , and she couldn't  take the  pressure.

I tied to talk her out of it, but I remember the day i walked into the building and knew she had done it. she had been  out for a day and when she came back, she wouldn't  look at me, so I knew/  she had gone to a Syn  doctor. now she'll never have any children. and for what?  why?

Ded knew how  upset everyone was over the abortions, but he didn't back off. he let it be known that it would make him very happy if all the men got vasectomies.  that meant anyone who wanted to stay in his good graces had better go along - because  staying in Chuck's good graces

*161  meant better housing, better job assignments and other perks. if you resisted, you could be demoted and forced to collect garbage or pull weeds.

this was the beginning of the end for Jack and me. I begged Jack,  'Please don't do this.  Don't get a vasectomy'.  I wanted to have another baby.
but he knew that his position as land development director was at stake. so he said, 'Look, honey, we already have Jason.  and besides, I'm getting too old.
'Old? Jack, you're all of 36! Listen, Jack, please', I said .  'we've made a mistake. this is completely crazy. we need to leave this place right now'.
and the minute I said that  - the minute. I suggested leaving Syn - I could see him turn against me. his face got really hard, and he wouldn't listen  to me or talk to me. he just shut me out of his life. it was so awful. we had come to Syn  to make our relationship  better, but now Syn was coming between us. Jack is totally dependent on that organization; it's his whole life. he's going to fight me tooth and nail about getting Jason back. as far as he's concerned, Jason doesn't belong to him Or me. ; he belongs to Syn.
so anyway,  he got the vasectomy - I knew he would  - and so did every other man in Syn.  except Ded himself, of course,. Isn't that rich? I know he's laughing at the way he can coerce everyone else to do something he would never lower himself to do. some couples left Syn over it, but most of them stayed on and they wee even more committed because of the sacrifice they had made.

but as bad as that is, it's  not the  worst of it.

after  the suit against teh Hearst Corporation, Ded started having fantasies of revenge. Syn  facilities  had had break -ins from time to time, especially in Oakland,  where a street gang actually  came in and stated beating up our people for no reason. so Ded told all the facilities to form security detains.  they were like volunteer fire departments at first, but in just a short time they  got  to be like internal police forces. then Ded told all the facilities to form security detains. they were like volunteer fire departments at first, but in just a short time they  got to be like internal police forces. then Ded  started a group of guards, but really they're more like a small army. they're called the Imperial Marines and they're made up mostly of juvenile delinquents that government social service agencies send us to rehabilitate.  these kinds are mean and they're well armed, too.

on top of this, Ded started giving tirades over the Wire -  the in-house radio network - saying how Syn  was not going  to be messed with anymore.  he would go on and on about the urban riots of the late  1960s and the crime wave of the 1970s.  he would say that we have to counter

*162  violence with violence. Syn would 'break some legs and kneecaps,' if it  had to.  that's what he actually said, this former guru of nonviolence.
he even made this part of the Syn  religion. he liked to say Syn  was becoming an 'aggressive,militant'  religion and that we weren't going to mess with turning the other cheek. instead, the  rule of our religion was  'Don't mess with us - it can get you killed.

and to be fair, I have to warn you that if you  take my case.  I'm not sure what might  happen, because Ded gets rabid when lawyers help former Syn  members get their kids back. I've heard him say,  'I am quite willing to break some lawyer's legs and next break his wife's legs and threaten  to cut their child's arm off'.  and he means it, too.
a lot of couples were like me and Jack - one partner wanting to leave and the other one wanting to stay. I think that's why Ded came up with his idea for the biggest loyalty test of all. he decided marriage was getting in the way of total loyalty to him,  so he decided to get rid of it.  just abolish  marriage. to do this, he decided to split up all the married couples and force them to hookup with someone else - what he called a 'love match'.  these would last about 3 years and then everyone had to take a new love match.  Ded himself selected who went with whom most of the time.

Ded would hold these big separation ceremonies, where all the married couples were supposed to thank each other for the time they had had  together and then pair off with someone new. he started off with his own grown children, to set an example. his daughter - her name was Jady - really loved her husband, but she left him to pair up with another man. he son had a harder time. and Ded had to threaten  to demote him. he said, 'You're not going to get in the way of this movement'.  as if Syn were still some idealistic movement to change the world!  It may have started out that way, but by now it was nothing  but personal tyranny. Ded was stripping all of us of everything we loved, everything we cared about, trying  to make us loyal only to him.

he told Jack and me to split and he put Jack with Trina. can you believe it?  I think he did it to make the point that he could do anything he wanted, even reversing something he had done in the past.  for me, Chuck  picked Michael Tenney.
I owe Mike a lot, actually. I think he loves his wife, Diane even more than I love Jack. a lot of people looked up to them as the ideal Syn couple. Mike's a doctor, Diane's a nurse and they took care of just about everybody at one time or another  at Tomales. I think  even Ded regretted  breaking up Kind and Diane, but he couldn't  allow exceptions.  Diane was so

*163  upset,  she just walked out of Syn and never came back. Ded  got on the Wire and ranted about how she was a 'splittee' - that's what they call people who leave - and how she had no  gratitude,  no loyalty, how she was rotten  and on and on. he always did that when anyone left.

anyway, the first night after I was matched with Mike, I went through the motions;  I put on my nightie and waited for Mike to finish taking a shower. I kept thinking of that line from Huxley's Brave new world:  'Let's do it for the state!  it was like Orwell's 1984,  too, because , I mean,  what was the difference between Charles Dederich and Big Brother? ? Ded was going for complete control.

Mike came back from the communal showers  in his T-shirt and sport shorts and he shut the  door. I've never seen a man look sadder in my entire life, especially  walking into a room with a woman waiting for him in bed and I started laughing.
'What? Mike asked.
'You. you look like you're about to be drawn and quartered.

he sat down on the side of the bed and we began to talk.  'I've decided to leave Syn, he said.  'I know this may go badly for you. maybe they'll  accuse you of driving me off or something. but I love Diane more than anything in this world and I want to find her. I hope she'll get back together with me  once I'm out.
'Do you know where she is?
'I  haven't talked to her, but she's probably over in Walnut Creek with her sister.

'Look, I said, you don't have to do this, I know, but if you could just sleep in this room  - over there on the couch - for  2 or 3 nights, then people would think our 'love match ' is working. then we'll both go at the same time.  we'll just split.
both of us knew how traumatic - even dangerous - it could be to leave Syn.  the Imperial Marines gave one splittee a serious beating. they have a huge cache of weapons and anyone who leaves gets all kinds of threats. De gets on the Wire and starts condemning splittees and give out hints that he wouldn't mind if they were hurt. I know it sounds incredible,  but the place has turned into an armed camp, a small totalitarian state.  I had even heard a rumor about a prison camp they're  running in the desert.
Mike and I made our break  at the same time, as we planned. Mike and Diane had liquidated all their assets and poured the money into Synanon, so they left with nothing but the clothes on their backs. they lost everything.
as for me, the past month  I've been down in Malibu, back with my parents, getting myself together.  I've called Jason and they did let me talk to

*164  him . he's 12 now. very independent and, I'm afraid, very foul-mouthed. he thinks he's about to become a cowboy in the Imperial Marines or something, and says he doesn't want to see me  anymore. you should her him. 'Mom, he told me, you don't own me. I belong to Synanon and that's where you should be too.You should get your blankety- blank back here'.  it's as if he's joined the Nazi youth!
he's still a kid, though. he needs his mother. and I need him. I can't believe I gave up so much to be a loyal member of that organization!  I've lost years of my life and I've lost my husband and my child. I realize that Jack's gone,  but there's still a chance for Jason. yo have to help me get him back. You have to.

what you've just read is a dramatized account and Meg Broadhurst is a fictionalized character. but Synanon, its leader Charles Dederich and the major figures associated with Syn are real. the events described her all took place and the experience of Meg and her family accurately represents the typical fate of those who became involved in Synanon, a counter cultural organization devoted to what Ded liked to call 'a better way of living'.
 2 years after meg would have been providing this account, a real-life  custody battle, similar to the one described in this dramatization,  provoked such violence from Charles Dederich that his criminal actions brought Synanon to an end. an attorney named Paul Morantz won a $300,000 judgment against Syn for its interference  in a child-custody case. afterward, Morantz received so many anonymous threats that he began checking everywhere for traps. one day when he reached into his mailbox, his hand  felt as if  a nail gun had gone off straight into his palm. he whipped his hand away. seconds later,  a 4.5 foot rattlesnake its rattles clipped  so that it would give no warning, slithered out of the box.  neighbors rushed him to the hospital.  11 vials of antivenin serum saved his life, but the assault left him with permanent nerve damage.
through a neighbor's testimony, the attack on Morantz was traced back to Syanon.  the 2 men who set the trap were eventually arrested, along with Dedrich himself. all three were indicted, though Ded was given only  a fine and probation. but the convictions effectively ended Syn's reign of terror. the community continued to struggle on through the early  1980s,  but lawsuits against Synanon  for its violent treatment of community members and outsiders. along with the complete collapse of its

*165  donation network, demanded that assets be sold off until nothing was left. one by one, former members left Syn.
sadly, for many families it was too late. hundreds of children lost their childhood to Syanon's communal nurseries. hundreds of parent lost their families,  their children's love and affection and years of their live to Charles Ded's 'better way of living'.  it was a utopian dream for an ideal society, and it went  the way of all utopian dreams...as we shall see.

*167  Chapter  7  SYNANON AND SIN

 if the experience of human history from Rousseau  to Stalin means anything, it must be that we are stuck, like it or not, with a doctrine  - nay the reality - of original sin.  Edward T.Oakes

Synanon is not just a tale of 1960s idealism  gone awry  in a small corner of northern California. it is a parable of what happens when men  and women reject the biblical teaching of sin and evil and then embrace the great modern myth of utopianism:  that human nature is intrinsically good and can form the basis of a perfect society. as political philosopher Glenn Tinder writes, if one acknowledges 'no great, unconquerable evils in human nature,' then it seems possible to create a heaven right here on earth.
this was exactly the philosophy  behind Synanon. and in the events of that small, coercive community, we can see in microcosm just how dangerous that philosophy is. for when we  close our eyes  to the human capacity for evil, we fail to build the moral boundaries needed to protect us from that evil.
Charles Dederich's desire to free addicts from their destructive behavior began with apparently good intentions. his approach was inspired,in large part, by the individualism of Ralph Waldo Emerson,  who trusted that the isolated self  could find within itself all the goodness and truth needed for a morel community. this is what Emerson meant by his celebrated   notion of 'self-reliance'  - that the self, in its search for truth, must be freed from all external authority, whether divine revelation, the church, history or tradition. Emerson announced the dawn of a new age of 'every one for himself;  driven to find all his resources, hopes,  rewards, society and deity within himself'.

*168  this utopian vision of a new age shaped Ded's strategy. to create isolated, Emersonian individuals among  his flock,he mercilessly attacked all their preconceptions,belief systems and moral loyalties. he broke down their emotional reserve in the vicious free-for -all  exchanges of the Game; he invaded the private boundaries of the mind with the Wire; and finally, he destroyed the family, with his enforced policies of communal nurseries , abortion and vasectomy and temporary 'love matches'.
the idea was that old emotional ties, old loyalties, old thought patterns must be torn down to make way for new, positive, healthy patterns to emerge. but what really emerged was total dependence on a cultic authority figure.  when moral convictions and personal commitments are destroyed , the result is not a great release of human goodness. instead, the individual becomes malleable, controllable by anything or anyone who steps in to take the place of family, church and village - and who can then impose his will and convictions on the isolated individual.

all utopians,no matter how well intentioned, adopt this strategy in one form or another.they start with the promise to liberate the individual from such things as economic oppression or crime-ridden streets or ancient superstitions.and the bargain is always the same:  Give me power and I'll use it to create an ideal society. but, as we saw in  the Synanon story, the exchange only brings out the worst in those who have the power, while enslaving  those they promised to liberate.

does the modern utopian worldview, then, produce a rational, sustainable life system? most emphatically not. it tells us we are good, but it unleashed the worst evil. it promises enlightenment, but it thrusts us into darkness.
the cautionary lesson we must derive from Synanon is that the same pattern can take hold anywhere the utopian myth is accepted. contrary to contemporary assumptions , the threat of tyranny did not die in the rubble of the Berlin Wall.  the utopian myth lives on. admittedly there's an enormous difference  between a totalitarian state and America's democratic republic, yet the same assumptions that led to the most destructive tyrannies of the 20th century are at work in our own society. the only difference is the speed at which these  ideas are being played out toward their inevitable consequences. while the totalitarian nations have completed the cycle. demonstrating the consequences of utopianism in all their horror ,  most Western nations are still somewhere in the earlier stages,still couching the utopian vision in humanitarian language.

for example, the denial of sin and responsibility is couched in

*169 therapeutic terms, such as the need to 'understand'  even the worst crimes as a result of a dysfunctional childhood or other circumstances. symptoms of family breakdown - such as divorce, adultery and abortion - are defended as expressions of the individual's freedom of choice.  SOCIAL ENGINEERING  SCHEMES ARE DRESSED UP AS PUBLIC COMPASSION.  but these are all window dressings, for beneath these explanations lies the same false utopian view we saw played out vividly in the story of Synanon. it is the same worldview that gave rise to modern totalitarianism. as Glenn Tinder writes,  'Much of the tragic folly of our times, not only on the part of extremists such as Lenin but also on the part of middle-of-the-road liberals and conservatives, would never have arisen had we not,in our technological and ideological pride, forgotten original sin.

will the Western nations see through their delusions and change course before it is too late?  that is a pressing question raised in the following chapters, where we will probe the consequences of the false worldview of human goodness, in both the totalitarian systems of the East and the welfare state of the West. we will trace this worldview's effects in politics ,  psychology, crime, welfare and education, in order to reveal  its fatal weaknesses.  against the utopian worldview, e will pose the Christian worldview, which we submit is demonstrably the only philosophy that fits universal human experience.
but first we must look at how the myth of utopianism was born and why it has such a grip on the modern mind. we cannot begin to counter the myth until we understand how the utopian  vision came to replace what had been for 16 centuries the settled understanding of human nature and society. in other words, whatever became of the biblical notion of sin?

Whatever became of sin? in 1973, when psychiatrist Karl Menninger posed this provocative question in his best-selling book of that title, he sounded like an Old Testament prophet thundering against the moral relativism of our age. lets  not talk about what's progressive or unprogressive ,  what's appropriate or inappropriate,he said, cutting through the fog of fashionable cover-up words like a brisk breeze. let's talk about good and evil,  right and wrong.

what did become of sin? Good question. to solve the mystery, we must travel back to the mid-18th  century and to the influential writings of a young Swiss-born philosopher named  Jean-Jacques Rousseau.  persuasive ideas are typically launched  in the writings of one person who

*170  captures and gives expression to what becomes a powerful trend . such was the case when Rousseau burst upon the European intellectual scene, winning instant notoriety with an essay arguing a surprising thesis: that the progress of civilization had not been beneficial for human beings, but harmful. in it natural state, human nature is good,  he contended ; people become evil only when they are corrupted by society.
from the time of Aristotle, most philosophers had taught that humans are naturally  social and that they fulfill their true nature by participating in the civilizing institutions of family, church, state and society.  but Rousseau turned this settled notion around. he insisted that human nature is at its best prior to and apart from social institutions;  that people are naturally loving virtuous and selfless;  and that it is society, with its artificial rules and conventions, that make them envious, hypocritical and competitive.
Rousseau's notion that civilization is artificial is perhaps less surprising when you realize that the society he lived in was just that. picture the French  aristocracy of the 1700s.  women concealed themselves beneath powdered wigs, pasty white makeup  and ornate dresses dripping with jewels and ribbons. men pranced about in long, curly, powdered wigs; silk waistcoats and frilly cuffs; satin britches; clocked hose and high-heeled, buckled shoes.  Rousseau fled this powdered and polished society, denouncing it as false to the core and he retreated to small country houses where he could be close to nature.  he dressed in shabby, threadbare clothing, but he also delighted in shocking people by wearing bizarre flowing robes and caftans. he refused to practice accepted manners or social formalities, cultivating instead an intensely emotional and spontaneous style of behavior.he kissed  his friends ostentatiously, often throwing himself around their necks.  he enjoyed playing the part of the tactless, vulgar oaf.
Rousseau's odd dress and crude manners were a deliberate expression of his philosophy:  If human nature is essentially good, if evil and corruption are created by a false and hypocritical society, then throw off the restraints of civilization and explore your natural, spontaneous self -  the true self that underlies social forms. free it from stultifying pressures to conform.

these same ideas appear in Rou's  formal writing on philosophy. he rejected anything that limits the freedom of the inner self, which he saw as naturally good - or, at least, unformed and undefined and capable of being Made good. Individuals must be free to create themselves by their own choices, free to discover their own identity, free to follow their own road (to quote the Saab advertisement mentioned in Chapter 4) Rou's most influential work, The Social Contract. opens with the famous line,  'Man is born free

*171 and everywhere he is in chains'. he called on reformers to set people free from the chains of institutions, rules,  customs and traditions.
yet ironically Rou's philosophy of radical and unbounded freedom spawned the most oppressive regimes of the modern world. inspiring revolutionaries, like Robespierre, Marx, Lenin, Hitler and Mao.  even Pol Pot and his cadre of Paris-educated terrorists were known to have studied Rou while their henchmen   were slaughtering a quarter of the Cambodian  population. how did this happen?

the key is that Rou did not define freedom as the assertion of rights against the State;  freedom meant liberation from the forms and institutions of Society - family, church, class and local community. the state, in fact, would be the liberator. by destroying all social ties, the state would release the individual from loyalty to anything except itself.  'Each citizen would then be completely independent of all his fellow men,  proclaimed Rou,  and absolutely dependent on the state.

this was the first time that the state was actually portrayed as a liberator.  for Rousseau, the state, 'is the agency of emancipation that permits the individual to develop the latent germs of goodness heretofore frustrated by a hostile society'.  and so was born what one historian calls 'the politics of redemption', the idea that politics can be the means not only of creating a better world but of actually transforming human nature, creating 'the New Man'.
moreover, since human nature is essentially undefined, according to Rou, there are no moral principles limiting the state's ambitions. in the Christian worldview, we treat a thing according to its nature, the type of being it is, based ultimately on what God created it to be. that's why we treat a child differently from a dog.  but if there is no such thing  as human nature, then there is no justification for saying we should treat people one way rather than another. there is no basis for saying the state must treat its citizens justly instead of unjustly and there are no moral limitations on the state's use of power.
this explains why Rou's philosophy gave birth to the modern concept of revolution, which involves not just political rebellion to overthrow a particular ruler but also the wholesale destruction of an existing society in order to build  a new,  ideal society from scratch. whereas traditional social  theory justified and given action by an appeal to the past - to the normative human nature created by God - modern revolutionaries justify their actions by an appeal to the future - to the ideal society they well crated. the bloodiest atrocities can be justified by invoking the perfect society that the

*172  revolutionaries promise to build on the ashes of the old.  thus modern revolutionaries moved ruthlessly and brutally, slaughtering  millions of people.
why didn't anyone in Rou's legions of disciples foresee these disastrous consequences? why didn't anyone consider that absolute power is sure to corrupt?

because utopianism creates a peculiar blindness. believing the individual  to be naturally good., Rou was confident that the all-powerful state would likewise be good, since in his view the state was simply a merging of individual wills into a 'General Will'. Rou actually believed that the state would always be right, always tending toward the public good - 'and if  some recalcitrant individuals failed to agree with the General Will?  that merely proved that they had been corrupted and that they must be coerced into seeing that their true liberty lay in conforming t the General will. as Rousseau put it, the individual must 'be forced to be free'.
Robespierre, who led the Reign of Terror that overtook the French Revolution in  1793,  grasped this logic all too well. he and his fellow Jacobins understood Rou's call fro 'force' to include condemnation and execution of all who opposed  the new order, resulting in the imprisonment of 300,000 nobles, priests and political dissidents, and the deaths of 17,000 citizens  within the year. of course,  this was only the beginning of the rivers of blood  that would flow from Rou's philosophy. for in practice, the utopian program of building a new and perfect society always means killing off those who resit, those who remain committed to the old ways, or those who belong to a class judged to be irredeemably corrupt  ( the boureoisie,  the kulaks, the Jews, the Christians).

this same basic pattern can be seen in the philosophy of Karl Marx,  whose vision of a perfect society has fueled one failed utopian experiment after another in nations around the globe. the fatal flaw in Marxism's utopian view of the state is once again the denial of the basic Christian teaching of the Fall. if one is to believe that is such a thing as sin, one must believe there is a God, who is the basis of a transcendent and universal standard  of goodness. all this Marx denied. for him, religion and morality were nothing by ideologies used to rationalize the economic interests of one class over another. small wonder that the totalitarian states created by Marxism acknowledged  no universal moral principles. no transcendent justice and no moral limits on their murderous brutality. the party, like the General Will, was always right.
the same denial of sin explains the roots of fascism. in  1964, Time magazine was  a latecomer in raising the question on its front cover,  'Is God

*173  Dead? back in the 19th century, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche had already declared the death of God and had etched out what that meant:  the death of morality. he dismissed sin as nothing but a ruse invented by a wretched band of 'ascetic priest(s),' Old Testament shamans who had achieved a magical  hold over men and women by playing the 'ravishing music' of guilt  in their souls. and he denounced Christian morality as a morality for salves. kindness, forgiveness, humility, obedience,  self-denial - these were the characteristics of weak, repressed slaves who had rejected the joy of life. to Nietzsche, the biblical ethic was nothing less than a pathology, a life-killing prudery. he looked forward to the evolution of a race of superhumans imbued with an ethic of power.  a century later, the Nazis, taking their cue from Nietzsche, tried to create just such a superrace.

it is paradoxical indeed that such horrors flowed from the idealistic-sounding philosophy of innate human goodness. French satirist Anatole France once observed that never  have so many been murdered in the name of a doctrine as in the name of the principle that human beings are naturally good. but if we look into the personal lives of the people who established the philosophy, we begin to see the dark flaw at the heart of their 'idealism'.
take Rou. Why did he see oppression only in social institutions such as the family? and why  did he paint the state as the great liberator?
historian Paul Johnson offers an intriguing hypothesis .  at the time Rou was writing The Social Contract, Johnson explains, he was struggling with a great personal dilemma. an inveterate bohemian, Rou had drifted from job to job and mistress to mistress eventually living with a simple servant girl named Therese. when Therese presented Rou with a baby, he was, in his own words, 'thrown into the greatest embarrassment'. at that time, he was still trying to make his way into Parisian high society, and an illegitimate child was an awkward encumbrance.
friends whispered to Rou that unwanted offspring were customarily sent to a 'foundling asylum' and a few days late, a tiny, blanketed bundle was left on the steps of the local orphanage.  4 more children were born to Therese and Rousseau and each ended up on the orphanage steps.

records show that most of the babies placed in this institution died;  the few who survived became beggars. Rou was quite aware of this unhappy fact; he knew he was abandoning his own children to almost certain death. in several of his books and letters, he even made vigorous attempts to justify his actions.
at first he was defensive, arguing that he could not work in a house 'filled with domestic cares and the noise of children'.  later his stance became positively self-righteous. he insisted he was merely following the

*174  teaching of Plato, who had declared the state better equipped than parents to raise good citizens.
when Rou turned to writing political theory, his personal excuses seem to be sublimated into  general maxims. his ideal state turns out to be one that liberates its citizens  from troubling personal obligations. in particular.  he urged that responsibility for educating children should be taken away from parents and given to the state.  was there a connection between Rou the man, fleeing from the obligations of fatherhood and Rou the political theorist?

of course, it's risky business to try to read a philosopher's personal motives from his theoretical writings. but we do know that right up to the end of his life, Rou struggled with guilt over his children.  in his last book, he grieved that he had 'lacked the simple courage to bring up a family'.

ideas do not arise from the intellect alone. they reflect our whole personality, our hopes and fears, our longings and regrets. people who follow a particular course of action are inevitably subject to intellectual pressure to find a rationale for it. theologians call this the 'noetic' effect of sin, meaning that sin affects our minds, our thinking processes. the Reformers coined the phrase 'total depravity', meaning that our sinful choices distort  all aspects of our being, including our theoretical ideas.

Rou's story chillingly refutes the contemporary notion that personal morality has no public consequences. the world has paid dearly for Rou's  personal choices, from the ovens of Auschwitz to the Game Temple of Synonon.  and we're still paying today, in ways that are subtle and thus all the more insidious.

Chapter 18 - WE'RE ALL UTOPIANS NOW

the utopian illusions and sentimental aberrations of modern liberal culture are really all derived from the basic error of negating the fact of original sin.  Reinhold Niebuhr.

*175  when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, the rejoicing on this side of the Atlantic had an almost smug ring to it. the Western model of democracy had triumphed, once and for all, over the great tyrannies that had dominated so much of the 20th century. and indeed,  the collapse of the communist behemoth was a profoundly significant political even. but what  happened to the ideas that created communism in the first place? have they quietly died as well?

not at all. in fact, many Americans and other Western people continue to cherish the same utopian myth that produced such bitter fruit in the totalitarian nations:  the same assumption that human nature is basically good, the same rejection of transcendent morality  as confining  and oppressive, the  same grandiose dreams of social engineering. and unless we change these basic presuppositions, we are headed down our own path to tyranny in a form the great french statesman Alexis de Tocqueville called 'soft despotism', an oversolicitous nanny state that debilitates  its citizens just as thoroughly nanny state that debilitates its citizens just as thoroughly,  but by coddling them instead of coercing them.
American utopianism traces its ancestry to Rou's notion  notion of human goodness,  but it also exhibits a unique technological , pragmatic cast that is rooted in the scientific revolution and that appeals to the Yankee can-do mind-set. Isaac Newton's dramatic discovery that a single law - the law of gravity  - explained a variety of phenomena, both in the heavens and

*176  on the earth, led to an image of the universe as a vast machine, running by natural laws. many people began to extend this this machine image into every area of life, including society itself.

in the 18th and 19th centuries, social thinkers fervently believed that science would not only explain the physical world but also show us how to order our lives together harmoniously. they searched  for some principle that would explain society in the same way Newton's law of gravity explained motion  - a principle that would reduce society in the same way Newton's law of gravity explained motion  - a principle that would reduce society to a unified law-governed system. they sought an experimental physics of the soul that would enable them  to craft a science of government and politics to conquer the age-old plagues of ignorance, oppression, poverty and war.

of course,  nowhere has this vision of scientific utopianism become a reality. and the reason it cotinually fails is lodged in the logic of the scientific method itself. if we turn human beings into objects for scientific study, we implicitly assume that they are objects to be manipulated and controlled, like scientific variables.  that means we have to deny things like the soul,  conscience, moral reasoning and moral responsibility. and when we apply these assumptions to real social problems, we inevitably dehumanize and demoralize people, placing them at the mercy of social scientists in the employ of the technocratic state. the end result is not utopia but another form of despotism.

From Animal to Machine

this line of logic can be seen clearly in the field of psychology, beginning in the 19th century with Sigmund Freud, who did more than anyone else to debunk the very notion of moral responsibility. Freud reduced humans to complex animals, rejecting explanations of behavior couched in 'old-fashioned' theological terms - such as Sin, Soul and Conscience - and  substituting scientific terms borrowed from biology, such as Instincts and Drives.  in Freud's theory, people are not so much rational agents as pawns in the grip of unconscious forces they do not understand and cannot control. a committed Darwinist, Freud, proposed an evolutionary scheme in which our primitive impulses (the id) belong to the oldest, most animal part of the human brain, while the rational mind (the ego) is a later development from the more highly evolved cerebral cortex. thus, the things that society labels  'bad' are not really evil; they simply reflect the more ancient, animal part of the brain.

later psychologists carried the process of reduction even further.

*177 Human nature was modeled not on the animal but on the machine. the earliest book on experimental psychology was titled Elements of Psycho physics, as if psychology were a branch of physics. its author, Gustav Fechner, another radical Darwinist, argued that humans are complicated stimulus-response mechanisms, shaped by forces in their environment.

after Fechner came Ivan Pavlov, whose name is familiar because of his experiments conditioning dogs to salivate at the ringing of a bell. Pav,  an evolutionist and materialist, adamantly rejected any notion of soul, spirit or even consciousness. all mental life, he declared (whether in his salivating dogs or in human beings),  could be explained in entirely mechanical terms of stimulus and response.

in the 1960s, B.F. Skinner's Walden Two introduced millions of college students to behaviorism, a school of psychology that flatly denies the reality of consciousness or mental states. because these things cannot be observed, Skinner argued, they cannot be described scientifically; therefore, they are not real. only observable, external behavior is real.

by denying the reality of the mind, Skinner and the behaviorists believed they were 'purifying' psychology of all philosophical prejudices and rendering it completely scientific and objective. in reality, of course, they were simply injecting there own philosophical prejudices. they were creating a new brand of 'scientific' utopianism, which said that the flaws in human nature are a result not of moral corruption but of learned responses - response that can be Unlearned so that people can then be reprogrammed to be happy and adjusted, living in harmony in a utopian society.

Retooling Human Nature

one of the results of this utopian thinking was a shift in education. classical education had always aimed at the pursuit of truth and the training of moral character. but if human nature was nothing more than a reactive mechanism, then it could be manipulated and shaped by the law that science discovered. this, education became a means of conditioning, with the child being treated as essentially passive rather  than as an active moral agent.

of course, this dehumanizing philosophy is always presented in the language of utopian promise. in the words of J. B. Watson, the founder of behaviorism,  'Give me the baby and...the possibility of shaping in any direction is almost endless'. forget trying to reform behavior through religion and morality; these are merely forms of oppression. through education the world can be 'unshackled from legendary folklore...free of foolish customs

*178  and conventions...which hem the individual in like taut steel bands'. Watson, sounding eerily like an early Charles Dederich, promised to bring up children with 'better ways of living', who 'in turn will bring up their children in a still more scientific way, until the world finally becomes a place fit for human habitation'.
the same ideas were applied to law. traditionally in the West, positive law (or human law) was based on a transcendent standard of justice, derived ultimately from God's law. but in the late 19th century, legal thinkers like Oliver Wendell Holmes, influenced by Darwin and the rise of social science, began to shift these foundations (as we will see later).  they reduced law to a summary of the social and economic policies proven scientifically to work best. the law was redefined as a tool for identifying and manipulating the right factors to create social harmony and progress.

the same scientific utopianism explains the rise of the welfare state.  the idea that both law and government policy should be transformed into social engineering took root in the New Deal of the  1930s and blossomed in the Great Society programs of the  1960s.  many American politicians became enthusiastic converts, sincerely believing that all it would take to solve the problems of poverty and crime would be some well-designed, well-funded government programs. they were confident  they could win president Lyndon Johnson's 'war on poverty.

well, today the war is over and poverty won. the welfare state has backfired, creating both a near permanent underclass of dependency and a host of attendant social pathologies, from broken families and teen pregnancy to drug abuse and crime. What went wrong?

Novelist Dean Koontz discovered the answer through hard experience.  in the 1960s, young, idealistic and eager to change the world, Koontz signed up as a counselor in Title III of the Appalachian Poverty program. his job was to work with problem students, giving them one-on-one  tutoring and counseling to help them break out of the area's depressed economic situation. but when Koontz showed up for work, he discovered that many of the students had criminal records. in fact, the man who preceded him on the job had been beaten up by the kids he was there to help and had ended  up in a hospital. Koontz soon realized these kids needed a lot more than a bit of tutoring. they needed forms of moral guidance and discipline, which they were  not getting at home or school. by the end of his first tear in the program, a discouraged Koontz realized that the notion of reforming society through government programs was itself misguided. the failed great Society programs, he writes, are an illustration of 'humanity's hopeless pursuit of utopia through government beneficence.'

*279  Koontz puts his finger squarely on the problem: 'the hopeless pursuit of utopia', the utopianism of the great society  offered no real answer to the dilemma of moral breakdown - to crime and social disorder - because it redefined moral maladies as technical problems that could be solved by bureaucrats. instead of treating human beings as moral agents who must be addressed in the language of duty and responsibility, the Great Society  treated them as objects to be shaped and manipulated. as a result, its programs tended to undercut the moral dignity of their recipients, leaving  millions dependent and demoralized.
again we see the irony:  when we deny the Christian worldview and reject its teachings on sin and moral responsibility in favor of a more 'enlightened' and 'scientific' view of human nature, we actually end up stripping people of their dignity and treating them as less than human.

public housing is another example. in the  1920s, progressives began clearing city slums and replacing them with housing projects built to hygienic and sociological standards. these great, hulking structures  reflected the utilitarian, technocratic vision. they were drab,stark towers of steel and concrete, impersonal and functional, designed to warehouse as many people as possible, as efficiently as possible.
the results? walls that belonged to no one were soon defaced by graffiti. hallways that belonged to no one were soon stalked by criminals and drug dealers. grounds that on one was responsible for were soon dry, dusty and littered with junk. the housing projects designed with such scientific care turned into seedbeds of crime and misery.
many of these projects have even had to be demolished when a housing project in neward, new Jersey, was dynamited, former residents stood by cheering. by contrast, the city mayor mourned 'the end of an  American dream that failed.
yet the dream had Not died. as housing project collapse into rubble, plans for new social engineering schemes are on the drafting table. and these, too, will fail. why? because the source of the welfare-state crisis  is not a few wrongheaded policies; it's the utopian philosophy behind the policies - a worldview that regards human beings as ciphers that can be molded and manipulated,k tinkered with and retooled. to fit the visions of social planners.
the trouble with the technocratic vision is that it reduces individuals to passive recipients of the state's ministrations, thus robing them of liberty and initiative. small wonder that B.F. Skinner's vision of a technocratic utopia was set out in a book called Beyond Freedom and Dignity. the title pressed the point that the only way to force people to fit into any ideal

*180  blueprint for society is to jettison traditional notions of human freedom and dignity.

moreover, when things go wrong, when poverty and crime prove intractable,  (def - hard to control or manage), the assumption is that the state is not doing enough. thus we have bred an entitlement mentality wherein people believe that government owes them support even if they do not fulfill the basic duties of citizenship  - or even if they engage in harmful or illegal behavior.

do they use drugs?
are they alcoholics?
are they able-bodied but refuse to work?
are they having children without the slightest intention of supporting them?
No matter.
they are entitled to government benefits, no questions asked.
thus these dysfunctional patterns are reinforced and the cycle continues. citizens are offered no encouragement to assume moral or personal responsibility for their lives. its no surprise, then, that welfare had spawned an underclass in which dysfunctional and illegal behavior is the norm. by ignoring the moral dimension, by reducing social disorders to technical problems to be addressed with scientific solution, we have crated moral chaos.

scientific utopianism always backfires.
it expands government control
while gradually sapping citizens of
moral responsibility,
economic initiative and
personal prudence.

A Matter of the Soul
but welfare is not the only area of public policy that illustrates the pernicious effects of the utopian myth. when it comes o crime, America's criminal justice policy swings back and forth between liberal and conservative approaches;  from an emphasis on rehabilitation and social engineering to an emphasis on tougher laws and harsher sentences. yet both approaches exemplify, in different ways, the same utopian worldview.
traditional liberalism fixes responsibility for crime on poverty and other social ills. crime is not a matter of the soul,says the liberal; it is a technical problem that can be solved by engineering the right social conditions: devising the right public policies, distributing money to the right places and arranging the right physical environment. this view was expressed at the dawn of the Great society by then Attorney General Ramsey Clark.he enumerated the causes of crime in sordid detail: 'the dehumanizing effect on the individual of
slums,
racism,
ignorance and
violence, of
corruption and
impotence to fulfill rights, of
poverty and
unemployment and
idleness, of
generations of malnutrition, of
congenital brain damage and
prenatal

*181 neglect, of
sickness  and
disease, of
pollution, of
decrepit, dirty, ugly , unsafe, overcrowded housing,  of
alcoholism  and
narcotics addiction,  of
avarice,
anxiety,
fear,
hatred,
hopelessness and
injustice'.

astonishingly, after reciting this horrendous litany, Clark concluded optimistically:  'THEY CAN BE CONTROLLED'.
never mind  how universal,
how endemic, (def -natural to or characteristic of a people or place)
how intractable these problems are;
they are all merely technical malfunctions that can be fixed by applying the right technical solution.

furthermore, since  liberalism regards crime as the outcome of impersonal forces in society, IT LOCATES RESPONSIBILITY FOR CRIME OUTSIDE THE CRIMINAL.
already at the turn of the century, Clarence Darrow, the lawyer who achieved notoriety  defending Darwinism in the Scopes trial, was portraying criminals as helpless victims  of their circumstances.  in  1902,  in a widely published speech to the prisoners in Chicago's Cook county Jail, he declared that 'there is no such thing  as a crime as the word is generally understood... I  do not  believe that people re in jail because hey deserve to be. they are in jail simply because they cannot avoid it on account of circumstances which are entirely beyond their control and for which they are in no way responsible.
today, Darrow's heirs fill courtrooms across the country, wringing pity from juries by presenting wrongdoers as victims of forces beyond their control. this kind of defense has grown so common that it is now known  as the 'Twinkie defense, named for a 1978 case in which a man pleaded temporary insanity after shooting the mayor and the city supervisor in San Francisco's city hall. he insisted that a steady diet of junk food had raised his blood sugar and addled his brain. Twinkies made him do it.

while this LIBERAL APPROACH is often presented as caring and compassionate, the truth is that it is based on A LOW VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE. as Myron Magnet writes writes in The Dream and the Nightmare,  liberalism treats people as passive products of the environment, like corn or alfalfa, that automatically grow or wilt depending on the rain and sunshine.

yet the traditional conservative approach is equally dehumanizing, for it treats crime as little more than a calculation of incentives.
it proposes that crime increases when the benefits of criminal  behavior outweigh the cost of punishment.
therefore ,  the solution is harsher punishments and longer sentences.
I  know this approach intimately, having written many of President Nixon's law-and-order slogans when I was in the White House. how we curried applause in conservative circles with that tough rhetoric!
ultimately this approach stems from a mechanistic philosophy that reduces the world to mathematical relations and truth to calculation. it treats people not as moral agents who are disposed to sin but as complex

*182  calculating machines that total up incentives, weigh them against disincentives and then decide whether to commit a crime.
America's staggering crime rate from the 1960s through the  1980s demonstrates that both liberal and conservative approaches to criminal justice have failed. why? because neither recognizes the dignity of the soul and its ability to make morally significant choices. neither respects human beings as genuine moral agents, capable of both real good and real evil. and neither addresses the need for moral responsibility and repentance.
this denial of sin and loss of moral responsibility has spread across the entire spectrum of our culture, ushering in 'The Golden Age of Exoneration'.  when people are consistently told that they are controlled by outside forces, they begin to believe it. when  things go wrong, someone else must be to blame.
preposterous examples are lion. like the woman who entered a hot-dog-eating contest in  a Houston nightclub. in her rush to outdo the other contestants, she ate too quickly and began to choke. did the woman shrug off the mishap  as a natural consequence of her own zany behavior?  No, she decided she was a victim. she sued the nightclub that sponsored the contest, arguing that their business was to blame because 'they shouldn't have contests like that.

the victim ploy  can be attractive because it frees us  from having to admit to wrongdoing. yet IT IS IN ADMITTING GUILT THAT WE FIND OUR TRUE DIGNITY,  for doing so affirms the moral dimension of human nature. for centuries , Western law codes and social morality were based on a high regard for INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY.  it was understood that human beings are moral agents capable of distinguishing right from wrong and are, therefore, accountable for their actions.

of course, acknowledging responsibility means attributing real praise  and blame - and blame, in turn, implies the legitimacy of punishment. that's what makes moral accountability so bittersweet. yet PUNISHMENT  ACTUALLY EXPRESSES A HIGH VIEW OF THE HUMAN BEING.  if a person who breaks the law is merely a dysfunctional victim of circumstances, then the remedy is not justice but therapy;  and the lawbreaker is not a person with rights but a patient to be cured. the problem, said C. S. Lewis, is that 'to be 'cured' against one's will... is to be put on a level with those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals. but to be punished, however severely, because we have deserved it, because we 'ought to have know better', is to be treated as a human person made in God's image.

*183  Denial of sin may appear to be a benign and comforting doctrine, but in the end, it is demeaning  and destructive, for it denies the significance of our choices and actions. it reduces us to pawns in the grip of larger forces;: either unconscious forces in the human psyche or economic and social forces in the environment. social planners and controllers then feel perfectly justified in trying to control those forces, to remake human nature and rebuild society according to their own blueprints - and to apply any force required toward that end.
of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim  may be the most oppressive, wrote Lewis.  'those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
Utopianism can be maintained only by a kind of willful blindness to the reality of sin and in the end, we actually compound its effects. therein lies the  greatest paradox of all attempts to deny the Fall: in denying sin and evil, we actually unleash its worst powers.

CHAPTER 19 - THE FACE OF EVIL

*185  sin cannot be overcome by human devices of the kind that governments wield but only by suffering and by grace.  Glenn Tinder

What does the  face of evil look like?

a few years ago when I visited a South Carolina women's prison, I learned that Susan Smith had signed up to hear me speak. Smith is the woman who drowned her two small sons by letting her car slide into a lake with the children still strapped in their car seats. her reason? she felt that the man she was dating had hinted that the children were obstacles to marring her.

as I prepared to speak that day. I scanned the audience, wondering what this unnatural mother would look like. I imagined some kind of female Dorian Gray, her face marked by the soul-struggle  she had waged with evil. recalling photos from the newspaper, i searched for her face, but I couldn't pick her out.
after the meeting, I asked the local Prison Fellowship director whether Smith had even attended. 'oh, sure,  he replied. 'Oh sure,  he replied . 'she was in the front row, staring at you the whole time.

the face of evil is frighteningly ordinary.

in Jonesboro, Arkansas,  an 11 and a 13 year old pull the school fire alarm, assume sniper positions and then shoot at students and teachers as they file out of the school. they kill 4 students and one teacher, wounding 11 others.
in Oakland, California, a teenager with a knife chases a woman down

*186  the street, while a crowd gathers and chants, 'Kill her! Kill her! like spectators at a sporting event. someone in the crowd finally trips the frightened woman, giving  her assailant a chance to stab her to death.
in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, 3 boys surround a ninth-grade classmate and stab him to death.  afterward they laugh and trade high fives, like basketball players celebrating after a slam dunk.

in New Jersey, Brian Peterson takes his girlfriend, Amy Grossberg,  across the state line to a Delaware hotel room, where she gives birth. they kill the newborn and dump him in the  trash.

killers with freckled faces.  killers on the playground. Killers who do it for sport.

what does the face of evil look like? it looks like the kid next door. it looks like us.

how can we view this carnage, this unspeakable evil lurking behind  the wholesome grin of an 11 year old and still cling to the myth that humans are basically good.
media coverage of these heinous crimes offered all the conventional answers.  the PROBLEM IS POVERTY.  (but most of these killers were middle class.) the problem is RACE- for there is a hushed racism in much of our perception of crime.  (but most of these perpetrators were white. ) the problem is A DYSFUNCTIONAL CHILDHOOD - the therapeutic catchphrase these days for all abnormal behavior.  (but millions of kids come from harsh circumstances and never commit a crime.)

the only explanation not offered is the one that modern commentators cannot bring themselves to utter:  the dreaded 's word'...SIN.  it is sin that unleashes the capacity for raw evil. it is sin that BLINDS  US TO ANYTHING  BEYOND OUR OWN SELFISH DESIRES.  as the judge said to Amy Grossberg f during  her sentencing,  'if there is a disturbing aspect to your character,... it was an egocentricity that blinded you to the need to seek help and to the intrinsic value of the life of the child.
Sin is choosing what we know is wrong. after he had interviewed Susan Smith's pastor , a reporter for the New York Times magazine concluded with this analysis: Smith 'had a choice between good and evil. she had a choice and knew what she was doing when she made it'.  how rarely we hear people acknowledge this stark, simple truth. we have a choice and when we sin, we choose to do evil.

how have e lost touch with such a fundamental truth? to begin with , look at the  way children are raised today. a generation go, children and adolescents were still subject to moral discipline at school, following a long-standing tradition that regarded moral character as important as

*187  academic ability. teachers believed that pat of their role was to encourage virtue and instill restraints against the ever threatening lure of sin and immorality. this tradition dates back to colonial days when little girls in aprons and little boys in knee britches learned how to read from the New England Primer, which taught the alphabet along with almost gloomy theological lessons.

A - In Adam's fall,
we sinned all...
I - The idle fool
is whipt at school...
X - Xerxes did die,
and so must I.

how different from the modern classroom, where children are taught, above all else, to like themselves. where even grammatical errors go uncorrected lest a red mark damage the student's self-esteem. where 'guilt' is something hazardous to mental well-being, an artificial constraint from which we need to be liberated. as a result, today's younger generation does not even understand the vocabulary of moral responsibility. is it  surprising, then, that we now see kids who show no remorse when they violate the rights of others, from trivial things like stealing a sister's blouse to horrific crimes like gunning down a classmate?
the utopian myth has even taken hold in the home, where the same ideas are served up through magazines, parenting seminars maternity classes and books on child development .  back in the  1940s,  in the most influential book ever written for parents, Dr. Benjamin Spock encouraged parents to reject the old puritan notion of children as savages, prone to evil and in need of civilizing. instead , he urged them to understand  children as evolving psyches in need of attention. for example, when a school-age child steals something. Spock suggests that parents consider whether their child might 'need more...approval at home' and even a raise in his allowance!

the same message was advanced in the  most popular parenting books of the  1960s and 1970s;  Haim Ginott's Between parent and Child and Thomas Gordon's Parent Effectiveness Training. these books aimed at transforming parents from stern moralizers  into sympathetic therapists,  who were to remain coolheaded, nonjudgmental, even professional in their demeanor, calmly leading their children to 'clarify' their own values'.
thus, even in the home, the heart and hearth of society, a sense of duty  has been replaced by a sense of entitlement, a sense that we have a right to

*188  what we want, even if it means violating standards of proper behavior. adults who once gave firm and unequivocal moral direction - parents, teachers, even pastors -  have been indoctrinated with the idea that the  way to ensure healthy children is not to tell them what's right and wrong but to let them discover their own values. as a result, many Americans have lost  even the vocabulary  of moral accountability. sin and moral responsibility have become alien concepts.

just how deeply this has affected us was evident in a MTV network special news report on 'The Seven Deadly Sins',  which aired in Aug, 1993.  a description of the program looked promising enough  - interviews with celebrities and ordinary teens talking about the 7  deadly sins:  lust, pride, anger, envy, sloth, greed and gluttony. but what came across most forcefully was the participants' shocking moral ignorance.
Rap stare ice-T glared into the camera and growled,  'Lust isn't a sin...these are all dumb'.

one young man on the street seemed to think sloth was a work back. 'Sloth...Sometimes it's good to sit back and give yourself personal time'.
Pride was the sin the MTV generation found hardest to grasp.  'Pride isn't a sin - you're supposed  to feel good about yourself',  one teen said. actress Kirstie Alley agreed. 'i  don't think pride is a sin and i think some idiot  made that up,  she snapped.
the program offered not one word about guilt, repentance or moral responsibility. instead, it was littered with psychotherapeutic jargon, as if sin were a sickness or addiction. even the program narrator joined the chorus:  'The 7  deadly sins are not evil acts, but rather universal human compulsions'.
the utopian mind-set has become so pervasive that most people in Western culture have no intellectual resources to identify  or deal with genuine wrongdoing.  for example, when a respected historian wrote a book about mass murderers like Hitler and Stalin, all he could  say was that they were subject to 'mental disorders'.  every one of us is affected by this degeneration of moral discourse, to the point where even Christians are prone to use the  vocabulary of therapy instead of the sterner language of morality.
the question of genuine evil was posed with brutal honesty in Thomas Harris's The Silence of the lambs, a horror novel made into a grisly but riveting movie. in it, an imprisoned serial killer named Hannical Lecter,  a monster who cannibalizes his victims, is approached by a young female FBI agent who hopes he can give her information that will help catch another brutal killer.

*189  what possible reason could I  have or cooperating with you?  asks Lecter.
'Curiosity, says office Starling.
'About what?
'About why you're here. about what  happened to you.
'Nothing happened to me, Officer Starling. I  happened. you  can't reduce me to a set of influences. You've given up good and evil for behaviorism, officer Starling...Nothing is ever anybody's fault. look at me officer starling. can you say I'm evil?  am I evil, Officer Starling?

Hannibal Lecter's taunting question blows away the accumulated jargon that clogs our brains. we do know, both intuitively and from experience, that evil is real. we sense  a force - in ourselves and in others - that has the  power to dominate and destroy.

the fatal flaw in the myth of human goodness is that it fails to correspond with what we know about the world from our own ordinary experience. and when a worldview is too small, when it denies the existence of some part of reality, that part will reassert itself in some way, demanding our attention. it's like trying to squeeze a balloon in you hands: some parts will always bulge out. our sense of sin will always find expression in some form.
take,  for example, the enormous appetite Americans have for horror fiction. what explains this fascination? part of the answer is that these books deal with gnawing questions about the depth  of human evil.  this may be one reason Stephen King's novels top the charts again and again. for in King's gruesome world, evil is threateningly real and supernatural forces lurk everywhere, seeking whom they may devour. normal people are drawn to these grim stories for the  same reason a small child wants to hear the story of the 'Three Little pigs' over and over again, each time delighting in the  way the resourceful third pig heats a pot of boiling water in his fireplace to scald the big bad wolf when he sneaks down the chimney.
Children love fairy tales, especially the classic ones recorded by the Brothers Grimm, because they're stocked  with scary villains - evil step-mothers and wicked witches, ugly trolls and fierce dragons. children instinctively know that evil exists, and they gravitate toward stories that symbolize the bad and scary things of life through fantasy characters - and then show those characters being soundly defeated by the good.
Psychologist Bruno Bettelheim says well-meaning who refuse to read these spine-tingling stories to their children are not doing the  kids a favor. instead, they're denying them a chance to face their very real fears within the safely sheltered realm of fantasy - in a story where the witches and goblins disappear with the words 'happily ever after'.

*190  for adults, fiction can provide a similar function:  a way of confronting  the dark side of reality. Novelist Susan Wise Bauer says adults living in a world of tragedy and pain 'need a Grimm for grown ups  - a narrative that not only explains the presence of evil but offers triumph over it'. 

horror/thriller writer Dean Koontz believes the popularity of his own novels about serial killers stems from readers' hunger for pictures of the world painted in vivid moral hues. in our therapeutic age, we have been taught that 'one form of behavior is as valid as another',  that even murder and destruction must not be condemned but understood, Koontz says.  'in 'enlightened' thought there is no true evil'. but in our daily life, we know this isn't true. this explains why 'people gravitate to fiction that says there is true evil,  that there is a way to live that is good and that there is a way to live that is bad. and that these are moral choices'. people have an 'inner need to see what they really know on a gut level about life reflected in the entertainment they view of the literature they read.

in a world where juries excuse the inexcusable, where psychologists explain away the most inexplicable evils, people are groping for a kind of realism that they find, ironically, in fiction.

the fact is that a utopian framework has taken away the conceptual tools we need to grapple effectively with genuine evil. and when we cannot name or identify evil, we lose the capacity to deal with it - and ultimately we compound its deadly effects....

CHAPTER 20 - A SNAKE IN THE GARDEN

(God) created the fact of freedom; we perform the acts of freedom. He made evil men possible; men made evil actual.  Norman Geisler and Ron Brooks

*193  the best diagnosis of the human condition is 'all in the first few pages of Genesis,  says theologian Nigel Cameron. in those pages we learn where we came from, what our purpose is, and what has gone wrong with the world.
when God created the first 2 human beings, Adam and Eve, he set a moral limit:  'You are free to eat from any tree in the  garden; but you must not eat from the tree  of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die' (Gen. 2.16-7) Adam and Eve were free either to believe God and obey His law or to disobey Him and suffer the consequences. this same choice has confronted every person throughout history.
obedience to God is not just a matter of following rules arbitrarily imposed by a harsh master. obedience to God is a means of entering into real life, a life rich in meaning and purpose:  'See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction...Now choose life, so that you and your children may live'. (Deut. 30.15,19)
And obedience is not simply about external acts. obedience is an internal response to God as a personal being; it is choosing to know and 'love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength' (Deut. 6.5) at the core of God's commandments is not a set of principles or a list of expectations; at the heart of God's commandments is a Relationship. we are to love God with all our whole being.
to create personal beings capable of this kind of relationship, however,

*194  one of the main characters in this battle is a fallen angel, a once-perfect being who made a moral decision to reel against God. this being is called 'the Accuser" or 'Satan' or 'the devil'.  in the first chapter of the Old Testament book of Job, Satan boasts that he goes freely 'roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it' in his search for souls to corrupt (Job 1.7). thousands of years later, the apostle Peter apparently picking up this image from Job, warns that the devil 'prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour'. (I Peter 5.8) in the Gospels, we learn that after  Judas made his fateful decision to betray Jesus,  'Satan entered into him. (John 13.27),  a hair-raising phrase that tells us an evil spirit can extend its grip deep into a person's soul once that person has made the decision to betray the Lord, Jesus warned that Satan's primary mode of operation is  deceit: 'He is a liar and the father of lies. (John  8.44)
Satan's own fall from grace began when he declared his intention to be like God:  'i will make myself like the Most High' (Isa.  14.14) He then enticed Eve with the same temptation: if you eat from the tree, you will be like the Most High, able to determine good and evil. as Francis Schaeffer puts it, Satan is 'the originator of The Great Lie' - that we have the capacity, lie God, to create our won standard of right and wrong. it is a lie repeated so often that it has become the accepted wisdom of our culture.
we can almost imagine the crowds of angels, knowing that all of human history hangs in the balance, watching in tense silence as Satan makes his offer to Eve. and we can almost her then the collective groan of sorrow as Eve reaches out her hand and grasps the fruit. she has believed the lie!

'she also gave some (of the fruit) to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it'. (Gen. 3.6) in these utterly simple words lies the explanation for the human dilemma that has bowed generations upon generations under a load of suffering and pain. Adam and Eve's sin was not eating a piece of fruit. their sin was coveting godlike power, craving something that was not rightfully theirs. they  rejected their nature as created, limited, finite beings, and they tried to be what they could never be - divine. they wanted to be their own god.
this single choice to disobey a divine command introduced the moral battle of the heavenlies into the earthly arena, with consequences that will reach to the end of history. the original sin in the Garden has affected all of humanity, so that every human being is born into a state of alienation from God.

a convert once asked Nancy,  'Aren't Dam and Eve just

*196  symbols for all humanity and isn't the Fall merely a symbol of the sin that traps us all? no, this is not a mythical fable. these were real choices, made by real human beings. as the apostle Paul declares again and again in Romans 5, Adam and Eve's fall into sin was as historical as Christ's redemptive work on Calvary. and the reverse holds as well: Because the Fall was genuinely historical, the second person of the Trinity had to enter history and suffer a historical death and resurrection to bring about redemption.
the biblical explanation of evil is not some intellectual exercise or a theoretical way to explain what's wrong with the world. instead, it carries an unavoidable personal message:  that Each Of Us has sinned against a holy God . as the apostle Paul writes,  'There is no one righteous, not even one...all have turned away'. (Rom.  3.10-12) when we truly understand these words, we are gripped by a profound humility. we realize that we all come into this world on an equal moral standing before god; we all need the redemption that god alone can provide.

virtually every other worldview draws the line separating good and evil, between sets of people: between Jew and Gentile, between Aryan and non-Aryan, between Brahmin and untouchable, between bourgeoisie and proletariat. but the Bible teaches that the line between good and evil divides each human heart. the evil is within us.  'Nothing outside a man can make him'unclean' by going into him, said Jesus. 'Rather , it is what comes out of a man that makes him unclean' (Mark 7.15) we all stand guilty before the Judge of the universe. we are all responsible for the brokenness in our world.

moreover, we all face the same profound consequences, both personally and cosmically. many people are put off by the very idea of hell or by preaching about an eternal judgment. but the doctrine of hell is historic and justice requires both heaven (reward for righteousness) and hell (punishment  for unrighteousness).  this divine judgment may sound harsh and inhumane, but the reality of hell is what makes our choices significant and what grants us full human dignity. for if our actions had no ultimate consequences, they would be meaningless.  furthermore, there would be no final moral accountability and therefore no reason for acting morally, which  in  turn means there would be no basis for a civilized society.
but, the skeptic asks, what about the person who never hears the gospel?  the apostle Paul tells us that all are without excuse because 'what may be known about God is plain to them.  (Rom.  1.19-20) we are accountable for what we know (and by implication Not for what we Don't know). and when we rebel against what we know to be right and true, we eventually pay the consequences.

*197  even so, God always leaves us a way out. He is ready and willing to forgive and restore us. full redemption, as we shall see in the next section, is God's provision for sparing us the consequences we rightly deserve.

BONDAGE TO DECAY

 the consequences of sin affect the very order of the universe itself. most people have a narrow understanding of the term Sin. we tend to think it means that we have broken a few rules, made a few mistakes. so we apologize and get on with our lives. right? wrong. sin is much more  than breaking the rules. God created an intricate, interwoven comos, each part depending on the others, all governed by laws of order and harmony. sin affects every part of that order and harmony - twisting, fracturing, distorting, and corrupting it.
First , SIN DISRUPTS OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD. what was he first thing Adam and Eve did after they ate the  forbidden fruit?  they tried to hide from god. because of sin, humans feel guilty and afraid of god. this is not some neurotic, false guilt, some dysfunctional barrier to living a full, uninhibited life, as modern psychiatry often contends. no, real guilt is an internal signal that we have done something wrong, just a pain is a signal we have done something harmful to our body. when we put a hand on a hot stove, pain tells us that we need to change something we're doing. (we need to take our hand off the burner!) guilt works the same way. it is an awareness in the core of our being that we  have violated the law that governs the universe an have shattered our relationship with the Creator.
Second, SIN ALIENATES US FROM EACH OTHER.  Adam immediately began to blame Eve for his action; Eve, in turn, blamed the Serpent for tempting her  (The devil made me do it'. )  evasion, blaming, finger-pointing, superiority, bitterness and pride  - all the elements of social breakdown  are right there in the early chapters of Genesis.
Third, THE FALL AFFECTS ALL OF NATURE.  because Adam  and Eve were given dominion over the rest of creation, their rebellion injected disorder into all of creation. this is a difficult concept to grasp in our scientific age, but Scripture  clearly teaches that sin ruptured the physical  as well s the moral order. God warned Eve that, as a consequence of sin, childbearing and family life would become a matter of pain and sorrow (see Genesis 3) certainly it is in our intimate family relationships that we suffer the deepest heartbreak. then God warned Adam that when he tried to cultivate the earth to grow food, it

*198  would produce 'thorns and thistles'  (Gen.  3.17-9).  work, which was originally creative and fulfilling, would become a matter of drudgery and toil.

finally, god told Adam and Eve that they would return to the dust from which they were taken. in other words, death and its preliminaries - sickness and suffering - would become part of the human experience. death 'had no place in the original creation,' wires C.S. Lewis; it entered our experience because the physical world itself - including our physical  bodies - was damaged by the Fall. 'It is not the soul's nature to leave the body;  rather, the body (denatured by the Fall) deserts the soul'.  creation itself is in 'bondage to decay' until the final redemption. (Romans 8.21)

clearly, the Fall was not just an isolated act of disobedience that could be quickly mended. every part of God's good handiwork was marred by the human mutiny. this is why the Reformers described human nature as 'totally depraved'. they did not mean that human nature is completely corrupted, for in the midst of our sin, we still ear the image of God, just as a child's sweet face shows through smudges of mud and dirt. total depravity, according to the Reformers, means that every part of our being - intellect will, emotions and body - shows the effects of sin. no part remains untouched by the Fall.
for example, sexuality is good, created by God; but it is often distorted by lust and unfaithfulness. similarly, government was created to maintain order,  but it easily degenerates into tyranny and oppression. the human capacity for artistic creativity is good; but it can be twisted into messages of rebellion and license. at the Fall, every part of creation was plunged into the chaos of sin and every part cries out for redemption. only the Christian worldview keeps these two truths in balance:  the radical destruction caused by sin and the hope of restoration to the original created goodness.

PAYING THE PRICE

only the Christian concept of sin and moral responsibility gives us a rational way to understand and order our lives. an exchange in one of Nancy's college ethics classes illustrates this well. during a discussion on the nature of moral responsibility, one student asked, 'Who are we responsible To?  after all, the notion of responsibility makes no sense unless we are responsible to someone'.

'we're responsible to other people', another student volunteered.  'For example, if you run over a child, you're responsible to the child's parents'.

*199 'but who says? persisted the firs student 'Who will hold me accountable to those parents?

'it's society we're responsible to, ventured a third student.  'Society sets up the laws that we follow and it holds us accountable'.
'but who gives society that right?  asked the first student.

the answer lurking in many of the students' minds was that our ultimate responsibility is to God. any other authority can be challenged. only if there is an absolute Being, a Being of perfect goodness and justice, is there an ultimate tribunal before which we are all accountable. but in a secular university classroom, no one dared say that. so the student debated back and forth,  hoping to find some basis for moral accountability that would not require them to acknowledge divine authority.

the university classroom is not the only place where 'God talk' is taboo. in many parts of contemporary culture, it is acceptable to believe in god, but only if you  keep your belief in a private box. yet Christianity will not remain privatized. it is not merely a personal belief. it is the truth about all reality. Christians must learn  how to break out of the box, to penetrate environments hostile to our faith, make people see the dilemma they them selves face and then show them why the Christian worldview is the only rational answer.
nonbelievers must be made to see that they are in an intolerable dilemma. on one hand, we all implicitly hope to live in a society where divine authority is respected, where we don't  want to recognize an external, transcendent source of moral truth that restricts our own behavior. that would be a blow to human pride and self-centeredness, and a denial that choice is our ultimate right, that we are morally autonomous. what's worse, it would mean that when we fail to live up to that transcendent truth, we are in the very uncomfortable position of having not only to admit guilt before the divine tribunal but also to accept the consequences. this is the price we pay for accepting the Christian answer.
and yet the price for rejecting it is much higher. when morality is reduced to personal preferences and when no one can be held morally accountable, society quickly falls into disorder. entertainers churn out garbage that vulgarizes our children's tastes; politicians tickle our ears while picking our pockets;  criminals terrorize our city streets; parents neglect their children; and children grow up  without a moral conscience. then, WHEN THE SOCIAL ANARCHY  BECOMES WIDESPREAD IN ANY NATION, ITS CITIZENS BECOME PRIME CANDIDATES FOR A TOTALITARIAN-STYLE LEADER (OR LEADER CLASS) TO STEP IN AND OFFER TO FIX

*200 EVERYTHING. sadly, by that time many people are so sick of the anarchy and chaos that they readily exchange their freedom for the  restoration of social order - even under an iron fist. the Germans did exactly this in the  1930s when they welcomed Hitler; so did the Italians eagerly following Mussolini,  who promised to make the trains run on time.

we must ask people to face the stark choice: either a worldview that maintains that we are inherently good or a worldview that acknowledges a transcendent standard and our accountability before a holy god for our sin. the first choice eventually leads to moral anarchy and opens the door to tyranny; the second choice makes possible an ordered and morally responsible society. when jewish theologian Dennis Prager gives speeches, he often asked audiences to imagine that they are walking down  a dark city alley at night and they suddenly see a group of young men coming toward them. Prager then asks:  'Would you be frightened or relieved that they are carrying Bibles and that they've just come from a Bible study?' audiences invariably  laugh and admit that they would be relieved. commitment to biblical truth leads to more civil behavior.
by contrast, no one looking at the history of our won century should be able to slow the notion that if only we liberate people from oppressive moral traditions and rules, they will be spontaneously good and generous. every civilization from the beginning of time has known that lawlessness leads to cruelty and barbarism. even thieves have codes of honor, as the saying goes. moral laws are not stifling rules that repress and restrict our true nature rather, they are directions for becoming the kind of beings God intended when he created us. when we understand this, we see that moral standards are life-giving, life-enhancing, life-enriching truths.
the case needs to be made that a realistic, biblical doctrine of sin is the only safeguard against both the personal tyranny of a Charles Dederich and the impersonal tyranny of a overbearing state, it was acceptance of the biblical doctrine of sin that gave Americans the historically unprecedented degree of freedom that we still enjoy today. our founders built checks and balances on all branches of government because they recognized the need to contain ambition and greed. as James Madison put it, these structures 'pit ambition against ambition and make it impossible for any element of government to obtain unchecked power'. such limits on power protect us much better than any written document guaranteeing human rights. after all, the constitution of the former Soviet Union contained a list of rights even more extensive than our own Gill of Rights, but the document didn't do any good without limits of power.
we need to press our skeptical neighbors to spin out the logical

*201  consequences of their worldviews.denying the reality of sin may appear to be enlightened and uplifting, but ultimately it is demeaning and destructive. it denies the significance of our choices and actions and it unleashes our worst impulses. Christianity, on the other hand, enables us to address societal issues such as welfare, crime, human rights and education. Christianity provides the basis for a welfare system that is both compassionate and morally challenging, reinforcing recipients' dignity and self-respect. Christianity undergirds a criminal justice system that hold people accountable for their actions rather than reduces their stature as moral agents through the psychobabble of victimization. Christianity affords the basis for a solid theory of human rights, regarding all individuals as equally created  by god and equally fallen. Christian education treats children  with the dignity of beings made in the image of God. in each of these areas, as we have seen in the preceding chapters, a comparison exposes the utter bankruptcy of modern utopianism and is central tenet of natural goodness. 

TURNING THE TABLES

of course, the notion of sin is not just a worldview issue; it is also intensely personal. on that level, a realistic grasp of human depravity drives us to God in our search for a solution to our personal guilt. instead of trying to bury it under layers of psychological jargon - where is never stays buried - we can face our guilt head-on, knowing that God Himself has provided a way out.

we frequently hear it said that religion is merely wish fulfillment. this was Freud's argument: Christianity is an illusion we invent to meet various personal needs. and it's true that there are psychological benefits to be derived from believing in God. but psychological reductionism is a game  both sides can play. for it can be said that there are likewise certain psychological benefits from Not believing in God. after  all, the idea of God can be as disconcerting as it is comforting (at least in the short term). who wants to abandon personal preferences and e held accountable to an absolute moral standard for every though and action? who wants to go beyond admitting to a few mistakes and actually confess to having sinned before a holy God? who wants to give away one's wealth?  who wants to suffer for others?
Indeed, we could argue that the myth of human goodness to which modern culture has succumbed is best explained by the psychology of atheism,  which is itself a form of wish fulfillment - a deep desire to e free from all external authority or from any transcendent source of morality. it can be much more pleasant to believe the dogma of the autonomous self, which

*202  reassures us that there are no objective truths making legitimate demands on us, that right and wrong are subject to our own choices, that y our own decisions we create values out of nothing .  each individual is a mini-god , creating his or her own private world. people can even consign their own children to death with impunity, as Rousseau did.

no God, no sin, no guilt. humanity is on the throne and all's well with the world. no wonder the utopian myth can appear, initially, to e so attractive.

by turning the tales in this way, we can show people that the strategy of relegating ideas to the game of mere wish fulfillment cuts both ways. and then we can steer the conversation back to the real issue: the straightforward claim that Christianity is true. it matches our own experience better than any other worldview. it fits reality. it makes sense. it answers the questions of existence.

and yet, there is one question that every sensitive soul raises at some point;  How can God be good and still allow evil? in moments of distress, believers and nonbelievers alike face this seeming contradiction. why would a loving God allow His creatures to suffer? even the most brilliant mind of our century was stymied by this question and in his case it formed a tragic barrier between him and the God that he knew must exist.

CHAPTER 21 - DOES SUFFERING MAKE SENSE?

*203  a God who did not abolish suffering - worse, a God who abolished sin precisely by suffering - is a scandal to the modern mind.  Peter Kreeft

the year was 1942 and the scene was the crowded  front parlor of Albert Einstein's home, where the famous physicist had arranged a tea party for 3 clergymen: a young orthodox rabbi named Dov Hertzen, a middle-aged Catholic priest named Brian McNaughton and a liberal Protest theologian named Mark Harman.
'Rabbi Hertzen here 'provoked' this little party, Einstein began, as soon as the men had sampled the tea and cookies. 'He congratulated me on my open-mindedness when I dropped my belief in a static universe. not long ago, I observed  Hubble's red shifts for myself at Cal Tech.

Einstein leaned back in his chair and lifted his chin.  'Of course, i  have known for a long time that one of the implications of general relativity is that the universe is expanding. and if it is expanding ,  then clearly in the past, it was once smaller. extrapolate backward in time and you end up with a universe that began at some finite time in the past as a superdense ball.

and so,  Einstein  concluded, folding his hands,  'I  have come to accept that the universe had a real beginning in time. but hat are the consequences of this discovery? does it have any metaphysical ,  or even religious, implications?  this is what Rabbi Hertzen asked me and I thought perhaps we could discuss it together.

he smiled briefly. with his touseled hair and bushy mustache, his old sweater and slacks, Ein  was a master at creating the stereotype of the

*204  gentle, absentminded professor. but he used his famous image ruthlessly, disarming people,  then wielding his sharp logic to cut them to shreds.
Rabbi Hertzen fell for the ruse immediately. perched on the edge of his chair, he plunged in eagerly.  'don't you think, if the universe itself had a beginning, there must be a cause behind it?  a capital C Cause?
'and why is this conclusion necessary? Ein gave the young rabbi a sharp look over his teacup, then added in a friendlier tone,  'I know something of science, but when we begin to speak of a capital C,  we have passed beyond the bounds of science'.
'this much, at least, remains scientific,  Father McNaughton broke in, calmly gesturing with the cigarette wedged between his fingers. 'If we observe an effect, we infer a cause,. if the universe had a beginning in time, that even must have a cause  - a cause Outside the  universe.
'Bravo, Ein said archly.  you have just reduced the question to a simple syllogism.
'sometimes the truth is simple, McNaughton retorted with a smile. the  group laughed nervously.

Rabbi Hertzen resumed his argument, his voice slightly shrill with agitation,  'the findings of astronomers are giving scientific confirmation that there must be an almighty Being. as a Jew,  Dr. Ein,  don't you have every reason to find out whether or not this being is the one who gave Moses the Torah?  the almighty One, blessed be He, of the Jewish people. your own people', he finished triumphantly.
'how could any almighty being Not be the God of the Jewish people? Ein asked dryly.
'so you do believe in a creator?  the rabbi pressed.
'i have said it before and I will say it again: I believe in Spinoza's God, a deity revealed in the orderly harmony of the universe'. he leaned forward for emphasis, warming to his subject.  'as a scientist, when ever i find a way to reduce disparate events to some underlying unity of natural law, I am moved by reverence for the rationality at the heart of reality. for me, this attitude seems to be religious in the highestst sense of the word. I call it cosmic religious feeling.

the faces of his 3 guests brightened, while Ein drew on his pipe, permitting them this momentary hope.  'but what I Cannot accept, he went on, is the idea of a personal God who punishes or regards people. my religion has no dogma, no personal God created in man's image. a real scientist must be convinced of the universal operation of the law of causation and he cannot for a moment entertain teh idea of a being who interferes in the course of events.

*205  Einstein's voice grew louder. 'Why do you religious leaders attach your conception of god to the myths of the past? I tell you, you do religion a disservice by keeping up this primitive notion. it's the major cause of conflict between science and religion.
he jabbed his pipe and glared from one man to another.  'i know what it is. your religion has been a tool fro control. you use it to fill people with fear and concentrate power in the hands of priests. that''s why you cling to it - to increase your own power.
taken aback, his 3 guests scrambled mentally for a response. Ein took advantage of their silence.

'for give me for my vehemence. you are, after all, my guests. but please, consider - the argument is really simple. if this personal being is omnipotent, then every event everywhere in the universe is his work  - including every human action, every human thought, every human feeling. so how is it possible to think of holding people responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an almighty being?
his voice dropped to a steely intensity.  'You say God is a being of absolute  goodness and righteousness. but think of this. if he is the one ultimately responsible for our actions, then he is behind all the harm we do each  other. in giving out punishments and rewards, he is in a way passing judgment on himself. God Himself is the source of the very evil he supposedly judges!

Father McNaughton was the first to recover. 'But we have free will, he began.
'this I don not believe, Ein interrupted. Science reveals a universe utterly bound by natural laws, a rational universe. there is simply no room left for cause of a different nature'.
'if we have no free will, how can there be morality  ?  asked Rabbi Hertzen.
'this i do not believe, Ein interrupted. 'science reveals a universe utterly bound by natural laws, a rational universe. there is simply no room left for causes of a different nature.
'If we have no free will, how can there be morality?  asked Rabbi Hertzen.
'Free will. Free will. don't you see, it's an illusion? Ein rubbed his forehead and closed his eyes briefly, beginning to weary of this fruitless exchange. 'when science has probed the depths of the human mind, i am convinced we will find the laws that govern it, just like everything else. so, please, don't rest your arguments for God on arguments for free will.  your religion is constantly being forced to retreat before the advances of science'.
as Einstein picked up his teacup, Rev. Hartman finally found his opening. 'Really, he said soothingly,  we don't have to argue science versus religion. religion doesn't make any claims about the world known by science. genuine religion is a feeling of dependence on the Absolute.

'Hmmmm, Ein said, crumbling a cookie.  'I know you to be a

*206  progressive, forward-thinking man, Rev. so how do you explain away the problem of a God who cases evil? His eyes glinted.
'Oh, I have no quarrel with science or its teaching that we are part of a universe governed by natural laws. but religion belongs in the realm of human experience.  we give meaning to suffering by believing in a God of love and redemption.
'I see, said Einstein evenly. 'We know religion is false, but we believe anyway to meet our psychological needs.
'No! exclaimed Rabbi Hertzen.  'God allows suffering because we learn by it.
Ein took a deep breath and raised his eyebrows cryptically. 'yes I'm afraid we do, he said.  'this has been a mos interesting afternoon, gentlemen. but I have a headache and should rest before dinner.

after his guest had left, Ein wandered over to his music stand and began shuffling idly through the sheet music. he eye caught the title of a piece he had played recently on his violin: Bach's 'Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring.
with a snort Einstein gave vent to the impatience and frustration that had been building all afternoon. he knew well what had motivated his little tea party. he had long nursed a smoldering anger about the suffering of the Jewish race through the centuries and now ominous rumors were coming out of Germany. no, he could not accept the idea of a personal God who allowed such things to happen. and this afternoon's conversation had brought him no closer to an answer.

better to escape into the world of science, where order and rationality offered an alternative to the chaotic pain of personal life.  he opened his violin case and fingered the strings of his instrument. for that matter, music was almost as good an escape. in music  he found the symmetry, the fundamental simplicity, the rational perfection that he craved - the same order he found in his scientific work.

he took out his violin and started tuning up. music would take his mind off these troubling questions that had no answers.

EINSTEIN'S DILEMMA

for Albert Einstein, the greatest scientist of this century, the toughest intellectual barrier to Christian faith was not the question of whether God created the world. he saw clearly that the universe is designed and orderly and he concluded that it must, therefore, be the result of a mind, not merely of

*207  matter bumping around  endlessly in space. as he put it, the order of the universe 'reveals an intelligence of such superiority' that it overshadows all human intelligence. his famous quip,  'God does not play dice with the universe', though directed specifically against quantum theory, reveals his fierce commitment to a causal order unifying nature from top to bottom.

no, what stymied Ein  was something much tougher than the doctrine of creation: it was the problem of evil and suffering. knowing there must be a designer, he agonized over the Character of that designer. how could God be good yet allow terrible things to happen to people? and because Ein could not reconcile the problem of evil and suffering with a good God, he turned away from the God of the Bible.
what tripped Ein up was that he was a determinist. he viewed human beings as complicated machines, doing what they are programmed to do by natural forces, like windup toys. but if that is so, then there can be no such thing as morality, sin, or guilt. if a person's actions are determined, then God Himself must be evil.
unwilling to accept the hopelessness of a belief system in which the ultimate reality is evil, Eins concluded that the only God that exists is an impersonal cosmic mind giving the world  its rational structure. in saying he believed in Spinoza's God, Ein meant he believed in the principle of order in the universe. to Ein , true religion was nothing more than rapture before the rational structure of the universe.
Ein was nothing if not logical. but a person's conclusion is only as good as his premise and Ein's premise - that humans are essentially robots - was seriously flawed. he missed the truth of Judaism (into which he was born) and of Christianity (which he also investigated) not because he was forced to by 'the facts',  but because he had already committed himself to a particular philosophy - a philosophy that prevented him from reconciling the existence of suffering and evil with the existence of a good God.
many people share Ein's predicament, finding the problem of evil

*208  a major stumbling block to Christian faith. so  how can we respond? does the Bible  offer a sound answer that makes sense of suffering? can Christianity answer the heart 's demand for justice in a fallen universe?

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

to see the problem clearly, let's state it in simple propositions. if God is both all-good and all-powerful, He will not allow evil and suffering to exist in his creation. yet evil does exist. therefore, either God is not all-good (that's why He tolerates evil),  or He is not all-powerful (that's why he can't get rid of evil, even though he ants to). throughout history, people have grappled with this apparent contradiction and have proposed a variety of solutions, all of which fall short of the biblical solution. since we encounter these solutions again and again, it is important to know why they are inadequate and false. let's examine 5 of the most common false solutions.

Solution #1: DENY THAT GOD EXISTS AT ALL. the atheist simply throws out the first proposition. if there is no God, then evil poses no problem. or does it?

if we follow this proposal to its logical conclusion, the problem of evil is transformed int something even worse: that Nothing is evil and, by extension, that nothing is good. for if there is not God, then 'good' or 'evil' are nothing more than subjective feelings that reflect what our culture has taught us to approve or disapprove, or hat we individually happen to like of dislike. for the atheist there i no answer to the question of evil because here is really no question. there is no such thing as objective evil we are merely projecting our subjective feelings onto external events.

but does this satisfy the innate human outrage over evil and suffering? of course not. instead, it mocks us by reducing our deepest moral convictions to a trick of our minds. we may be robbed, our children may be murdered, we may die a lingering death, but none ff this is genuinely evil.  it is merely part of nature because nature is all that exists. we may cry out in the night for answer, but objective reality is indifferent to our tears. poet Stephen Crane portrays this dilemma poignantly:

a man said to the universe,
Sir , i exist.
however, replied the universe,
the fact has not created in me
a sense of obligation.

*209  on its own terms, atheism simply has no answer and the pointlessness of our suffering makes it all the more painful.
ironically, though, when thins go  horribly wrong, even die-hard atheists shake their fists at heaven; even those who say God does not exist instinctively blame him for their sorrows.  there are no atheists in foxholes, as the saying goes so let's move on to various religious answers.

Solution #2: DENY THAT SUFFERING EXISTS.
some people attempt to solve the problem  by casting evil and suffering as illusions created by our own minds. this is the strategy adopted by Christian Science and by some Eastern religions. the physical universe is an illusion  (maya in Hinduism) and the suffering of the body is a misconception of the mind. if we train ourselves to think correctly, we can overcome suffering through realizing  that it does not exist.
but can anyone really live consistently with such a philosophy of denial? the story is told of a boy who went to a Christian Science practitioner  and asked him to pray for his father, who was very ill.  'Your father only Thinks he is sick, the man told the boy.  'He must learn to counter those negative thoughts and realize he is actually healthy'.  the next day the boy came back and the minister asked how his father was doing. 'today he thinks he's dead', replied the boy. the power of positive thinking cannot erase the objective reality of suffering and death.
during my White House days, I  personally witnessed the futility of trying to pretend evil is not real.  among President Nixon's small circle of top advisors were four Christian Scientists, including Bob Haldeman and the late John Ehrlichman...

*210  'A logical Christian Scientist  who has committed a grave wrong suffer pangs of guilt and seek redemption; rather the whole mater is as far as possible erased from one's from one's mind'...

Solution #3 PLACE GOD BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.  some people hold the notion of a God so distant and transcendent that he cannot  be defined by any concept  in the human mind -a 'God who is beyond good and evil'. this may sound lofty and reverent, but if the terms Good and Evil do not apply to ultimate reality, then they are mere quirks of our own subjective consciousness. the idea of God as 'wholly other' makes Him so utterly transcendent that our outrage finds no echoing outrage in him. we are still left alone with our tears in the night.

Solution #4: GOD'S POWER IS LIMITED.  the reasoning here is that an all-powerful God would not allow bad things to  happen; since  ad things do happen, God must not be all-powerful. this perspective  is gaining popularity today through a school of thought known as Process theology, which proposes a God who is still in the process of becoming - a God who is evolving with the world and is not yet omnipotent. this God has the best of intentions  (he really would like to change things),  but being finite, he is not able to get rid of the evil that plagues creation. we must direct out hope to the future, when God and the world will reach a glorious new stage of evolution and all ills will be overcome.
this is the theology promoted in Rabbi Kushner's best-seller When Bad Things Happen to Good People, which defends God's goodness by denying His omnipotence.  'God wants the righteous to live peaceful, happy lives, but sometimes even he can't bring that about', Kushner writes.  'It.s too difficult even for God to keep cruelty and chaos from claiming their innocent victims.'  this is a deity who struggles assist the forces of chaos , winning some battles and losing others.

now, such a theology might solve the problem of suffering for future generations, born after God has finally gotten His act together, but it

*211 certainly won't solve the problem of suffering and evil for us here and now. this deity is a kind  but incompetent heavenly bumbler who has little to offer to the many generations who must suffer and die Before heaven has evolved here on earth.

Solution #5 GOD HAS CREATED EVIL TO ACHIEVE A GREATER GOOD.

this is the position taken by philosopher John Hick in Evil and the God of Love. only in a world where we have to struggle for the  good can we freely choose God, Hick argues. the struggle itself is necessary to mature the soul and make us ready to enjoy God forever.

this position contains a kernel of truth, for good does sometimes emerge  from bad things and struggle can, indeed, mature the soul. the problem is that if we propose that God created evil For Any Reason,  even a good reason, then we are back to Einstein's dilemma:  that God Himself is evil and there is no escape, no salvation. for if evil is an intrinsic part of reality, it cannot ultimately be eliminated. besides,  if God created human beings in such a way that they require evil in order to mature, then He made them flawed rather than 'very good', as Genesis 1 proclaims.

the poet and playwright Archibald MacLeish makes this point in his play J.B. ,  which retells the story of Job in a modern setting. a clergyman tells J.B. that his suffering is cause by the simple fact that he is a humble being, for humans are intrinsically flawed.  'Your sin is simple. you were born a man'.
J.B. finds this explanation singularly uncomforting. 'yours is the cruelest comfort of them all, he responds, 'making the Creator of the Universe the miscreator of mankind, a party to the crimes he punishes'.
like Einstein, MacLeish realized that if we say that God created humanity sinful, the implication is that when he judges sin, he judges Himself.
moreover, the notion that God created evil to achieve a greater good is an obvious fallacy, for it is clear that many evil things do not lead to good results. the most gripping expression of this objection comes from the pen of the great Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky in The Brothers Karamzov.

in a challenge to his younger brother, who is a Christian, Ivan Karamazov tells the story of a little girl tormented by her parents.  'this poor child of 5 was subjected to every possible torture by those cultivated parents. they beat her, thrashed her, kicked her for no reason till her body was one bruise'.  then Ivan turns on his brother, demanding an answer,  'Can you understand why a little creature who can't even understand what's done to her should beat her little aching heart with her tiny first in the dark and weep her meek, unresentful tears to dear, kind God to protect her?  do you understand...why this infamy must be and is permitted?

*212  for himself, Ivan insists, he will not accept a God who allows the pointless suffering of even one tiny child.  'Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature - that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance - and to found that edifice on its avenged tears, would you worship the architect on those conditions?

the answer must be no. no sensitive person could respond otherwise. but the problem lies in the premise:  the assumption that God requires evil, even as a temporary stage, to complete creation's destiny. the God of Scripture does not need to build a temporary hell in order to produce heaven. of course, once evil exists, God can and often does wring good from it. but that is a very different point (as we will see later).
so why is there evil in the world? how do we find any meaning in our suffering? none of the alternatives described above satisfies the cry of the human heart. every one of them either diminishes god or diminishes us.  only the biblical explanation is consistent with both reason and human experience, for it alone tells us how God can be God the ultimate reality and Creator of all things  - and yet not be responsible for evil.

FREEDOM TO CHOOSE

how does the Bible reconcile God's goodness and power with the presence of evil? Scripture teaches that God is good and that He created a universe that was 'very good'. it also teaches that the universe is now marred by evil, death and suffering. logically there is only one way to reconcile these 2 statements Without denying any element in them:  There Must Be a Source of Sin Outside of God. and that is exactly what Scripture tells us.
God is good and created a perfect world. but one of the things that makes humans (and angels)intelligent beings is freedom. they had the freedom to obey God or to turn away from Him. and to turn away from God, the source of all goodness, is to create evil. evil does not have an independent existence, nor was it created by God, EVIL IS CREATED BY SIN.

the decision to sin was made in the spiritual realm by Satan and other angels, who are intelligent beings capable of genuine moral choice; sin thane entered our world through the free moral choices made by the first human beings, Adam and Eve. from there, the plague has spread through all of history because of the free moral choices humans continue to make.

People sometimes ask, What made Adam and Eve sin?  but freedom

*213  means there Is no external cause. we are not trapped in an endless chain of cause and effect, as determinists like Einstein believe. instead, we can initiate a genuinely new chain of cause and effect. in making moral choices, we are a genuinely new chain of cause and effect. in making moral choices, we are genuine first cases and logically you can't ask what caused a first cause. thus we can resolve the apparent contradiction we began  with: god is all-good, and He created a world that was good  and perfect;  but one of the perfect things he made was free creatures, and they have freely chosen to do wrong.
as we said earlier, it is vital that we recognize the historicity of the Fall. if the fall is merely a symbol, while in reality sin is intrinsic to human nature, they we are back to Einstein's dilemma:  that God created evil and is implicated in our wrongdoing. Scripture gives a genuine answer to the problem of evil only because it insists that God created the world originally good  - and that sin entered at a particular point in history. and when that happened, it caused a cataclysmic change, distorting and disfiguring creation, resulting in death and destruction. that's why evil is so hateful, so repulsive , so tragic. our response is entirely appropriate and the only reason god can truly comfort us is that He's On Our Side.  he did not create evil and He, too, hates the way it has disfigured His  handiwork.

but if God knew beforehand that we would make such a mess of things, says the skeptic, why did He create us capable of sinning? fair question. but think carefully about what it means. in order for God to ensure that we Could Not sin, He would have had to tamper with our freedom of will - to create us not as full human beings but as puppets or robots, programmed to do only what He wanted. but that would have rendered us incapable of loving God or one another, for genuine love cannot be coerced. also, without free will, we would not be capable of moral responsibility, creativity, obedience, loyalty or heroism. the only way God could create being that are fully human was to take the risk that they would use their freedom  to choose evil.
then , once humans did choose evil, God's holy character required justice. He could not ignore it, overlook it, or simply wipe the slate clean and start over again. once the scales of justice had been tipped, they had to be balanced. once the moral fabric of the universe had been torn, it had to be mended.
in that case, says the skeptic, the human race should have ended with Adam and Eve. they should have been punished for their rebellion, cast into hell and that would have been the end of human history. ah, but God is merciful as well as justice had been tipped,  they had to be balanced. once the moral fabric of the universe had been torn, it had to be mended.

in that case, says the skeptic, the human race should have ended with Adam and Eve. they should have been punished for their rebellion, cast into hell, and that would have been the end of human history, ah, but God is merciful as well s just and He devised and astonishing alternative: He Himself would bear the punishment for His creatures. God Himself would enter the

*214  world of humanity to suffer the judgment and death that sinful humans deserved. and that is exactly what He did, through the God-man, Jesus Christ.

this was not what anyone ever would have expected; it was not anything humans could have devised. Jesus met the demands of divine justice by accepting execution on a Roman cross. He beat Satan at his won game: He took the worst that Satan  and human sin could mete out and He turned it into the means of our salvation. 'By his woulds w are healed', writes Isaiah. (53.5) through his death on the cross, Jesus defeated evil and guaranteed the ultimate victory over it. at the end of time there will be a new heaven and a new earth,  free of sin and suffering, where He will 'wipe every tear from their eyes. Revelation 21.4
until that time, God uses the 'thorns and thistles' that have infested creation since  the Fall to teach, chastise, sanctify and transform us, making us ready for that new heaven and earth. this is something I well understand:  the greatest blessings in my life have emerged from suffering and I have seen the same process repeated in countless lives. just as it hurts when the  doctor sets a broken bone, so it can cause enormous pain when God resets our character. yet it is the only way to be whole and healthy.

an ancient document describing the martyrs of the church in the first century says that they 'attained such towering strength of soul that not one of them uttered a cry or groan'. through suffering, God gives all who turn to Him 'towering strength of soul'. because we are fallen creatures,it often takes suffering to detach us from our wrong habits, our mistaken notions, and the idols we live for, so that our hearts are free to love God.
Friedrich Nietzsche, though himself an atheist, once uttered a profoundly biblical truth:  'Men and women can endure any amount  of suffering so long as they know the why to their existence'.  the Bible gives us 'the why',  the wider context of meaning and purpose, an eternal perspective. God's purposes are the context that give suffering meaning and significance.

in his famous doctrine of 'Blessed Fault,' Augustine encapsulated the mystery of suffering:  'God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil at all. '.  better to endure the pain involved in redeeming sinners that not to create human beings at all.

why did he do that? there is only one answer. Love. God loved us so much that even when He foresaw the sin and suffering that would darken and distort his creation, he chose to create us anyway. that is the most profound mystery of all and one that inspires our hearts to worship.

PART 4: REDEMPTION:  WHAT CAN WE DO TO FIX IT?

CHAPTER 22: GOOD INTENTIONS

*217   The bank of operating -room  lamps cast a glaring light over the patient as Dr. Bernard Nathanson surveyed the scene with a practiced clinical eye from beneath his bushy black eyebrows. heavy white sheets  covered the woman's upper body; her knees were bent, her feet in the stirrups. 40 minutes ago she had been prepped with a tranquilizer to ease her anxiety.

Nath positioned the speculum to hold open the vaginal canal, they administered a local anesthetic to the cervix with a hypodermic. he widened eh cervical canal with a metal rod and inserted the curette  ( a long metal instrument with a sharp-edged steel loop at the end) into the uterine cavity. the patient was about 9 weeks  pregnant - far enough along that it took Nath an extra minute or 2 to be sure that all of the inner layer of the uterus was scraped away and the tissue collected for examination.

at the end of the 10-minute procedure, Nath carefully examined the lumps of bloody tissue on the tray to make sure that he could account for all the parts of the dismembered fetus. having satisfied himself that the procedure was successfully completed, Nth turned away from the gurney, nodded to the nurse and stripped off his surgical gloves. after dropping them in the disposal bin, he brushed his hands in a dismissive but satisfied gesture. he'd done a good job. quite routine, yet one did want o maintain high standards.

*218  he stepped over and looked down into the face of the woman under he white sheet. 

'everything's fine, he said. 'rest for a while in the recovery room; then I'll come check on you. you have someone to take you home, right?
the woman nodded, licking her dry lips.
Nath headed for the swinging doors leading to the surgeon's rest area, where he would take a short break before returning to the table for the afternoon patients. another lineup of terrified, often grief-stricken women.
no one watching the scene in the operating room would have guessed that the woman on the gurney was Nathanson's lover...or that he had just aborted his own child.

for Dr. Bernard Nathanson in the mid-1960s this scene typified the new world of reproductive freedom. he had campaigned vigorously for the legalization of abortion, and in his eyes, his intentions were good and reasonable. even righteous.  after all, when he had begun his residency at the obstetric and gynecologic clinic at New York's Woman's Hosp  10 years earlier, he had seen hundreds of emergency cases resulting from illegal abortions. and the outcomes differed markedly, depending on the woman's social and economic situation.

poor women arrived hemorrhaging badly, running high fevers, in shock. they had either attempted to induce abortion themselves, using crude instruments,  or they had been butchered by quacks. the massive infections that often followed frequently resulted in sterility and many times they led to the need for a hysterectomy. some women even died.
by contrast, affluent private patients had it easy. together with sympathetic doctors, they contrived ways of faking miscarriages, which meant that Nathanson and other residents would then perform a D &C (dilation and curettage (def - removing tissues from body cavities). or the women simply flew off to Puerto Rico, England or Japan and had the procedure done there.

it was this social inequity that first motivated Bernard Nathanson to  campaign for the legalization of abortion. in 1969, he teamed up with Lawrence Lader to found the National Abortion rights action League (then known as the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws).  the organization helped to enlist feminists, including Betty Frieda, in the cause of abortion on demand;  but it was the 2 men , Nathanson and Lader, who crafted the movement's strategy against its most formidable opponents and

*219  did much to define abortion as a 'woman's issue' on which only feminists are permitted to express an opinion. it was also Nathanson and Lader who determined that the Catholic hierarchy should be demonized as an elite club of white males who were insensitive to women's problems.

in 1970, when New York liberalized its abortion laws, Nathanson began running the nation's largest abortion clinic, the Center for Reproductive and Sexual Health (known to staff members by its acronym, CRASH). located in Manhattan, the facility thrived on referrals from the Reverend Howard Moody's Clergy Consultation service on Abortion, a network of Protestant ministers and Jewish rabbis. Nath took pride in the clinic's high professional standards and in the success of its outpatient surgical model.
in 1973,  however, when Roe v. Wade made abortion on demand legal across the country, Nath decided to make a career change. he accepted a position as chief of obstetrical service at St. Luke's Hospital Center and went from tending mothers to tending babies (although he continued to perform abortions). his task was to organize a sophisticated perinatology unit, complete with electronic fetal-monitoring machines and other expensive equipment to treat ailing newborns.

at the time, one of the most exciting new gadgets was the ultrasound machine, which literally opened a window on fetal development. the first time nah saw an ultrasound in action, he was with a group of residents gathered around a pregnant patient in a darkened examining room, watching a demonstration by a technician.
the technician applied a conductive gel to the woman's abdomen and then began working a handheld sensor over her stomach. as the splatter on  the video screen clarified, Nath was amazed. he could see a throbbing heart! when the technician focused closely on the image, Nath could see ll 4 chambers pumping. it looked like an animated blossom, with such thickness and definition  that it took his  breath away. he could also see the major vessels leading to and from the cardiac rose. 

the technician next brought the baby's forehead,m eyes and mouth into focus. then, by zooming out, the technician showed that the baby had its hands folded over its face. right hand, left hand. on each one, Nath counted 4 fingers and a thumb.
the view from above the crown of the  baby's head showed the development of the brain, where the first folds could be seen. then the technician scanned the elegant architecture of the spine.

was it a boy or a girl? just like expectant parents, the group couldn't

*220 help wondering. it was a girl. then finally, the technician showed the bone structure of the legs and each foot with 5 perfect toes.
during the course of the scan, Nath noticed that his mind had dropped the word Fetus in favor of Baby. suddenly everything he had been learning about the child in the womb since his entry into the field of perinatology snapped  into focus. for example, he knew that a fertilized human egg becomes a self-directed entity very early, after it has multiplied into only 4 cells; that the heartbeat begins as early as the  18th day after conception; that at 6 weeks  the major organ systems have formed. in fact after  only 12 weeks , No new anatomical developments occur;  the child simply  grows larger and more capable of sustaining life outside the womb.
all these had been only medical facts, but now they coalesced with the  grainy image on the screen and crushed into Nath's consciousness. he felt a chill along his spine and the air in the  room seemed to grow denser, making it hard for him to breathe. his mood swung from the exaltation of new knowledge o a brow-sweating panic as the question hit him: How many babies just like this little girl had he himself cut to pieces?  who many human lives had he taken?

Bernard Nathanson soon became convinced that human life existed within the womb from the onset of pregnancy.in an article he wrote for the New England Journal of Medicine, he confessed that at CRASH  he had presided over '60,000 deaths'. in abortion 'we are taking life,  he wrote ,  'and the deliberate taking of life, even of a special order and under special circumstances, is an inexpressibly serious matter'.  while he did not conclude that abortion was wrong, he did say that physicians 'must work together to create a moral climate right enough to provide for abortion, but sensitive enough to life to accommodate a profound sense of loss'.
Nath's article caused heated controversy and the public attention forced him to think even more closely about the morality of abortion.
the article also generated a new development that took Nth by surprise. he  began receiving invitations to speak at pro-life gathers  - groups that consisted largely of devoutly religious people, whether Catholics, conservative Protestants, or Orthodox Jews. although Nath accepted the invitations, he always made it clear that his objections to abortion were not based on any religious beliefs but proceeded from scientific facts and purely humanitarian conclusions. when his first book Aborting America, was

*221 published in  1979, he even criticized what he saw as specious arguments and false rhetoric used by some pro-life activists.
yet by this time, Nath had decided that abortion could be justified  only when the life of the mother was threatened. the same year that Aborting America was published, Nath stopped performing abortions. he had always believed that a society's morality must be judged by its treatment of the weak and defenseless, and his own early work for abortion reform had been inspired by a concern for the poor. but ultrasound technology had revealed to him an even more vulnerable class:  the unborn.

one day, Nath had a brainstorm. since ultrasound could reveal the  baby in womb, it could also be used to witness an abortion. he asked a colleague who was performing several abortions a day to put an ultrasound device on a few of the patients and, with their permission, tape the procedure.

Nath knew quite well what happened in an abortion. yet when he saw abstract concepts transformed into vivid images - when he actually witnessed tiny bodies being torn limb  from limb - he was startled and revolted. even more sickening, the ultrasound showed the  babies desperately trying to wriggle away from the suction apparatus. one 12-week fetus continued to struggle  even after it had been severely maimed, opening his mouth in what looked horrifyingly like a scream of fear and pain.

Nath made the tape of the 12-week fetus into a film and titled it The Silent Scream. when it was released in  1985,  it instantly transformed the nature of the abortion debate. Pro-abortion forces raged, accusing Nath and the producers of faking the footage. when the authenticity of the tape was confirmed,  they switched tactics and sidetracked the discussion into the question of whether a fetus is capable of feeling pain during an abortion - as the fetus so clearly appeared to in the film. without proposing any theological position, Nath had forced abortion supporters to acknowledge that abortion is about taking human life.
at the same time, an internal 'silent scream' began to dominate Bernard Nathanson's own life. troubling questions played and replayed in his mind:  How could I have been so blind to the true nature of abortion? how could i have presided over mass slaughter? and with such a crassly utilitarian attitude, as if it were nothing more than a mater of professional competence?

*222 he began a profound examination of conscience, digging into his past to uncover the source of his skewed ideas. his father, Joseph Nathanson, a wealthy doctor, had sent him to Hebrew school while at the same time ridiculing  the spiritual lessons taught there. although the older Nath dismissed the religious claims of Judaism as superstition, he wanted his son to embrace Judaism as an ethnic identity. Joseph Nath,  having escaped the poverty he grew up in, was driven by materialism. now, looking back, Bernard Nath realized he had learned one overwhelming lesson from his father: Don't Let Anyone Get InYourWay.
and he had learned the lesson well. he had even consigned not one, but two of his own children to death. the first time an unwanted pregnancy threatened to 'get in the  way', he was in medical school and he gave his pregnant lover the money to get an illegal abortion. the second time was in the mid-sixties, when he was between marriages and his womanizing resulted in an inconvenient pregnancy.  that was the abortion he had performed himself.
like his father, Bernard Nathanson had grown materialistic and ruthlessly ambitious. his first marriage had been fashionable and without substance. his second marriage gave him his son, Joey, but Nth  had neglected the  boy for an ever more frantic swirl of professional activities and appointments. his idea of parenting was to send his son to expensive private schools. after that marriage ended, he played the swinging bachelor. eventually ,  he destroyed his third marriage as well.

he had lived an 'unspeakably shallow' life, as he wrote later, acquiring lavish homes, trendy autos, trophy wives, wine cellars and horses.  then, as he aged, he sought desperately to recover his youth through cosmetic surgery, bodybuilding and fashions designed for college kid.  'I was dwelling in the suzerainty (def - a sovereign exercising control over) of the demons of sin, he wrote, 'oblivious to all but the seemingly endless carnival of pleasures, the  party that never ends (or so the demons would have you believe").
but the heaviest baggage Nath carried  was abortion. Abortion, abortion, abortion.  how ironic that his one great humanitarian cause had turned out to be nothing less than mass slaughter. Nath  found himself face-to-face with guilt.  real guilt.  not a passing feeling of shame or a confused embarrassment,  but a brutal, crushing, dogged knowledge of his won evil. he was a charred ruin.

off and on during the late 1980s, Nath contemplated suicide. he would awake from fitful dreams at 4 or 5  in the morning, feeling as if he were being strangled by some nameless dread. his

*223  grandfather and sister had committed suicide and he found himself asking, 'Would the people closest to me find my death a relief?
he turned to what he called the 'literature of sin'.  he read St. Augustine's Confessions repeatedly and absorbed books by Kierkegaard, Tillich, Niebuhr and Dostoyevsky - works that described the soul's tormented search for answers  to guilt. 'Your beauty drew me to you', Augustine wrote. 'I had no doubt at all that you were the one to whom i would cling, only... my inner self was a house divided against itself'. Augustine wanted to turn to God, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. Nathanson's own cry echoed Augustine's agonizing  meditations.

but was Augustine's ultimate solution available to him? could Nath accept Christianity?  ever since his childhood, he had associated   the name of Jesus Christ with the long history of Christian persecution of the Jewish people. so instead of turning  to Christianity, he sought relief in therapy, self-help  books, antidepressant drugs, counseling and a hodge-podge of spiritual approaches, from theosophy to Swedenborgianism. all to no avail.

'I felt the burden of sin growing heavier and more insistent, Nath wrote. 'I  (had) such heavy moral baggage to drag into  the next world...I  (was) afraid.

then, in 1989, Nath attended a pro-life rally in New York City  to gather data for an article he was writing  on the ethics of abortion clinic protests. forbidden to participate himself because of a court order stemming from earlier protests (he had been convicted of trespassing), he stood apart as an objective observer. and what he saw there finally broke through his defenses.

the pro-life activists seemed to have an otherworldly peace. 'with pro-choicers hurling the most fulsome epithets at them the police surrounding them, the media openly unsympathetic to their cause, the federal judiciary fining and jailing them and municipal officials threatening them - all through it they sat smiling, quietly praying, singing,  confident', Nath wrote. they exhibited an 'intensity of love and prayer that astonished me.
it was only then, with this vivid image of love pressing in on him, that Nath began 'for the first time in my entire adult life...to entertain seriously the notion of God

almost immediately,he turned from the literature of sin to the

*224  literature of conversion, especially to Pillar of Fire, an autobiography detailing the conversion of Karl Stern, one of Nath's former teachers. as  a medical student, Nath had been fascinated by Stern, the leading figure in McGill University's department of psychiatry. in his book, Stern descried his long intellectual journey from nominal Judasim to a highly intellectual and devout Christianity. in retrospect, Nath realized that Sterns's religious beliefs were what had transformed mere medical technique into medical Care. Nath had been drawn to Stern's methods without understanding their inspiration.
That' The Kind Of Transformation I Want In My Own Life And Practice, he thought.

in  1993, Nath shut down his practice to pursue advanced studies in bioethics fist at Georgetown University, then at Vanderbilt,  where bioethics students were allowed to incorporate religious studies in their programs. he also sought counsel from rabbis,for he had come to other point where he believed he would meet his Creator someday. how could he enter the presence of a just God? the rabbi taught that one can atone through performing good works, through hearing the declaration of God's forgiveness personally and individually? how could he himself be delivered from death - the death of all the  lives he had taken and the death of his own soul?

in the dim hours of early morning he sometimes felt that he had already entered a hell marked 'No Exit' ,  that his 'good intentions' had led him to become,in his words, the 'Mayor of Hell'.  his won sense of justice haunted him. he stood condemned in his own eyes. was here any hope for him?

CHAPTER  23 - IN SEARCH OF REDEMPTION

*225  He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.  Colossians 1.13

 one day in  late autumn  1996, my secretary informed me of a surprising phone. Dr. Bernard Nathanson was inviting my  wife and me to his baptism at St. Patrick's Cathedral, with Cardinal John O'Connor presiding.
I was stunned. 'Are you sure you've got the right name? I asked. 'Bernard Nathanson?
'that's it, she said with a smile.
I had known that Nath  was interested in Christianity; in fact, the 2 or us had been trying to meet for some time, but we had been unable to coordinate our schedules, and i had no idea he had come so far. I confess I  experienced a twinge of disappointment that i hadn't introduced him to the Baptist tradition, yet i was overjoyed to earn that the man who had once been the nation's leading abortionist was now a Christian. it was an invitation I could not refuse.

a few weeks later, on a cold Dec morning, Patty and I stepped along briskly as we walked the few blocks from our Manhattan hotel to St. Patrick's for the 7.30 service. we had been told to go to the back entrance of the massive cathedral, where we were greeted by a smiling young man in a black coat and abroad-brimmed black hat. he introduced himself as Father John McCloskey and led us down a few steps to a basement entrance.
I knew of McCloskey,  a charismatic young priest who had a powerful student ministry at Princeton University. he had also given Nathanson the

*226  good news of forgiveness that he so desperately sought and had guided him into the Christian faith.
Father McCloskey led us to a small basement chapel, chilly  and damp, where  about 50 people were seated on folding chairs. No pomp or ceremony, just a group of believers surrounding a small altar. we could have been eh first-century church, gathered in the catacombs, about to witness the baptism of a new believer in the name of the resurrected Christ.

standing before the altar, Cardinal O'Connor gave a short welcoming homily. then Nath was escorted forward by a young woman whom immediately recognized as Joan Andrews (now Joan Andrews Bell). how God delights in ironies, I thought. Andrews was a former nun who had spent 5 years in a Florida prison for nonviolent resistance at abortion clinics.in the prison, thieves and murderers came and went, while Joan  - her parole consistently denied by a stubborn judge  - sat silently in her cell praying. eventually most people forgot who Joan Andrews was, and she might have wondered if her act of protest had been worth the cost. but God uses every act of faithful obedience and here she was, guiding one of the world's leading abortionists to the baptismal font.

it was a striking moment of spiritual victory. most of the time , we Christians fight in the trenches, seeing only the bloody warfare around us.  but every so often God permits us a glimpse of the real victory. this was one of those rare, illuminating moments, as we watched Bernard Nathanson - a jew by birth, a man who had been an atheist by conviction and a brilliant but amoral doctor by profession - kneeling before the cross of Christ.
my mind flashed back to a day 3 moths earlier when I had joined a group of religious leaders to walk eh corridors of Congress and plead with senators to override President Clinton's veto of a ban on partial-birth abortions. during the roll call of votes. i sat in the gallery, watching and praying. the atmosphere that day  was unusually solemn; the senators seemed to move about  the chamber in slow motion.  the  only sound was the secretary calling the roll, followed by 'yea' or 'nay' responses.

suddenly the shrill cry of a baby pierced the eerie silence...probably the child of a tourist visiting the Capital building. was it my imagination, or did some of the senators turn ashen? the sound of a live baby in that chamber was a vivid reminder of what was at stake in this crucial vote.

yet it made no difference. the vote to override failed.

dejected, ashamed for my country, I made my way though the crowds and down  one floor to the marble reception room just off the Senate chambers. there I saw Kate Michelman, a leader of the pro-abortion forces and a group of her cohorts celebrating -embracing, cheering and exchanging high fives. the

*227  scene struck me a macabre.  (def - gruesome, horrifying) here were well-dressed, professional women celebrating eh right to continue an utterly barbaric practice: a procedure in which a baby is removed from the  birth canal backward, all except for its head,  then the  base of the skull is punctured and the baby's brains are sucked out.
that day, the pro-choicers won an important political victory. and yet it paled in comparison to what patty and I were  witnessing, just 3 months later, at Bernard Nathanson's baptismal service. there before our eyes was the real  victory: God's ultimate triumph  over sin through Christ's sacrifice on the cross.
after the baptism, our small group gathered in an Irish pub on Second Avenue. Bernard Nathanson, Father McCloskey, Joan Andrews, several priests  (most of whom also had been imprisoned for nonviolent demonstrations against abortion)  and other Right to Life activists filled the  half-dozen tables, ordering late breakfasts of bagels and scrambled eggs. speaking softly and with deep feeling, Nathanson thanked everyone for coming.
'All i could think about while i s kneeling at the altar was my bar mitzvah, he said. 'That day i was so afraid'.he hesitated, then looked up. 'Today i felt all that fear fall away. i experienced sheer grace'.

Bernard Nathanson had been redeemed. he was a new man,taking his first tentative steps into a new world of faith and hope, his fears relieved, his tormented soul transformed and eh most vexing questions of life answered.  as i listened to him speak, I shivered with wonder at the transformation that can take place in the human soul. Dorothy Sayers, mystery writer and friend of C. S. Lewis, coined the phrase 'the dogma is the drama meaning that the Christian teaching on salvation has all the artistic elements of a great story. indeed it is the best story ever told. no novelist, no playwright, no movie scriptwriter has ever come up with a plot line so compelling. and it is reenacted every time a person stops running from the Hound of Heaven and gives in  to is relentless pursuit of love.

not all of us, of course, are driven to the depths of despair that Nathanson was. yet all human beings yearn, deep in their hearts, for deliverance from sin and guilt. many try to suppress the longing, to rationalize it away, to mute it with lesser answers. but ultimately, it is impossible to evade. this is the great human predicament: sooner or later, even the most decent among us know that there is a rottenness at our core.  we all long to find freedom from our guilt and failures, to find some greater meaning and purpose in life, to know that there is hope.

*228  this need for salvation has been imprinted on the human soul since the first couple went astray  in the Garden. the  desire is universal and every religion and worldview offers some form of redemption. for the Buddhist, it is nirvana;  for the Jew, it is the atonement of good works;  for the Muslim,it may be heaven after the perilous walk across the sword of judgment.

but religions and philosophies are not the only ones offering redemption. any belief system in the marketplace of ideas, any movement that attracts followers, anything that has the power to grab people's hearts and win their allegiance does so because  it taps into their deepest longings. and those longings are, ultimately, religious.
just as every worldview offers an answer to the question of how we got here (creation) and an analysis of the basic human dilemma (the Fall)) so every worldview offers a way to solve that dilemma (redemption).  but  which offer of redemption is true? which gives a genuine answer to the human dilemma? and which ones are crass counterfeits?

MORALITY PLAYS FOR TODAY

the siren that calls many people today is the one that claimed Bernard Nathanson's heart and soul for so long:  the belief  that THE OBJECT OF LIFE IS MATERIAL GAIN,  that achievement and advancement and sensual pleasure are 'all there is'.  America has a highly developed, technologically advanced industry - the advertising industry - designed to entice us with the promise of redemption through materialism and commercialism.
every time we turn on the television set o open a magazine or newspaper, we are bombarded with the gospel of commercialism: that for every need, every insecurity, every worry,  there is a product for sale that can satisfy our need, pump up our self-esteem, soothe our worry. advertisers devote huge budgets to hiring psychologists to probe the human psyche and pinpoint our deepest needs and longings. then they craft seductive images and phrases designed to hook us, to beguile us into thinking that buying their product will satisfy those fundamental needs.

and since those deepest needs are religious, what ads really trade on is the universal longing for redemption.
this is no accident. according to sociologist James Twitchell, in his book AdcultUSA,  many of America's early advertisers were Christians, often sons of clergymen. as they developed the art of modern advertising, they simply translated their understanding of spiritual need into the  commercial arena.  the spiritual sequence of sin-guilt-redemption became the psychological

*229  sequence of problem-anxiety-resolution. that's why the typical television commercial is,in Twitchell's words,  'a morality play for our time'. we see a man or woman in distress. he has a headache; she has a cold. a second figure appears on the screen promising relief, testifying to the power of the product being advertised. the seeker tries the product and, hallelujah,  the problem is solved. life is blissful. from on high , the disembodied voice of an announcer presses home the advantages of the product.
'the powerful allure of religion and advertising is the same , Twitchell concludes. both reassure us that 'we will be rescued '.
this message takes various forms. sometimes ads trade on themes of personal faith, with slogans such as 'I found it!'  'It's the right thing'.  'Something to believe in'.  Others offer a veiled substitute for a personal relationship with the divine: 'Me and my RC' 'You're in good hands'.  still others suggest the blessing of the Promised land:  'We bring good things to life'. 'Be all you can be'. finally, some ads exploit the rhetoric of religious gratitude: 'Thank you, TastyKakes'.  'Thanks, Delco'.  'I love what you do for me'.
in recent years we've seen religion itself pop up in ads. after all, what is deeper than the need for God? take an appeal to status or pleasure, combine it with an appeal to religion - or turn pleasure itself into a religion - and the allure is all but irresistible.
picture this:  a family battles desperately as floodwaters threaten to wash away their home. with the house on the verge of collapse, the father cries out for help. and behold, the heavens open and a giant  hand descends from the sky to rescue the family from disaster.

deliverance by God? No. Deliverance by All State Insurance Company. the ad co-opts the universal longing for security, which is, at course, a religious longing. one almost expects to see the family offer up a prayer: 'We thank you, All State, for your protection in times of trouble'.

then there's the ad that shows a young woman in church 'confessing ' her miserly ways.  'It's not a sin to be frugal, the preacher reassures her. and the young woman is released from guilt to enjoy her sporty but economical new Chevy Cavalier.
one IBM as shows Catholic nus walking to vespers while whispering about surfing the Net. another IBM as shows Buddhist monks meditation telepathically about Lotus Notes. Gatorade features Michael Jordan running in Tibet and meeting an Eastern holy man, who intones, 'Life is a sport. Drink it up. Snickers shows a football team inviting a Catholic priest to bless the team,  followed by a rabbi, a Native American, a Buddhist and a long line of other spiritual leaders.. 'Not going anywhere for a while? says

*230  the tag line.  'Grab a Snickers'.  a Volvo ad shows a man being bathed in flowing, crystal-clear water. as he looks skyward, a soothing, ethereal voice says, 'Volvo, it can help save your soul.

clearly, advertisers are attuned to the human yearning for salvation - and eager to exploit it. novelist John Updike compares the effort put into commercials, with the fanatical care medieval monks devoted to decorating sacred manuscripts. the goal of all this advertising artistry is 'to persuade us that a certain beer, or candy bar, or insurance company, or oil-based conglomerate is, like the crucified Christ,...the gateway to the good life'.  modern advertising makes 'every living room a cathedral', and places within it ,  every 6 minutes or so, the icons of modern culture -'votive objects as luxurious and loving as a crucifixion by Grunewald or a pieta by Michelangelo.

Calvin Coolidge, our 30th president, once told the American Association of Advertising Agencies that 'advertising ministers to the spiritual side of trade'. it is part of the 'greater work of the regeneration and redemption of mankind'.  Regeneration? Redemption? through advertising, the 'religion' of appetite and ego gratification is offered to us as a solution to the human dilemma, a comfort in our insecurities, a way of salvation. the most advanced tools of communication and persuasion are being used o press us into the service of America's most popular deity, the idol of consumerism.
but as Bernard Nathanson would tell you, material goods and consumer items offer no comfort when one enters the dark night of the soul. as some people have said, the poor are better off than the rich because the poor still think money will buy happiness; the rich know better.

practicing the religion of consumerism is lie drinking salt water:  the more you drink, the thirstier you get. thee is never enough wealth and power to satisfy, never enough material possessions to blot out guilt. and no matter how pleasant or attractive such things can make our brie existence here on earth, they cannot carry us beyond. for the old adage is apt: You can't take it with you.

though consumerism is America's favorite substitute religion, it is not the only one. others have proven equally seductive...and even more destructive.

CHAPTER 24 - DOES IT LIBERATE?

one of the most dangerous errors instilled into us by the 19th century progressive optimism is the idea that civilization is automatically bound to increase and spread. the lesson of history is the opposite.
C.S. Lewis

*231 when Diane went off to college in  1967,  she also went off the deep end.  within weeks she was smoking pot, flouting her childhood faith and mouthing slogans about women's liberation.

today, Diane has returned to her Christian faith and no longer calls herself a feminist.  'I got tired of being a victim, she explains. 'I used to read the feminist books by the armload. then one day it hit me. all those books were the same! every problem a woman might have was explained by saying that someone, somewhere had done her wrong - as if women were weak,passive creatures.it was pathetic'.
Diane hands changed hr mind, but millions still march behind the banner of women's liberation - along with a host of other liberation ideologies.  across the nation, groups gather around ideologies of gender, race and sexual orientation, seething with rage over alleged oppressions of one kind or another.
to understand the appeal these groups exert, we need to understand their underlying worldview. according to these groups , what is the human dilemma, the source of suffering and injustice? oppression by whites or males or heterosexuals or some other group. what is the solution, the way to justice and peace? raising our consciousness and rising up against the oppressor. thus, the promise of liberations ultimately a promise of redemption.
all the liberation ideologies in the marketplace of ideas today are

*232  variations on a single theme that has been pervasive in Western though;t since the 19th century:  that history is moving forward toward a glorious consummation. this is sometimes dubbed the 'myth of progress', or , in the words of British philosopher Mary Midgley,  'what Escalator Myth,' and it is a secularization of the Christian teaching of divine providence. whereas Christianity teaches that history is moving toward the kingdom of God,  the Escalator Myth reassures us that we are evolving toward an earthy utopia that is the product of human effort and ingenuity.

along with the denial of sin, the idea of inevitable progress has fueled the great utopian movements that we traced in the previous section. this idea first took hold through the work of the 19th century German philosopher George Friedrich Hegel. until that time, the world had been pictured as a static ladder of life.  everything had its niche on a rung on this great ladder -from rocks to plants to animals to humans to angels to God Himself.  but Hegel did something entirely new, something really breathtaking. he tilted the ladder of life on its side, so that instead of being a list of all the things that exist in the world at any one time, it became a series of Stages through which the world passes during the course of history. thus the ladder was transformed into a dynamic series of steps:  everything moves from one rung to the next in an endless progress toward perfection.

as a result of Hegel's influence, everything was seen as subject to evolution - not just living things but also customs, cultures and concepts. the universe was thought to be  in a process of constant change, caught up in a great transformation from primitive beginnings to some exalted future. in every field, from biology to anthropology, from law to sociology, there was a fevered search for 'laws of development' that would reveal the pattern of history and the direction of evolution, providing people with guidance on how to live in accord with that great movement toward a better world. there was great optimism that the best human minds could uncover the laws of progress and lead us forward into utopia - a substitute vision of heaven. philosophers and thinkers began vying with one another to be the one to unveil the path to the earthly heaven, the means of redemption.

NEO-MARXISM IS ALIVE AND WELL

Hegel's best-known disciple was Karl Marx and Marxism is best understood as a prime example of the Escalator Myth - of and effort by the modern

*233  mind to secularize the kingdom of God, to create a purely human heaven here on earth. marxism may be discredited as a political theory in most parts of the world today, but it lives on in updated form in various liberation movements, as we noted at the beginning of this chapter. the cast has changed, but the plot is the same.
in the classic marxist drama of history,  the oppressed were the proletariat (urban factory workers);  in the newer multiculturalist ideologies, the oppressed are women, blanks or homosexuals. in classic Marxism, the proletariat will rise up against their oppressors - the capitalists; in the updated forms, people of various colors and genders are likewise called to harness their rage and do battle against their oppressors - usually white male heterosexuals.

the politically correct campus today offers countless variations on the Marxist theme,  but the common core of all these variations is revealed by the way they overlap and complement on another. the University of California at Santa Barbara offers a course listed as Black Marxism, linking Marxism and black liberation. Brown University connects black and homosexual liberation in a course listed as Black Marxism, linking Marxism and black liberation. Brown University connects black and homosexual liberation in a course called Black lavender: Study of Black Gay/Lesbian Plays. UCLA relates Hispanic ethnicity with homosexuality in a course listed as Chicana lesbian Literature. Villanova  combines feminism with  environmentalism in a course titled Eco-feminism. and Stanford University mixes everything in a single cauldron with a course its catalog lists as Women of Color:  the Intersection of Race, Ethnicity, Class and Gender.  as a result of this massive politicization of education, college students are being taught to apply Marxist categories to law, politics, education, family studies and many other fields.

what all this means is that marxism, though largely discredited as a political ideology, is still very much above and well in Western intellectual life. reborn as multiculturalism and political correctness, it remains one of the most widespread and influential forms of counterfeit salvation. government-mandated group rights and other outgrowths of multiculturalism are even being read into the US Constitution, so that though original Marxism never took over our nation, this reborn marxism may yet do so.

A GULAG  IN THE END

 while Karl Marx hunched over his books in the British Museum in the ind-nineteenth century, feverishly philosophizing,  what he eventually came up with was a full-blown alternative religion. in the beginning was a creator:

*234  namely, matter itself. in marxism the universe is a self-originating, self-operating machine, generating its own power and running by its own internal force toward a final goal - the  classless, communistic society. Marx's  disciple, Lenin, stated the doctrine in explicitly religious language: 'We may regard the material and cosmic world as the supreme being, as the cause of all causes, as he creator of heaven and earth.
marxism's counterpart to the Garden of Eden is the state of primitive communism. and the original sin was the creation of private property and the division of labor, which caused humanity to fall from its early state of innocence into slavery and oppression. from this follow all the subsequent evils of exploitation and class struggle.
in this drama, redemption is wrought by reversing the original sin: destroying  the private ownership of the means of production. and the redeemer is the proletariat, who will rise up against the capitalist oppressors. in the words of historian Robert Wesson,  'The savior-proletariat (will) by its suffering redeem mankind and bring the kingdom of Heaven on earth'.

the Day of judgment, in Marxist theology,  is the day of revolution, when the evil bourgeoisie will be damned. it is significant that Marx called not for repentance but for revolution.  Why? because, like Rousseau, he regarded humanity as inherently good. he believed that evil and greed arise from the economic structures of society (private property) and therefore they can be eliminated by a social revolution that destroys the old economic system and institutes a new one.

finally, like all religions, Marxism has an eschatology (a doctrine of the final event so history). in Christianity, the end of time is when the original perfection of God' creation will be restored and sin and pain will be not more. in marxism the end of history is when the original communism will be restored and class conflict will be no more. paradise will be ushered in by the efforts of human beings whose consciousness has been raised. Marx looked forward to this inevitable consummation of history as eagerly as any Christian anticipates the Second Coming.

Marxism is a secularized vision of the kingdom of God, writes theology professor Klau Bockmuehl. 'It 'it is the kingdom of man. the  race will at last undertake to create for itself that 'new earth in which righteousness dwells'.  Marxism promises to solve the human dilemma and create the New man living in an ideal society.
these religious elements explain Marxism's puzzling powers of endurance. most of Marx's specific theories have failed spectacularly and his promise of a classless society has never come to pass, despite countless marxist-inspired revolutions around the globe.

*235  why , then, is marxism still so popular/ Why do so many liberation movements today adopt marxist categories and analysis? why have multi-culturalism and political correctness cut a huge swath across the university campus, sweeping up student s like Diane and teaching them to view the world through the lens of aggrieved self-righteousness? precisely because marxism aims at an essentially religious need,tapping into humanity's hunger for redemption.

Marx himself knew he was offering a militantly atheistic counter part of Christianity.  'Marx was confirmed at 15 and for a time seems to have been a passionate Christian, says historian Paul Johnson. but ultimately he rejected the biblical God, denouncing religion as 'the illusory sun around which man revolves, until he begins to revolve around himself.

Marx's ultimate goal was autonomy. he wrote: 'a Being only considers himself independent when he stands on his own feet and he only stands on his own feet when he owes his Existence to himself'.  but person cannot be independent i he is the creation of a personal God, for then 'he lives by the grace of another. so Marx determined to become hi own master, a God to himself.

this is the root of Marxism, and it is the point where we must begin to critique it. how plausible is this insistence on absolute autonomy?  ironically Marx himself admitted that it is highly Implausible. belief in a creator , he acknowledged, is 'very difficult to dislodge from popular consciousness'; at the same time, to most people the notion of absolute autonomy is 'incomprehensible'. Why? 'because it contradicts everything Tangible impractical life'. in other words, in real life it is obvious that we are Not completely autonomous. we do not create  ourselves and we cannot exist completely on our own. we are finite, contingent, dependent beings -tiny specks within a vast universe, a mere eddy within the  ever flowing stream of history.
the conclusion is that Marx's world view is fatally flawed; it does not match up with reality. and Marx himself admitted as much in acknowledging that his philosophy 'contradicts everything' in 'practical life'. Marx is a living example of the apostle Paul's description of unbelievers:  they Know the truth and still they suppress it. Romans  1.18-32

as a young man, Marx wrote poetry,much of it dwelling on themes of rage, destruction and savagery. one of his surviving pieces includes these lines:

The I will wander godlike and victorious
through the ruins of the world
and, giving my words an active force.
i will feel equal to the creator. 

*236  here he reveals the ultimate religious motivation behind his philosophy: to be equal to the Creator, to  give his own words the active force of God's creative words.

Mar's self-deification has had disastrous results for millions, leading to war, massacre and labor camps. 'apply Marxism in any country you want, you will always find a Gulag in the end, says French philosopher Bernard-henri Levi, himself a former Marxist. because revolutionaries are confident  that the next state in history will automatically represent progress, that any change will be for the better, they readily tear down and destroy the existing order - which historically has often meant killing off anyone who resists, from rulers to peasants. moreover, because Marxism assumes that the reconstruction of social and economic institutions is enough to usher in harmony and peace, it puts no moral restraints on the leaders in the new order. because it denies the evil in human nature, it does not recognized the need to place checks and balance on the individuals in power, allowing them to accrue absolute power. and we all know what absolute power does.

Marxism is a substitute religion that wreaks devastation and death. and today's liberation movements, which  depend heavily on the Marxist worldview, are inherently religious as well. they may have dropped Marx's focus on economics in favor of race or gender or ethnicity, but the basic thought forms remain the same - and they are equally flawed and dangerous.

and for those who really believe in salvation through the Escalator myth, the sexiest for of liberation is...sex itself.

CHAPTER 25 - SALVATION THROUGH SEX

 'All the intellectual and cultural breakthroughs of modernity were in some way or other linked to the sexual desires their progenitors knew to be illicit but which thy chose nonetheless. their theories were ultimately rationalizations of choices they knew to be wrong.'  E. Michael Jones

in his 1967 novel An exile, Madison Jones portrays a sheriff who is drawn into adultery with a young woman - and has an experience of transcendence.  as they lie in bed together , moonlight falls on colored windowpanes in the turret above them reminding the sheriff of a stained-glass window in the church he attended as a child.
'figured in the glass, in dull colors of blue and yellow and red, was a picture of Jesus blessing the children, Jones writes,  and from that window there fell upon him just such a light as this - a light that was the color of grace, that was God's grace itself descending through the window upon them all. '

gazing at the young woman seeping beside him, the sheriff muses, 'It was grace, the preacher had said, that made sinless, sinful man; and there he sat bathed in it. new-born in grace. was it not strange that now, with the sweat of his sin barely yet dry upon him, he should feel as he had felt then?'

strange indeed. for the sheriff's relationship with this young woman is solely sexual. he does not love her and she does not love him. in fact, as the reader later discovers, she has been coerced into the relationship by her father, who is engaged in criminal activity and hopes to corrupt the sheriff.  still, this loveless, utilitarian, purely physical encounter is portrayed as an avenue for a religious experience.
'like new, (the sheriff) thought: purged of the old body and the old

*238  mind. so this was grace...' the sheer physical act of intercourse, even in a sinful, loveless relationship, is portrayed paradoxically as a means of grace.

medieval mystics used meditation and self-denial to achieve transcendence and to commune with the sacred; modernists use sex.
sex is a vital part of God's created order, a sacred part of the marriage covenant; and our sexual nature is a good gift from God. but for many modern thinkers, sexuality has become the basis for an entire worldview, the source of ultimate meaning and healing, a means of redemption. sex has been exalted to the means of raising ourselves to the next level of evolution, creating a new kind of human nature and an advanced civilization. in short sexuality has been transformed into another version of the Escalator Myth.
where do these near mystical ideas of sexuality come from? in large measure, they stem from Rousseau, who taught that human nature was good and that evil was the result of the constraints  of civilization, with its moral rules and social conventions. in the 19th century, Freud attributed neurosis to the constraints  of moral rules and the guilt they produce. then, as science learned more about the physiology of sexuality - for example, the action of the glands - these same ideas were dressed up in scientific garb.
for example, in the early 20th century Margaret Sanger, who is generally remembered as an early champion of birth control, taught a broad philosophy of sexuality,  a philosophy reinforced by science. she contended that sexual restraint suppresses the activity  of the sex glands and thus injures health and dulls the intellect.  thus science itself, she argued, supports sexual liberation.

the drama of history, by Sanger's account, consists of a struggle to free our bodies and minds from the constraints of morality, the prohibitions that destroy and impoverish human nature, she adamantly opposed 'the 'moralists' who preached abstinence, self-denial and suppression', and described Christian ethics as 'the cruel morality of self-denial and 'sun'. she hoped to replace it with her own morality of sexual liberation promising that the release of sexual energies was 'the only method' by which a person could find 'inner peace and security and beauty'.  and also the only method for overcoming social ills:  'Remove the constraints and prohibitions which now hinder the release of inner energies, (and ) most of the larger evils of society will perish'.

what Sanger offered was nothing less than a doctrine of salvation in which morality is the root of all evil and free sexual expression is the path to redemption. she even resorted to religious language, calling on a sexual elite to 'remove the moral taboos that now bind the human body and spirit, free the individual from the slavery of tradition and above all answer their

*239  unceasing cries for knowledge that would make possible their self -direction and salvation'. Salvation? in another passage, she promises that men and women will literally become geniuses through the removal  of physiological and psychological inhibitions and constraints which makes possible the  release and channeling of the primordial inner energies of man into full and divine expression'. Divine? here's a new twist on the serpent's promise in Eden: it's not eating the fruit from the tree in the Garden that will make us godlike; it's the release of sexual energies.

Sanger's philosophy is simply another version of the Escalator Myth in which sexual freedom is the  means  to transform human nature and create the New Man. it is in our power to 'remodel the (human) race' and create 'a real civilization', to 'transmute and sublimate the everyday world into a realm of beauty and joy, she wrote euphorically. and she resorts again to religious language: 'Through sex, mankind may attain the great spiritual illumination which will  transform the world, which will light up the only path to an earthly paradise'.
one of Sanger's contemporaries, Alfred Kinsey, was equally influential in shaping sexual mores and sex-education theories, particularly with his books Sexual Behavior in the Human male  and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, published in the 1940s. Kinsey's impact was due in part to the pose he struck as an objective scientist, tabulating what Americans did in their  bedrooms. but the truth is that he was neither objective nor scientific. like Sanger, he was committed to an ideology that defined morality as a harmful force to be opposed and that elevated sexuality into a means of salvation.

to liberate sex from morality, Kinsey reduced sex to the sheer biological act of physical orgasm. he then claimed that all orgasms are morally equivalent -whether between married or unmarried persons, between people of the same or the opposite sex, between adults or children, even between humans and animals. his model was the animal world. Kinsey was a devout Darwinian who believed that since humans evolved from animals, there are no significant differences between them.  he liked to talk about 'the human animal',  and if a particular behavior could be found among animals , he considered it normative for humans ass well. for example, Kinsey claimed that certain mammals are observed to have sexual contact between males and even across species; therefore, he concluded, both homosexuality and bestiality are 'part of the normal mammalian picture' and are acceptable behavior for humans.
so eager was Kinsey to drive home his philosophy that he employed highly unscientific research methods, such as relying on unrepresentative samples that included, a disproportionate percentage of sex offenders and

*240  other deviants. it is hardly scientific to use such skewed samples to define 'normal' sexuality, and yet, as biographer James Jones documents, Kinsey persistently studied people who were on the margins, or even beyond the pale , in their sexual behavior: homosexuals, sadomasochists, voyeurs, exhibitionists, pedophiles, transsexuals and fetishists.

Kinsey remained undeterred by criticism, however , for his sexual views were not based ultimately on science but on an intensely held personal belief system. in the words of Stanford professor Paul Robinson, a sympathetic critic, Kinsey viewed history 'as a great moral drama, in which the forces of science competed with those of superstition for the minds and hearts of men'. by 'superstition,' Kinsey meant religion and its moral prescriptions. Kinsey sometimes spoke as it the introduction of Bible-based sexual morality was The watershed in human history, a sort of 'Fall" from which we must be redeemed. for Kinsey, sexual expression was the means of saving human nature from the oppression of religion and morality.
another major influence on American sexual attitudes was Austrian psychologist Wilhelm Reich, who became something of a cult figure in the 1960s. his contribution was the search for the 'ultimate orgasm', which quickly became one of the fads of the human potential movement. Rich taught that nearly everyone is in some degree neurotic and that every neurosis is in turn a symptom of sexual failure. therefore, the answer to all human dysfunction is to develop 'the capacity for surrender to the flow of biological energy without any inhibition, the capacity for complete discharge of all dammed-up sexual excitation through involuntary pleasurable contractions of the body'. Rich believed that human beings are nothing more than biological creatures and that redemption comes through complete immersion in the sexual reflex.
the enemy in Reich's sexual Eden is, once again, traditional religion and morality, that 'murderous philosophy' that creates guilt, distorts our drives, and gives rise to personality disorders. he insisted that since nature knows nothing of morality, any moral restraints on the sexual impulse work like a slow poison on the entire personality, in a book aptly titled Salvation through Sex, psychiatrist Eustace Chesser says that for Reich, orgasm 'is man's only salvation, leading to the kingdom of heaven on earth.
Reich's ideas  were incorporated by Robert Rimmer in his provocative novel The Harrad Experiment, published in 1966.  the book sold 3 million copies and helped fuel the sexual revolution. for an entire generation of college-educated Americans, it became recommended reading in college courses on marriage and family and many people credit the book with being

*241  instrumental in the sudden merger of male colleges with female colleges and in the creation of coed dormitories.
the novel portrays an experimental college where the students are expected to couple up in various combinations and permutations in order to develop a free and uninhibited approach to sexuality. the philosophy behind this sexual utopia  is voiced by the professor who founded the college: 'the premise is that man  is innately good and can lift himself by his bootstraps into an infinitely better world'. How? by sexual liberation. it is the means for taking 'one more step up the evolutionary ladder', for 'evolving into a new form of man and woman'.

Rimmer's view of sex is frankly religious, and he has the professor state openly that intercourse 'is actually an act of worship'. or, as he has another character say (quoting philosopher Alan Watts), 'What lovers feel for each other in this moment is no other than adoration in the full religious sense... such adoration which is due God, would indeed be idolatrous wee it not that, in that moment, love takes away the illusion and shows the beloved for what he or she in truth is...the naturally divine'. Sex is portrayed as the path to divinity.
in a postscript added in the 1990 edition of the novel, Rimmer neatly summarizes his religion:  'Can we lift ourselves by the bootstraps and create a new kind of society where human sexuality and the total wonder of the human body and the human mind become the new religion  - a humanistic religion, without the necessity of a god, because you and i and all the billions who could interact caringly with one another are the only God we need? I think we can.'

sexuality is clearly being presented as more than mere sensual gratification or titillation. it is nothing less than a form of redemption, a means to heal the fundamental flaw in human nature. only when we see these sexual ideologies as complete worldviews,  held with religious fervor, will we understand why Christians and morel conservatives find it so hard to reform sex-education courses in public schools. you won't find contemporary sex educator using words like Salvation; nonetheless , many hold the same basic assumption that free sexual expression is the means to a full and healthy life.

for example, Mary Calderone, major architect of contemporary sex education and former executive director of Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS),  tipped her hand in a 1968 article in which she said that the 'real question'  facing sex educators is this:  'What kind (of person) do we want to produce' to take the place of human nature as we know it today? and 'how do we design the production line' to create this advanced creature?

*242  the problem, as Calderone sees it, is that human nature is not evolving as quickly as technology; therefore we must remold human nature itself to fit the modern, ever-changing world a new stage of evolution is breaking across the horizon, she writes and the task of educators is to prepare children to step into that new world. to do this, they must pry children away from old views and values, especially from biblical and other  traditional forms of sexual morality - for 'religious laws or rules about sex were made on the basis of ignorance.

in this new stage of evolution, all currently held values will fall by the wayside, making way fro new values based on science alone. therefore , say Calderone, the best thing we can do for our children is to prepare them  to view all notions of right and wrong as tentative, changing and relative . then, loosed from the old values, they can be inculcated with the values of a scientifically trained elite consisting  of professionals like herself, of course), who know what makes a human being truly healthy. she calls on schools and churches to use sex education to develop 'quality human beings by means of such consciously engineered processes as society's own best minds can 'blueprint' draw n up by a scientific elite.
when we trace the history of ideas about sexuality, it becomes clear that the founders of sex education never did seek simply to transmit a collection of facts about how our bodies work.  rather, they were evangelists for a utopian worldview, a religion, in which a 'scientific'  understanding of sexuality is the means for transforming human nature, freeing it from the constraints of morality  and ushering in an ideal society. it is another form of the Escalator Myth.

yet is we examine the lives of these self-appointed prophets, we find little grounds for believing their grandiose promises. Margaret Sanger was married twice and had numerous lovers -or, as she put it, 'voluntary mates'. she was addicted to the painkiller Demerol and obsessed with numerology, astrology and psychics in a desperate attempt to find meaning, in her life, sexual liberation was not the high rod to salvation that she had promised in her writing.

Kinsey, too, had a secret life we rarely hear about. his goal was 'to  create his own sexual utopia, '  says biographer James Jones and Kinsey built up a select circle of friends and colleagues who committed themselves to his

*243  philosophy of total sexual freedom. since the results were often captured on film, we know that Kinsey and his wife both had sexual relations with  host of male an female staff members and other people Kinsey was also a masochist, sometimes engaging in bizarre and painful practices.

but Kinsey had an even darker secret. in Kinsey, Sex and Fraud, researcher Judith Reisman argues convincingly that Kinsey's research on child sexual responses could have been obtained only if he or his colleagues were actually engaged in the sexual molestation of children. how else could 'actual observations' be made of sexual molestation of children. how else could 'actual observations' be made of sexual responses in children age 2 months to 15 years old? and this is the man whose ideas have been so influential in shaping American sex education.
Wilhelm Reich's life likewise reveals the flaws in his own philosophy.  Reich demanded complete sexual freedom for himself and conducted multiple affairs, but he couldn't stand the  thought that his wife might live by the same sexual philosophy. his third wife writes that he was desperately jealous and forbade her from living as he did. one test of whether  worldview is true is whether it corresponds to reality: can we live with it? obviously  Reich could not.

the truth is that sexual liberation has been no high road to salvation for those who have worshiped at its shrine, instead , the tragic results of sexual licentiousness have spread across our entire society, producing epidemics of abortion, sexually transmitted diseases (afflicting one out of 4 women), and children born out of wedlock, with all the attendant social pathologies, including school problems, drug and alcohol abuse and crime. yet for many Americans, sexual liberation remains a cherished right and the utopian visions planted by Sanger, Kinsey, Reich and Calderone continue to flourish. their ideas still form the unspoken assumptions in the sex-education curricula used through our public school system.
we all base our lives on some vision of ultimate reality that gives meaning to our individual existence. if we reject God, we will put something in his place; we will absolutize some part of creation. that's exactly what has happened with those who look to a sexual utopia for fulfillment and salvation. biology takes the place of God as the ultimate reality and sex becomes the path to the divine.
the irony is that those who reject religion most emphatically, who insist most noisily that they are 'scientific',  end up promoting what can only be called a religion. in fact, this seems to be a common malady among those

*244  who pride themselves on being scientific.  back in the Age of Reason, science was offered as a substitute for religion. but what few foresaw was that in the process, science would take on the functions of religion. and today, as we shall see, science itself has become one of the most popular forms of redemption.

CHAPTER 24 - IS SCIENCE OUR SAVIOR?

Scratch an 'altruist' and watch a 'hypocrite' bleed.  M. T. Ghiselin

*245  when the movie Independence Day hit the theaters in the late 1990s, many viewers had the feeling they had seen the story somewhere before. in effect they had, the film as essentially a remake of the 1953 science-fiction classic War of the Worlds - but with one significant difference.

while both versions feature aliens invading Earth, in the 1953 movie, scientists come up with a weapon that is eventually destroyed. the panicking population is forced to turn to God; churches are jammed with people praying what's more, their prayers are answered: the aliens contract earthborn bacteria and suddenly die off. 'All that men could do had failed', says a final voice-over; deliverance came from the hand of God alone. the film ends with a scene of people standing on a hillside, singing praise to God.
the contemporary update is quite different - signaling a dramatic change in American culture within  only a few decades. independence Day nods politely in God's direction by showing people praying for help. but real deliverance comes through the deployment of advanced military technology"  a few strategically placed bombs blow up the aliens and save the world. Independence Day is a celluloid expression of a widespread belief in science and technology as means of salvation.

the outline of this faith is neatly summarized in Daniel Quinn's best-seller Ishmael, which features a series of conversations between a

*246  disaffected 1960s idealist and a know-it-all-gorilla, who offers to explain what's wrong with the world. The problem, says the gorilla, is that Western culture has bought into the myth of science as savior. The myth goes something like this:  the universe started out about 15 billion years ago with the big bang; our solar system was born about 7 billion years ago; eventually, life appeared in the chemical broth of the ancient oceans, evolving first into simple microorganisms, then into higher, mover complex forms. and finally into human beings. we humans are the apex of evolution, with the intelligence to control nature and bend it to serve our purposes. the solution to our social problems therefore lies in our own hands, through the exertion of human intelligence and ingenuity. through our ever advancing science and technology, we will save ourselves.

SCIENCE AS SALVATION

Quinn has put his finger squarely on the assumptions that float around in the minds of most Western people, many of whom hold this basic worldview without even realizing that they do. because the worldview has no name, no label, no church and no rituals, most people don't identify it as a religion or even as a distinctive belief system. it's simply part of the furniture of the Western mind. yet it is nothing less than a vision of redemption, a surrogate salvation, a substitute for the kingdom of God, setting up science as the path to utopia.
looking back over history, we find some of the first dabbling with this notion in the writings of the 16th century scientist Francis Bacon. in a tale titled New Atlantis,  Bacon depicts an imaginary civilization centered on a gigantic laboratory committed to perpetual progress through science - or, as he quaintly put it, to 'the effecting of all things possible'.

more influential was the 19th century philosopher Auguste Comte, who is honored today as the founder of sociology. Comte proposed that all societies pass through 3 stages of social evolution. the most primitive is the theological stage, where people seek supernatural explanations for events the second is the metaphysical  stage, where people explain the world  through abstract philosophical concepts and the highest is the scientific stage, where people find truth through scientific experimentation. unlike most of his contemporaries. Comte admitted that what he was proposing was essentially a religion. he actually founded a Religion of Humanity, complete with churches and hymns and calendars listing special days for the 'saints' of science and philosophy - with himself as the high priest.

*247  but the religion of progress through science really took off after Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution by natural selection. by providing scientific sanction for evolution, Darwin's theory gave enormous impetus to the idea  of endless, universal progress. Darwin's theory gave enormous impetus to the idea of endless, universal progress. English philosopher Herbert Spencer expanded evolution into a comprehensive philosophy covering all of reality - from stars to societies.  in his system,  the goal of evolutionary progress is the emergence of human beings, who, in turn, will help produce something new and better for the next stage of evolution. Spencer's gospel of evolution became a secular substitute for Christian hope.  as Ian Barbour writes in issues in Science and Religion,  'Faith in progress replaced the doctrines of creation and providence as assurance that the  universe is not really purposeless.
even certain strains of Marxism identify science rather than revolution as the source of salvation. in the early part of this century, physicist J.D.Bernal predicted that after the triumph of the proletariat and the rise of the classless society, there was still one more stage before a real utopia would appear- a strange when a new 'aristocracy of scientific intelligence' would create a world run by scientific experts. in a burst of enthusiasm , Bernal predicted that scientists would actually evolve into a new, superhuman race that would 'emerge as a new species and leave humanity behind'.

the idea of creating a new and improved race is a key component in many forms of scientific utopianism. in the early 20th century, after Gregor Mendel's groundbreaking work on genes was rediscovered, many scientists began to place their hope in a vision of creating the New Man through genetics engineering. in the  1930s, the great geneticist H. J. Muller divided the history of life into 3 stages: in the first stage, life was completely at the mercy of the environment; in the second stage, human beings appeared and reversed that order, learning how to reach out and control the  environment; and in the dawning third stage, humans would reach inside and control their own nature. humanity will 'shape itself into an increasingly sublime creation - a being beside which the mythical divinities of the  past will seem more their own nature. humanity will 'shape itself into an increasingly sublime creation - a being beside which the mythical  divinities of the past will seem more and more ridiculous, Muller wrote. this godlike being surveys the entire universe and,  'setting its own marvelous inner posers against the brute Goliath of the suns and planets, challenges them to contest.
Muller was an excellent scientist, but what he is describing here is not science. it is science turned into a myth of salvation.
this same myth motivates much of the research done today in genetic engineering. Nobel prize-winner Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA writes:  'We can expect to see major efforts to improve the nature of man

*248  himself within the next 10,000 years some people even believe genetic science will eventually develop 'supergenes' to produce human beings with superintelligence or superstrength. this is salvation by genetics - the creation of the New Man by gene manipulation.

REALITY TEST

but will such a salvation really save us? how does this vision of redemption stack up in  a test against reality: not very well.
Science itself gives no moral guidelines for our genetic experimentation. how do we decide which traits we want? do we want to create a super-Einstein or a super-mother Teresa, or even a class of subhuman slaves to do our menial work? these questions  presuppose a standard of values which science itself cannot provide.
more important, the sheer attempt to remake human nature genetically would strip people of their dignity and reduce them to commodities. with technology offering greater choice and control over the embryo's traits, having a child could become like purchasing a consumer product. and children themselves may come to be regarded as products that we plan,  create, modify, improve and evaluate according to standards of quality control. what happens if the 'product' doesn't  meet the parents standard - if they do not think they're getting their money's worth? will the child be tossed aside, like an appliance that stops working? as one theologian argues , human beings are 'begotten, not made', and if we reverse that - if children become products that we manufacture - we do immeasurable damage to human dignity.
unfortunately, objections like these are not likely to be raised in a climate where scientists hold a faith in inevitable progress, for the Escalator Myth  creates the expectation that change will always be for the better. this explains why some scientists reveal a disturbingly uncritical acceptance of genetic engineering. but clearly, change can be either an improvement or a degeneration. new forms of technology can be used in the service of either good or evil. the faith that we can save ourselves through science can be sustained only if we shut our eyes to the human capacity for barbarism.

many thoughtful scientists find it hard to go along with such a blind faith. yet rather than search for another form of salvation, they simply transfer the Escalator Myth to a different galaxy. because  planet Earth is so mired in pollution, war and other pathologies, they say, we are likely to destroy ourselves before we manage to evolve to a higher stage. for example

*249  Stephen Hawking, author of the best-seller A Brief History of Time, warns that evolution will not improve the human race quickly enough to temper our aggression and avoid extinction. our only hope, then, is to link up with beings elsewhere in the universe - a civilization of extraterrestrials who have themselves successfully evolved to a more advanced stage and can help us.

these are not the rantings of wide-eyed UFO  enthusiasts, mind you. both the federal government and private foundations have poured huge amounts of money into the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence  (SETI), scanning the heavens with powerful radio telescopes in the hope of picking up signals from another civilization. if we ever do discover another civilization in space, says Frank Drake, who heads up the SETI institute, 'it can tell us what we might evolve to and how far we might evolve'. these friendly extraterrestrials might even pass on their technological knowledge, handing over 'scientific data which otherwise might take us hundreds of years and vast resources to acquire'.

the breathless enthusiasm that often accompanies descriptions of SETI is a dead giveaway that this search for an extraterrestrial solution is at core religious. and no one was a more enthusiastic supporter than the late Carl Sagan. for him, SETI  was not  just a scientific project; it would be, quite literally, the source of the world's redemption. his reasoning went like this: any society capable of transmitting messages to us must be far more technologically sophisticated then our own. therefore, the receipt of a message from space would give us 'an invaluable piece of knowledge', telling us 'that it is possible to live through the technological adolescence' through which we are now passing.

no such message has ever been detected, of course, yet Sagan offered detailed  descriptions  of the wondrous secrets we might learn if we ever succeed in decoding one. 'It is possible, he exclaimed, that among the first contents of such a message may be detailed prescriptions for the avoidance of technological disaster, for a passage through adolescence to maturity. Sagan never explained how an alien race that has never had any contact with Earth, a race whose chemistry and brains and language would be completely different from ours, would just happen to know exactly what our problems are, or how they would be capable of giving detailed prescriptions'  for solving them. still, he seemed certain that they would offer advice for 'straightforward solutions, still undiscovered on earth,to problems of food shortages , population growth, energy supplies, dwindling resources, pollution and war'.
though disguised as science, this is nothing more than a magical vision of heavenly extraterrestrials emerging from the unknown to lift us from

*250  our misery. a longtime critic of SETI puts the matter bluntly: 'It's a dream based on faith - a technological search for God'.
so this is where the great promise of science and technology leads us - not to a glorious earthly utopia, but to a fantasy-world escape from this planet and from the horrors that this  same technology has created. this view of salvation is no more rational than the demented dreams of the Heaven's Gate cult - 39 intelligent, well-educated people who ingested cocktails of alcohol and drugs in the hope that,by leaving their bodies behind, their spirits would meet up with  a comet and move on to the 'level Above Human'. in their case, the Escalator Myth proved deadly.

none of this scientific optimism, one should  note, involves a change of heart. it is assumed that humanity's problems are not caused by wrong moral choices but by lack of knowledge. for example, Sagan promises that the longed message from outer space will teach us 'the laws of development of civilizations' that will enable us to control society, just as knowing the laws of physics and chemistry enables us to control nature. . what need  is there for  and awkward and troublesome thing like morality when we can control society  for its own good through inviolable laws of 'cultural evolution?'
yet history offers no evidence that knowledge alone will save human society. to the contrary, the problem with the Hitlers and Stalins of the world was not that they were stupid or ignorant of the laws of cultural evolution; the problem was that they were evil. bigger and better technology simply gives people bigger and better means to carry out either good or evil choices.

having confidence in technology is a misguided form of salvation; some things are simply not amenable   to a technical quick fix. it is the human heart that determines how we will use our machines - whether  we will fashion them into swords or plowshares. instead of scanning the skies for messages from other galaxies, it is far more realistic to seek the God who Made those heavens and who came to reveal the truth  by living among us. we don't need radio messages from extraterrestrials; we already have a message from God Himself and it is found in an ancient book that  proclaimed the creation of the cosmos long before there were astronomers around to muse over such questions. The message begins: 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth'. Genesis 1.1

properly understood, science is a wonderful tool for investigating God's world. but science cannot solve the human dilemma and it cannot  give us hope and meaning. and ultimately, those who exalt science into a religion discover this - which is why they finally give in to a profound

*251  pessimism, adrift on a space station called Earth, waiting for a beacon from beyond to save us from ourselves.
but for those less inclined to fantasy, there is no escape from the dreadful realization that a world without God can end only in despair.

CHAPTER 27 - THE DRAMA OF DESPAIR

 so far as the eye of science can see, man is alone, absolutely alone, in a universe in which his very appearance is a kind of cosmic accident.

*253  the more the universe seems comprehensible, the  more it also seems pointless'. with these startling words, Nobel prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg concludes The First Three Minutes, his book about the origin of the universe.
Science reveals that we live in an 'overwhelmingly hostile universe. Womberg explains. it existed long before human beings appeared and it is not going to remain habitable forever. according to current predictions, the universe is headed for a fiery death, and it will take us with it. nothing we do will outlast our temporary span on this globe. life is meaningless, purposeless, 'pointless'.

for many modern thinkers, the alternative  to the Christian message of salvation is not any of the ersatz (def- artificial (replace) salvations we have discussed but a free fall into  pessimism and despair. they have given up, deciding there Is no transcendent purpose, no hope of redemption, no answer to life's most wrenching dilemmas, and the courageous person is the one who faces reality squarely and shakes off all illusory hopes. yet, ironically, even this pessimism is often  held with a fervor that resembles faith. like the literary antihero, who is really the hero, this is an antifaith that  actually functions as a faith.


what happened to the utopian dreams of the past 2 centuries, the vision of endless upward progress? for many people those dreams crashed in the convulsions of 2 world wars that left a trail of horrors, from the

*254  blood-soaked trenches of Argonne to the ashes of Auschwitz. from 1918 to 1945, a little more than a quarter century, the world was shocked  out of its complacent optimism by the inescapable reality of naked evil.
European intellectuals who experienced the madness firsthand, on their native soil, were the first to preach a philosophy of despair. 'there are no divine judges or controllers', proclaimed French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. 'The world is all there is , our existence is all we have'. thus was born the word Existentialism. in Sartre's play No Exit, one character distills the  existentialist creed  to a catch phrase: 'You are your life and that's all you are'.  There is no higher purpose of goal or meaning to life.

Albert Camus, another post -World War II existentialist, probed the classical problem of meaninglessness in The Myth of Sisyphus, based  on a story from  classical mythology in which Sisyphus is punished by the gods who require him to push a boulder to the top of a hill, only to have it roll down again. fro Camus, this mythological figure represents 'the absurd hero', the person who recognizes the absurdity of existence and rebels against it . since the universe is 'without a master', Camus writes, all that is left for the absurd hero is to exercise his free choice and rebel, thereby becoming his own master.
in the 1960s, the works of Sartre and Camus became wildly popular among American intellectuals and university students, feeding into the antiestablishment mood of the Vietnam era.  if naturalistic science leads to the conclusion that there is no ultimate meaning to life - that life  is absurd - then why not seek alternative sources of meaning in sensual pleasure and mid-altering drug experiences?

make no mistake. the 60s are not just an era of long hear and bell-bottoms. it was anti-intellectual and cultural upheaval that marked the end of modern it's optimism and introduced the worldview of despair on a brad level. ideas concocted in the rarified domain of academia filtered down to shape an entire generation of young people they, in turn, have brought those ideas to their logical conclusion in postmodernism, with its suspicion of the very notions of reason and objective truth.

of course, modernity has always had its dark underside. already in the 19th century, sensitive people  realized that science seemed to suggest an image of the universe that was hostile to human values. the world discovered by science was supposedly a world of mathematical  entities: mass, extension, and velocity. the things that matter most to humans - purpose, meaning love and beauty - were relegated to the subjective realm of the mind, whole human being s ere reduced to an insignificant presence in an unthinking , unfeeling, purposeless world of masses spinning blindly in

*255 space. Science teaches us that mankind is no longer 'the Heaven-descended heir of all the ages', said British philosopher Lord Balfour.'his very existence is an accident, his story a brief and transitory episode in the life of one of the meanest of the planets.
it is a gloomy picture, but many people have found it all the more attractive for its gloom, shuddering 'indelicious horror' before it, writes historian John Herman Randall. in fact, starting in the nineteenth century, 'many believed it Because it was so dreadful; they prided them selves on their courage in facing facts.
a widely quoted example is from British philosopher Bertrand Russell's A Free man's Worship.  (with a title like that, Russell clearly understood that he was proposing an alternative faith).  'man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; ...his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms'. and finally, these proud, despairing words: 'Only within the  scaffolding of these truths , only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built'. one almost pictures Russell standing on a craggy rock, bloody but unbowed, his chin raised to the impersonal skies, proclaiming his credo to the uncaring elements.

a more recent example is the world of Nobel prize-winning biochemist Jacques Monod.  in his celebrated Chance and necessity, Monod rejects the Christian  faith and replaces it with the drama of the scientist as lonely hero, challenging an alien and meaningless universe. 'man must at last wake out of his millenary (def - consisting of or pertaining to 1000, especially speaking of years) dream and discover his total solitude, his fundamental isolation. he must realize that, like a gypsy, he lives on the boundary of an alien world; a world that is deaf to his music and as indifferent to his hopes as it is to his sufferings or his crimes.' this melodramatic portrait goes far beyond anything that could properly be called science. it clearly expresses a faith, or, more accurately, an antifaith:  the world is hostile to all that makes us human, yet we will overcome our cosmic loneliness through heroic defiance.
the creeds of pessimism often take on a distinctly Darwinist cast. Darwin's theory suggests that human beings are merely advanced animals competing in the struggle for existence - that nature is 'red in tooth and claw', in the words of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. all life-forms are driven to compete for the next rung on the evolutionary ladder, leaving the weak behind. in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,these ideas were enshrined in social Darwinism - the idea that the rich and corrupt are in power because they've proven themselves the 'fittest' in the struggle for survival and that there's nothing we can do about it because it's simply the law of nature.

*256  moral persuasion and spiritual redemption are irrelevant because we are trapped in an endless struggle to reach the top of the heap.

GENE MACHINES

this dark side of Darwinism remained an undercurrent, causing few ripples in the reigning myth of progress until recent decades,when it burst forth in what is known as Sociobiology- today often called evolutionary psychology (discussed briefly in chapter 12) Sociobiology is an attempt to explain what evolution implies for human values. in doing so, it tends to take on the functions of religion, for it is impossible to discuss values without stumbling onto the most basic religious questions.

starting with the Darwinian assumption that those who are most competitive come out on tip, sociobiologists conclude that evolution requires ruthlessly selfish behavior. even actions that appear to be aimed at the benefit of others are grounded in underlying selfishness; we are nice to others only so they will be nice to us. over and altruism are illusions, cover-ups for underlying self-interest. in the words of one sociobiologist, there is 'no hint of genuine charity' among humans or any other organism. though an organism may sometimes find himself forced to act in ways that benefit others, still, 'given a full chance to act in his won interest, nothing but expediency will restrain hi from brutalizing, from maiming, form murdering  - his brother, his mate, his parent or his child'. in the cold light of science, we turn out to be selfish to the core.
what a ferocious picture of life - and taken at face value, it is a rather ridiculous one. no human society exist without altruism, charity and cooperation. yet these can be explained away, insists the sociobiologist. according to the theory, the real agents of evolution  are the genes  and their only interest is in surviving and being passed on to the next generation. even when we are engaged in apparently altruistic behavior, we are actually being duped by our genes, which are busily stacking the deck in their favor. thus , the mother sacrifices selflessly for hr child, but she does so only because her genes compel her to take care of the child, who is the vehicle for her genes to survive into the future.
now , we might agree that taking care of our own family members has a tinge of self-interest. but what about cooperation and altruism that reach beyond family and kin? what about the heroic passerby who rescues a drowning child? even that is reducible to genetic selfishness, says science writer Mark Ridley in The Origins of Virtue. he argues that any organism

*257  intelligent enough to remember individuals and keep tabs will discover that it is sometimes in our interest to help others - because they might someday help us in return. and if it's  in our interest, then it will be preserved by natural selection. even the most selfless behavior can be explained by selfish genes.
but notice how the claims of sociobiology have moved far beyond science and into the realm of myth, where the gene is personified as the hero of the plot. in Ridley's account, for example, the genes  weigh the pros and cons of cooperative behavior and 'program' us accordingly, as if genes had the logical capacity  of a computer expert. British science writer Richard Dawkins insists that humans are nothing more than 'machines created by our genes',  as if genes were engineers capable of designing and building complex mechanisms. or consider a famous line from Edward O. Wilson,  the founder of sociobiology:  'the organism is only DNA's way of making more DNA', as if genes were capable of planning and making things. Wilson even argues that the ultimate source of human morality is the morality of the gene', making genes capable of moral reasoning and choice.

in short, sociobiology attributes consciousness , will, and choice to genes, while reducing humans to machines that carry out their orders. this is a worldview in which genes become the deity - the ultimate creators and controllers of life.
of course, when pressed, sociobiologists will say this is all metaphorical, not intended to be taken literally. and yet, a consistent  and pervasive metaphor eventually shapes the way we think. even scientists themselves go back and forth, speaking sometimes as if they take the idea of selfish genes literally. 'I shall argue that a predominant quality to be expected in a successful gene is ruthless selfishness,  writes Dawkins. "let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish'.  notice how he heaps from genes to humans, using the word 'selfish' in exactly the same sense, with all its moral connotations. in the 'religion of the gene', selfishness is the original sin.

'Like successful Chicago gangsters, Dawkins goes on, spinning his colorful tale, 'our genes have survived, in some cases for millions of years, in a highly competitive world'  and preserving our genes is 'the Ultimate Rationale for our existence'. Dawkins argues, 'By dictating the way  survival machines (that's us) and their nervous systems are built, genes exert Ultimate Power  over behavior'. finally, Dawk waxes positively lyrical. the gene 'does not grow old. it leaps from body to body down the generations, manipulating body after body in its own way and for its own ends, abandoning a

*258  successions of mortal bodies before they sink in senility and death. the genes are the immortals'.
the immortals? Dawk offers this as sober science, but to speak about an immortal force with 'ultimate power' over our lives, giving us the 'ultimate rationale' for living, is clearly a religious statement.

indeed, sociobiology has all the essential elements of religion. it tells us where we came from: Fandom chemicals linked up to form the rudimentary DNA, until finally some DNA discovered how to construct bodies for themselves. it tells us what's wrong with us; THE FATAL FLAW IN HUMAN NATURE IS THAT WE ARE SELFISH - a selfishness that reaches far beyond our conscious moral choices and is firmly embedded in our genes.  but whereas most worldviews go on to offer a proposal for remedying the basic  flaw in human nature, sociobiology offers no remedy.
it presents the human being as a puppet in the control of immoral, scheming genes,
with no real hope of ever breaking free.
it is a religion with no hope of redemption.
perpetual warfare, while the gene is transformed into an evil and destructive demon, driven to overcome all competitors in the struggle for existence.

thus , sociobiology can be understood as a contemporary form of those fatalistic religions that tap into the human fascination with power, death and destruction
after all , the Greeks and Romans worshiped the gods of death (Pluto) and war (Mars). the Babylonians worshiped Nergal, a god of death and pestilence. the Hindu god Siva and his wife, Kali, stand for death and destruction. similarly, in sociobiology the 'deity being worshiped is power, writes British philosopher Mary Midgley. adherents 'offer us a mystique of power'  located in the genes.

what could possibly be appealing  about such a negative faith? despite its pessimism, it offers one compensation:  It gives adherents a way to debunk conventional religion and morality. it dispels the 'illusion' that there is a loving, sovereign God and that human beings have dignity and significance as genuine moral agents.
if you wonder whether we are reading too much into sociobiology, just dip into the writings of Edward O. Wilson, founder of the movement . Wilson admits that he left his Baptist tradition at the age of 15 and transferred his religious longings elsewhere:  'My heart continued to believe in the  light and the way...and I looked for grace in some other setting' - which turned out to be science. having entered 'the temple of science', Wilson shifted his faith to the 'mythology' of scientific materialism, and then searched for a 'single grand naturalistic image of man' that would explain everything 'as a material process, from the bottom up, atoms to genes to the human spirit.

*259  Wilson is completely candid that his goal is to 'divert the power of religion ' into the service of materialism or naturalism. 'Make no mistake about the power of scientific  materialism',  he warns.  it is a philosophy that presents 'an alternative mythology' that has repeatedly 'defeated traditional religion'.
but has it, in fact, defeated traditional religion? not at all, for sociobiology or evolutionary psychology itself fails a basic test of any truth claim: it is not an accurate portrayal of either human nature  or human society. common experience and common sense - bolstered by the findings of sociology and anthropology - easily debunk its excessively dark picture of unmitigated competition and slavery to the power of selfish genes.
it is seriously misleading to apply the word Selfish to an object that has no self -namely, the gene. when we talk about changes in gene frequencies, that's science. but if we say that humans are helpless puppets whose strings are in the hands of calculating genes, that's mythology. when  we say that humans are influenced by their genes , that's science. but if we say that genes are 'selfish' - that they are 'hidden masters' who have 'programmed' us to 'serve' them - that's mythology.

science does no compel us to adopt sociobiology or any other pessimistic worldview that denies the reality of redemption and dramatizes nature as a stage for perpetual conflict. indeed, many pessimists engage in circular reasoning:
First they banish God and conclude that the universe is meaningless;
then they argue that since the universe is meaningless,
there cannot be a God.
Atheism is presented as the Conclusion when it is, in fact the hidden premise.

and if your premise is rejection of the biblical God,
then no matter how sophisticated your theories,
they will end in despair.
for these pessimistic myths are right about one thing:
a universe without god is indeed impersonal, meaningless and purposeless.
it is, to echo Weinberg, pointless.

DEFYING DEATH

 a full-page ad for
Schwinn bicycles show a young man leaping high into the air on his Schwinn;  at the bottom of the page is a picture of  a coffin being lowered into the ground. the ad copy taunts the reader:  '
what, a little death frightens you? Schwinn is clearly marketing more than bikes; it is telling kids that it is cool to court death.
since when did playing with death become chic? (def - attractive, fashionable, stylish) since a pervasive sense of meaninglessness has left many people so jaded that it takes more than a

*260  whiff of danger to restore a sense of ultimacy. and what is more intense, more ultimate, than coming face-to-face with death?
this mind-set may explain the growing popularity of high-risk sports, from hang gliding to rock climbing, from street luge to skydiving.  when US News and World Report ran a cover story on the topic of high-risk sports, one subhead read:  'the peril, the thrill, the sheer rebellion of it all'. Like Camus's absurd hero, this is rebellion against the absurdity, against the futility of life, where everything we love or live for ends in death.in a society reduced to sterile dualism, the only response left is to look death  squarely i the face...and spit on it. this is the ultimate, heroic existentialist response.
Kristen Ulmer, an icon of the extreme sports' crowd, says she took up 'extreme skiing' (maneuvers that deliberately expose one to danger) to combat boredom. she insists she gets a thrill from any kind of risk or danger and she suggests spicing up conventional sports by injecting more danger:  'It's one thing to be a really good basketball player. but imagine if every time you missed a basket, somebody would shoot you in the head. it would be a lot more exciting, right?

in the Midwest, several companies offer to take tourists out to chase tornadoes. What's the attraction? the excitement of a brush with death. one man told NBC news that coming close to a tornado was 'a religious experience'.  this is all that's left for a culture that has plumbed the depths of absurdity: daredevil antics in the face of death.
and when the antics grow old, there is only death itself. Ernest Hemingway, one of this century's great novelists, held to the existentialist credo meaning to that nothingness, Hemingway invented his won code: He would taste life to the fullest -experience everything, feel everything, do everything. even death could be overcome if he treated it as another experience, the most exciting and interesting experience of all.
and  so, at age 61, after  a life of notoriety as a big-game hunter, adventurer ans womanizer, Hemingway deliberately embraced death.he could no longer prove that he was master of his own fate by his daredevil adventures or self-indulgent lifestyle, but he cold prove it by controlling the time and means of his own death.
on Sunday morning, July 2, 1961, Hemingway loaded his favorite gun, seated himself in the foyer of his Idaho home, braced the butt of the gun on the floor , put the barrel in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.
Neurotic? Sick? Perhaps not. given his worldview, Hemingway's action was eminently logical. after all, if life is meaningless and despair crouches like a lion at the gate, the best option might be to exit heroically on

*261  your own terms. Ernest Hemingway shook his fist at despair one last time by taking control of his own death.
in the end, those who deny the God of the Bible and of history and who find the myth of progress empty, have only 2 choices: they can either trivialize death by defying it or control death by embracing it on their own terms. thus, Hemingway is the perfect icon for the failure of Western science and philosophy: having played out the logical consequences of the Enlightenment's rejection of God, many people are brought to complete despair of any transcendent truth or meaning. the blazing,optimistic hope that humanity is moving ever upward and onward, boldly progressing to a new stage in evolution, has been replaced by bitter cynicism. marooned on the rocks  of reality, science itself now promises only the near comical fantasy that humanity might be rescued by extraterrestrials from outer space.
one might think that upon hitting the dead end of despair, men and women would be driven to return to the Creator. bu,t, alas, although it is true that 'our hearts find no peace until they rest in (God)', the basic human instinct is to flee Him.for finding God will cost us our cherished autonomy.

so where do many people turn? to the East.

CHAPTER  28 - THAT NEW AGE RELIGION

'men and women have ultimately come up from amoebas, (and) they are ultimately on their way towards God.  Ken Wilber

*263  when the bright image of science and progress began to fade and optimism gave way to disillusionment and despair, many people began to cast about for answers from other cultures. Asian religions, especially Hinduism and Buddhism,  have always enchanted people from Western cultures to some degree and today these religions have become popular alternatives to the dominate Western worldview.
and the attraction is powerful. Western secularism is materialistic, limiting reality to what can be tested scientifically. Eastern mysticism is spiritual, opening the consciousness to new levels of awareness. Western thought is analytical, leading to fragmentation and alienation. Eastern thought is holistic, promising healing and wholeness. Western science has destroyed the environment and polluted the air. Eastern pantheism proffers a new respect for nature.

in the 1960s, many young people turned to Eastern religion to fill their spiritual emptiness, giving rise to the New Age movement. today the movement has become so mainstream that community colleges offer classes in yoga, tai chi, astrology and therapeutic touch. the new Age movement is also a major commercial success. local supermarkets carry free copies of slick New Age publications, advertising everything from holistic health practices to past-life therapy.

Buddhism swept the silver screen with Kundun (which is Tibetan for

*264  'the presence') and Seven years in Tibet.  in the latter, Brad Pitt donned a white sari and shaved his head for his role as Heinrich Harrer, an Austrian who escapes from a World War II British prison in India and reaches Lhasa, whee he comes under the influence of the young Dalai lama. Pitt reportedly asked for the role because he wanted the religious experience. after each day's shooting, Buddhist monks would pray for the set and  invite the cast to sing with them. Pitt was often in tears.

Actor Richard Gere is even more devout. in  1984, he converted to Tibetan Buddhism and now spends several months each year traveling and speaking on behalf of the Dalai Lama. then there is Steven Segal,who has been recognized by the supreme head of the Tibetan-based Nyingma lineage as a Tulka (a reincarnated lama), as ell as a Terton (a revealer of truth). think of that the next time you watch Segal on film breaking an enemy's neck.
it's not difficult to see why Eastern religion is such an attractive form of salvation for a post-Christian culture. it assuages the ego by pronouncing the individual divine, and it gives a gratifying sense of 'spirituality' without making any demands in terms of doctrinal commitment or ethical living. and to make it even more palatable, the New Age movement reshapes Eastern thought to fit the Western mind, with its hunger for upward progress.
whereas Eastern thinking is fatalistic and pessimistic - the cycle of karma is called the 'wheel of suffering' - the New Age adaptation is optimistic and utopian. it promises that if we get in touch with the 'universal Spirit', of which we are all part, we will create a new consciousness and a new world. the new Age movement is premised on the promise that we are on the threshold of a great leap forward into, literally, a new age - of 'harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abounding', to quote the musical Hair. the massive  social upheavals of the past decades are not a warning of imminent disaster but the prelude to evolutionary transformation. as new Age writer Ken Wilber puts it, 'Men and women have ultimately come up from amoebas, (and) they  are ultimately on their way towards God'. toward Becoming God, Wilber means. humanity, he suggests, is about to make a quantum leap forward, to emerge as an entirely new creature, to become divine. this is nothing but  the Escalator Myth in spiritualized form.
it may seem that the New Age movement appeared out of nowhere in the 1960s, but the way had been prepared by the nineteenth century romantic movement, which as a kind of counterculture in its own day. as we saw in the last chapter, back then sensitive people could already see that science was creating a picture of the world  as a vast machine, inexorably grinding its gears with no place for beauty or meaning or purpose. the romantics cast bout for an alternative, just as the children of the 60s did and they

*265  revived an ancient philosophy know as neo-Platonism, a blend of Greek thought and Eastern mysticism. they tossed out the metaphor of the universe as a machine and replaced it with the  metaphor of the universe as an organism, a living thing, animated by a 'Life Force'.

EVERYTHING IS ALIVE THE ROMANTICS SAID. even matter itself, they thought, has a rudimentary form of life or consciousness. and what is the major characteristic of life? Growth. Development. the Romantics proposed that just as each organism unfolds in stages according to an inner law of development, so life itself unfolds in definite stages from simple to complex under the direction of the Life Force. the Life Force often took on the trappings  of an immanent deity, so that God was conceived not at the transcendent creator, but as a spirit pervading nature. 'The world was no machine , it was alive', writes historian John Herman Randall,and God was not its creator so much as its soul, its life.'
the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species gave the concept of spiritual evolution a big boost. most people who accepted Darwinian evolution were not atheists; instead, they tried to integrate it in some way with religion  by identifying God with a force that gives purpose and direction to evolution. bu the end  result was often more akin to Pantheism  than to orthodox Christianity This God was completely immanent in the world, compelling evolution to ever greater heights and leading mankind to some far-off divine perfection. as Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote, there is 'one God, one law, one element,/ and one far-off divine event./to which the whole creation moves.

spiritual evolution often reduced God to a participant in the process, a 'God -in-the-making', who was gradually evolving along with the world into full divinity. in the early 20th century, philosopher Henri Bergson reduced God to a vital force animating all life and driving evolution forward. the great philosopher Alfred North White head pictured God as the soul of the world, changing as the world changes,  striving toward perfection.and the role of humans is to help God actualize himself. as theologian Charles Harshoren puts it, we are 'co-creators' with God, not only in making the world but also in making God Himself we have met some of these ideas before in chapter 21 under the label of process theology, the  fastest growing  theology in America today.

what we see is that for a long time, in philosophy, the arts and even theology, the Western world has been embracing ideas compatible with Eastern pantheism.  all it took was a widespread disillusionment with Western culture to send these ideas hurtling into the mainstream.

*266  NEW AGE IN THE CLASSROOM

 today, New Age thinking permeates Western society, spawning a host of techniques used in medicine, business, education, the military and even - tragically - churches. Various meditation exercises are sold as means for resolving conflict and for enhancing relaxation, creativity, self -esteem , and even physical health. for example, at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, a seminar listed as Creativity in Business includes meditation, chanting, 'dream work', tarot cards and a discussion of 'the New Age Capitalist.' government agencies as well as private businesses spend millions of dollars in contracts with consulting companies that use New Age technique for management training.
of course,  these programs rarely use overtly religious language. for example ,  the Universal Spirit (Brahma, in classic Hindu thought ) is often called the Higher Self or some similar term. yet beneath the secular rhetoric, these programs embody the basic Hindu doctrine that the individual human mind or spirit is part of a Universal Mind or Spirit and that by using relaxation and guided imagery exercises,  we can tap into that Mind as a source of wisdom and creativity.

New Age programs have even permeated our elementary and secondary schools. a mother in Atlanta, Georgia, was concerned when her second grade daughter  failed to respond to her one day when they were driving  in the car. the mother  called the girl's name repeatedly and finally turned around to look in the backseat. her daughter's eyes were closed and her head drooped forward. alarmed, the woman stopped the car, opened the back door and shook her daughters arm. the girl jerked awake, as if startled out of a trance.
'What's wrong? the mother  asked anxiously. 'You wouldn't answer when I called'.

'Don't worry, Mom,  the little girl replied. 'I was with my friend Pumsy'.

Questioning her daughter further, the mother discovered that the girl had been learning edition techniques from the school's guidance counselor through a curriculum titled PUMSY In Pursuit of Excellence. Pumsy is a cute, fairy-tale dragon who discovers a wise guide named Fried, who teaches Pumsy (along with the children in the program )basic concepts of the Eastern worldview. for example, Fried tells Pumsy that her mind is like a pool of water: when she is tempted to think negative thoughts, her mind is muddy. but when she thinks positive thoughts, she can tap into a Clear Mind, which will help her solve her problems.

*267  there's a reason the term Clear Mind is capitalized: it's another cover up term for Brahma, the god of Hinduism. one clue is the quasi-religious language used to describe it. for example, Friend tells Pumsy, 'Your Clear Mind is the best friend you'll ever have....it is always close to you and it will never leave you.  this sounds suspiciously close to biblical language:  'i will never leave you nor forsake you'. (Josh.  1.5) a few pages later in the story, we read, 'You have to trust (your Clear Mind) and let it do good things for you'.  through this program, children are essentially being taught to place religious trust in a Hindu notion of God as a Universal Mind.

of course, such New Age techniques are not sold to teachers as religion. they are marketed as ways to increase creativity and boost self-esteem.  PUMSY teaches youngsters to chant slogans like 'I can handle it',  'I can make it happen' and 'I  am me, I am enough. ' once again, we hear echoes of biblical themes: 'I am who i am' Exodus 3.14 this program is teaching self-worship, not self-esteem. it's teaching that we  are saved not by trusting a transcendent God who reaches down to us in grace but by realizing that God is within us, that We are God. salvation is not a matter of recognizing our sin; it's a matter of raising our consciousness until we recognize our inner divinity.

edcation is only one avenue for new Age ideas. they turn up in every outlet of popular culture. Books about the New Age, for example, enjoy a commanding position on bookstore shelves, often crowding out traditional religious works. if you opened a book and read,  'I looked and saw a new heaven and a new earth', you might think you were reading the book of Revelation in the Bible. instead,  it is the opening of James Redfield's megahit The Tenth Insight.  the words are indeed from Revelation, but that's the closest link to any thing biblical. as the story unfolds, the author weaves his own New Age philosophy into the plot. we learn that, before birth, we are all part of a great spiritual force pervading the universe. we can reconnect to this force - or 'achieve union with god' - by recalling what it was like to be part of God before we were born. that knowledge is recaptured by tuning into the 'spirit within' - to the fragment of the Universal Spirit that remains in all of us. if enough people make this connection, Redfield claims, society will be transformed. evil and crime will disappear; poverty and disease will be wide out. we will live in perfect harmony - just as picture in the book of Revelation.

even Christians can be disarmed by the subtleties of the New Age. 'You must read this book, an enthusiastic friend told Nancy, handing her a copy of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, first published in

*268  1911. the friend was a thoughtful Christian mother, and the book is a children's classic. but Nancy was jolted when she discovered that the book is Hindu philosophy dressed up in a charming children's story.
in the words of 10 year old Colin, one of the book's main characters, the world is made of a single spiritual substance, which he calls Magic (always capitalized). 'Everything is made out of Magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people', says Colin. 'The Magic is in me....it's in every one of us'. this is classic pantheism and Burnett entwines it with language right out of the Christian creeds. 'Magic is always..making things out of nothing, says Colin.

the difference between this pantheistic deity and the Biblical God is that this is an impersonal force that can be tapped, like an electric current. as Colin says, we need to learn how to 'get hold of it (magic) and make it do things for us -like electricity and horses and steam'.  this is not a Lord to be obeyed but a force to be manipulated. and the way to do that is through spells and incantations. thus, Colin chants, 'The Magic is in me...Magic! Magic! Come and help!

ironically,  few years after Nancy read The Secret Garden ad dissected its New Age themes, her son was assigned the book to read - in a Christian school.  we must be on guard to know what our children are reading in school.

THE PRIMAL TEMPTATION

Clearly, the New Age movement should not be laughed off as a silly fad. it is the vehicle for disseminating a complete worldview, offering an answer to all three major life questions Where Did We Come From And Who Are We? we are somehow fragmented off from the Universal Spirit. What Has Gone Wrong With The World?  e have forgotten our true nature , forgotten that we are part of God. What Is The Source of Our Salvation? we must rediscover our true nature and link up to the God within.
like all forms of the Escalator Myth, this one stars with utopian premises. there is no real evil, only ignorance:  We have forgotten who we are and by the same token, there is no real redemption, only enlightenment:  We must recover a mystical knowledge of our inner divinity. this we do by various techniques, such as meditation, relaxation exercises, guided imagery, visualization and use of crystals  - all aimed at producing a state of consciousness in which the boundaries of the  self dissolve and we gain a sense o unity with the divine. through this higher consciousness, a person is said to

*269  tap into divine power and become more creative, more energetic and even capable of healing illnesses through the power of the mind.
but like all forms of utopianism, this offer of salvation is hollow. by denying the reality of sin, it fails to address the crucial truth of our existence - that we are fallen creatures prone to evil. proponents of the New Age reassure us that alienation and strife exist only on the superficial level of existence; at the deepest level, we re one with each other in God. as we become aware of this unity, they assert, we will begin to treat each other with kindness and charity. 

however, this view of human nature simply doesn't stack up against reality. mere knowledge is not enough to undercut the evil in the human heart. simply Knowing what is right doesn't enable us to
Do right. this is the dilemma the apostle Paul wrestled with: The good that I want to do, i don't do (see especially Rom.  7.14-25). we don't need to raise our consciousness; we need to be saved.

the New Age deity cannot save us. it is an impersonal spiritual substratum of energy underlying all things. He - or rather, it - is more akin to electricity than to a deity. it is a power people try to plug into, not a personal God they can love and communicate with.

moreover, for all its promises about raising self-esteem, the New Age gospel does nothing to affirm the worth of the individual; it offers no basis for human dignity and meaning. on the contrary, the goal of all meditation techniques is to lose the individual self, to dissolve ti in the Universal Spirit,  just as a drop of water dissolves in the ocean. how utterly unlike the biblical God, who created us as individuals, who watches over each of us and numbers 'even the very hairs of (our) head. Matthew 10.30
furthermore, New Age philosophy gives us  no basis for morality. if God is in everything, god is in both good and evil; therefore, there is no final difference between them. Morality is reduced to a method for purifying the soul from desires so that it can attain mystical consciousness, like the eight-fold path of Buddhism.
but the ultimate failure of New Age thinking is its sheer implausibility.  how many of us are capable of insisting, with a straight face, that  we are perfect?  yet New Age proponents actually claim that 'we are perfect exactly the way we are. and when we accept that, life works'. people who can swallow that have to be deliberately oblivious to their won failures, shortcomings, and sins.

and how many of us are capable of claiming, without sounding as if we've escaped from an asylum, that we are God, the ultimate reality, the absolute spirit? in a scene in Shirley Maclaine's television miniseries Out On A

*270  Limb, the star shows how she had to be coached by her New Age counselor to shout, 'I am God' over and over until she could say it with confidence. it takes some doing to convince ourselves, against all the evidence, that we are divine. and those who succeed in doing so have simply given in to the oldest temptation in human history: the impulse to self-deification, humanity's primal temptation. 'You will not surely die', the serpent promised. 'you will be like God'. ("Genesis 3.4-5)

A GOD IN OUR OWN IMAGE


th pantheism that underlies new Age thought has appeared in so many periods of history and in so many guises that C. S. Lewis considered it the religion that we fall into naturally, apart from divine revelation:  'the natural bent of the human mind...the attitude into which the human mind automatically falls when left to itself'. therefor , Lewis notes, pantheism is 'the only really formidable opponent' to Christianity. '
and today it is making inroads even into Christian institutions. main-steam  churches hold 'Re-Imagining conferences denouncing the biblical God as patriarchal and holding worship services to 'our mother, Sophia' (the Greek name for wisdom). Christian apologist Peter Kreeft says that at Boston College, where he teaches, most students enter as pantheists:  'Most of my Catholic college students believe we are parts of God and that God is in everyone'.  as a result, they don't believe we need to be saved; we 'need only recognize our intrinsic value and accept ourselves as we are'.  no wonder may people anticipate that the great confrontation of the next century will be between the New Age movement and orthodox Christianity (represented largely by evangelicalism, conservative Roman Cathoicism and the orthodox church).
the danger is that as more and more Christians regard religion as therapy, we lower our defenses against worldviews that appeal primarily to our emotions while demanding nothing. the New Age is the perfect religious match for a culture driven  by a therapeutic mind-set, hungry to fill the nothingness. it allows its followers to draw on ancient wisdom but to reshape it to fit the fashion of the moment.
by contrast, Christianity makes stringent moral demands on its

*271 followers. Critics often dismiss Christianity as
mere wish fulfillment,
a comforting illusion
dreamed up by the ancients.
but this characterization is patently foolish.
who, after all, would invent  religion that commands us
to give up our lives for one another,
to overcome evil with good,
to love our enemies,
to turn the other cheek,
to give our possessions to the poor ,
to an just all-powerful, sovereign, omniscient
God who demands righteousness and obedience?
a God who dispenses severe judgment?

No.
when people create their own religion,
they create gods and goddesses in their own image.
the ancient gods of mythology had limited powers,
were subject to human interference and
displayed all the human weaknesses and vices.
 and the New Age God,
who is little more than a warm feeling within
or at worst a dabbling in occult powers,
is merely  a ratification of whatever the human ego wants.

CHAPTER 29 - REAL REDEMPTION

the Bible is supported by archaeological evidence again and again...the fact that the record can be so often explained or illustrated by archaeological data shows that it fits into the framework of history as only a genuine product of ancient life could do.   Millar Burrows

*273  modern pluralistic society provides a smorgasbord of worldviews and belief systems, all clamouring for our allegiance. and whether their trapping are secular or religious, all are in essence offering means of salvation - attempts to solve the human dilemma and give hope for renewing the world. today's most fashionable answers presume there is no kingdom of God on which to fasten our eschatological hopes and therefore , they promise to create heaven here on earth -the Escalator Myth in its various forms. alongside these are messages of heroic despair, challenging us to be courageous in facing life's meaninglessness.
it is easy to become bewildered by the array of answers available in today's marketplace of ideas, to throw up one's hands and declare them all valid options. that's why pluralism often leads to relativism - to the idea that there is no overarching, objective truth but only a variety of subjective  beliefs. as Catholic scholar Ronald Know once quipped, 'the study of comparative religions is the est way to become comparatively religious'. sadly that maxim often holds true.

yet a careful examination of competing worldviews can actually lead to the opposite effect: by lining up the Christian faith against other worldviews and religions, as we have done in the previous chapters, we see with astonishing clarity that Christianity offers the only real answers to the most basic questions of life and the best understanding of how we can be saved.

*274  FIRST, Christianity Begins With An Accurate Diagnosis Of The Human Dilemma.

the basic problem is a moral one: our guilt before a holy God.
God create us and established the moral dimensions for our lives.
but we blew it.
we have sinned, every one of us; we all have fallen short of God's perfect standard. Romans  3.23
we have defied the moral order of the universe and  as a result, we are alienated from God.

admittedly, people often do not Feel guilty before God,
since we are indoctrinated with the belief that guilt is
merely a subjective feeling, a neurosis to be cured
and that we really ought to feel good about ourselves.
as a result, many people come to Christianity on grounds other than guilt;
a longing for inner peace and purpose,
an attraction to the quality of love practiced in a local church,
or a need to resolve some life crisis.
but no matter what initially attracts us to Christianity,
at some point each of us must confront the truth of our own moral condition:
Guilt is objectively real, and
We are guilty.
we are sinners in the hands of a righteous God.
the Holy Spirit can penetrate the hardest heart to convict us of our sinfulness.
I know, because that is exactly what the Spirit did in my life.

SECOND, Christianity Provides the only answer to the problem of sin.

God himself has reached across the moral chasm that separates us from him in order to bring us back.
the second person of the Trinity
became a human being,
lived a perfect life of obedience to the moral order and
His death paid the price for our violation of the moral law,
satisfying the demands of divine justice.
God's  solution  reveals a marvelous economy, for the substitutionary atonement
permits God to be both 'just and the one who justifies. Romans 3.26
he remains 'just' because He does not merely turn a blind eye to humanity's violation of ... moral law,
which  flows from His own holy character.
Yet at the same time He 'justifies' those who have violated that law,
because its demands have been met by Christ's suffering on the cross.

since it is humans who commit sin, only a human being can pay the penalty for it.
thus the incarnation is the only reasonable and fitting solution:
God becomes man in order, as man, to pay the penalty for our sin.

but death of the God-man is not the end of the story,
for Jesus was resurrected from the dead and lives forever.
He overcame death, making it possible for us to be free
from sin and death, from evil and destruction.

by accepting His salvation, we become new creations and a new people .
this is the 'good news'  (the literal meaning of Gospel) that Christianity offers
and it is far more than a mere intellectual answer;
it transforms our lives.
for myself, I know that i could not live with myself if I hadn't experienced the

*275  overwhelming conviction one nigh in 1973, sitting in my car in a friend's driveway, that God had died For Me. in a flood of tears, I felt released from a crushing sense of guilt and revived with a new sense of purpose and meaning .  for the first time, i had a real reason for living.

all the ideologies we've examined in this section are pallid imitations of the Christian gospel. they promise to free people from oppression for neurosis, or whatever else they define as the  problem) and create the Ne Man,  build the New Society , usher in the new Age. clinging to the beauty of the gospel's hope but wanting none of the gospels's requirements, they recast it as the Escalator myth, a fallacy of progress, promising that we can create a new life through politics, sex, science, or Eastern spirituality. but all of these worldviews are defective, inadequate substitutes for the real need of real people for real redemption.

THIRD, Christianity's offer of salvation is based on historical truth.
the final element that sets Christianity apart from all other religious and worldviews is that it is based not on some evolutionary projection millions of years into the future
or on some extraterrestrial fantasy,
but on a historical even at a specific time and place:
the crucifixion  of Christ during the Jewish Passover in Jerusalem in the year A.D. 30
 and His resurrection 3 days later.

During the 2000 years since Christ's resurrection, the historical validity of this event has withstood every imaginable assault, ranging from
the charge of 'a cover up' (by religious leaders of Jesus' day) to
 modern claims that it was a 'Passover Plot'
or a 'conjuring trick with bones'.
what skeptics overlook is that the empty tomb was a historical fact,
verifiable by ordinary observation like any other historical fact.
it was acknowledged by the soldiers who guarded the tomb.
why else did they need to concoct an alternative explanation?)
 the resurrected Christ also appeared to 500 witnesses - too many people to dismiss the accounts as mass hysteria or the power of suggestion. I Corinthians 15.3-6

moreover, the original disciples refused to renounce Jesus,
even though they were persecuted, tortured and martyred.
this defeated band of men, who had already returned to their fishing nets and boats, would never have been transformed into bold preachers of the gospel and defenders of the faith had  they not seen Jesus' resurrected body and know Him to be the living God.
had they attempted a Passover plot, they could never have kept it secret.
people will die for something they Believe to be TRUE,
but they will never die for something they know to be FALSE.

I know how impossible it is for a group of people,
even some of the most powerful in the world,
to maintain a lie.
the Watergate cover-up

*276  lasted only a few weeks
before the first conspirator broke and turned state's evidence.

a common stance, especially among theological liberals, is that the historicity of Jesus' resurrection doesn't matter - that even if the event didn't  happen, Jesus is an important moral teacher. India's former spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi expressed this attitude; 'I may say that I have never been interested in an historical Jesus. I should not care if it was proved by someone that the man called Jesus never lived and that what was narrated in the Gospels was a figment of the writer's imagination. for the Sermon on the Mount would still be true for me.

But historical truth Does matter.
it is not enough to see Jesus' death and resurrection
as a symbol, a parable, a myth, a purely subjective idea
that can be 'true for me' even if not true for others.
the Christian message is the good news about what God has done.
But if The Gospel Is a Myth, Then God Has Not Done Anything.
'If religion be  made independent of history, there is no such thing as a gospel',
wrote the great Christian scholar J. Gresham Machen.
'for 'gospel' means 'good news',  tidings, information ABOUT SOMETHING that had HAPPENED.
A gospel independent of history is a contradiction in terms'.

Jesus' resurrection is much More than a historical fact, of course, but it is nothing Less than one.

and the facts clearly support the gospel's claims. Critics used to argue that the New Testament was not written until hundreds of years after Jesus lived, by which time  a jungle of myth and legend had grown up and distorted the original events. but we now know that the New Testament books were originally written a few decades after Christ's resurrection - far too short a period for legends to develop. even many liberal scholars have come to agree that the New Testament was composed soon after the recorded events occurred, at a time when many people who knew Jesus were still alive and could dispute any false claims. 'In my opinion, writes William F. Albright, every book of the New Testament was written by a baptize Jew between the 40s and 80s of the first century'.

moreover, we have several thousand copies of the New Testament, many of them very old. (generally, the older the copy, the closer it is to the original composition and therefore the more reliable it is considered to be.) most of the New Testament books are preserved in manuscripts that are dated only a little more than 100 years after the originals ( and some fragments are dated even earlier). by contrast, we have only 20 copies of the works of  the Roman writer Tacitus and the earliest manuscript we have of the work of

*277 Aristotle is dated 1400 years after he lived. The earliest copy of Caesar's Gallic Wars is dated 1000 years after he wrote it. yet on one questions either the historicity of Tacitus or Aristotle or Caesar, or the authenticity of their writings. the upshot is that today, Jesus' life is more thoroughly validated than that of virtually any other  ancient figure.

the salvation attested to in the New Testament, which is also historically reliable, as archaeological discoveries continue  to confirm. for example, there was a time when critics said Moses could not have written the Pentateuch because writing was well developed thousands of years before Moses' day. the Egyptian and Babylonian cultures were highly literate cultures, with  dictionaries, schools and libraries.
Critics once reserved their sharpest criticism for the early chapters of Genesis, dismissing the stories of the patriarchs as legend. but in recent years, archaeological discoveries have repeatedly confirmed that Genesis gives highly accurate accounts of the names, places, trade routes and customs of patriarchal times. archaeologists have found cuneiform tablets containing references to people such as Abraham and his brothers, Nahor and Haran tablets also explain puzzling customs, such as Abraham's and Jacob's practice at the time. yet, only a few centuries after the patriarchs lived, many of these name and practises and even some cities had completely disappeared. contrary to what critics once claimed, it would have been impossible for the Bible writers to invent these stories later. they would  have to have invented events that, by sheer chance, matched places and customs by then long forgotten.
the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls likewise provided confirmation for much of the old Testament - even its supernatural character. take Psalm 22, which predicts Christs crucifixion in uncanny detail. Skeptics, rejecting the reality of divinely inspired prophecy, insisted that the psalm  must have been written in the Maccabean Era, just before the birth of Christ, since before then, the practice of crucifixion in uncanny detail. Skeptics, rejecting the reality of divinely inspired prophecy, insisted that the psalm must have been written in the Maccabean Era, just before the birth of Christ, since before then,  the practice of crucifixion did not exist in the Roman Empire. but when the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, they included copies of the psalms dated centuries Before the Maccabean Era.
and the evidence continues to mount. in the 1970s, archaeological excavations confirmed the unique design of philistine temples, with the roof supported by 2 central pillars about 6 feet apart. this discovery gives historical plausibility to the story of Samson, who grasped 2 pillars in the Philistine temple and brought it down.

*278  archaeologists have also uncovered the ruins of the ancient city of Jericho and have found evidence that the walls of the city fell in an unusual manner - outward and flat, forming a perfect ramp for an invading army. and in 1993, in Israel, archaeologists uncovered a rock fragment  inscribed with an ancient text referring to 'the House of David',  the first reference to King David and his royal family ever found outside the pages of the Bible.
the historical data presses us to conclude that the stories in the Old and New Testaments are not made-up fables; they are accounts of real people and real events. as British journalist and historian Paul Johnson concludes, 'it is not now the men of faith, it is the skeptics , who have reason to fear the course of discovery'.

MYTH BECOMES FACT

the old pagan world was littered with myths about a dying god who rises again, writes C.S Lewis, but in Christianity, that myth became fact,  something that happened in the real world. the story of Jesus, Lewis concludes, is 'Perfect Myth and Perfect Face: claiming no only our love and our obedience, but also our wonder and delight addressed to the savage, the child and the poet in each one of us no less than to the moralist, the scholar and the philosopher'.

but Christ's resurrection is only the beginning of the story of redemption. at Pentecost, the risen Christ sent forth the Holy Spirit into the lives of believers, to work out His purposes in their lives. today, as well, all believers receive the power to become children of god, to be transformed and restored to our true nature, people created in the image of god. and we live as the community of hope, in eschatological expectation, knowing that Christ will return and establish His rule over all.

God's
REDEMPTION, then, does not change us into something different so much as
it RESTORES us to the way we were originally created.
virtually all of the words the Bible uses to describe salvation imply  a return to something that originally existed.
TO REDEEM  means to 'buy back', and the image evokes a kidnapping: someone pays the ransom and buys captives back, restoring them to their original freedom.
RECONCILIATION implies a relationship torn by conflict, then returned its original friendship.
the New Testament also speaks of
RENEWAL, implying that something has been battered and torn, then restored to its pristine condition
REGENERATION implies something returned to life after having died.

*279  as Al Wolters notes, 'All these terms suggest a RESTORATION of some good thing that was spoiled or lost'.
Being justified before God is a wonderful gift, yet it is just the beginning. salvation empowers us to take up the task laid  on the first human beings at the dawn of creation:  to subdue the earth and extend the Creator's dominion over all of life.
only Christianity provides true redemption   restoration to our created state and the hope  of eternal peace with God. NO OTHER WORLDVIEW IDENTIFIES THE REAL PROBLEM:
THE STAIN OF SIN IN OUR SOULS.
no other worldview identifies THE REAL PROBLEM:  THE STAIN OF SIN IN OUR SOULS. no other worldview can set free a tormented soul like Bernard Nathanson or like me and you.

and having been liberated from sin, we are empowered to help bring Christ's restoration to the entire creation order.

PART FIVE:  RESTORATION; HOW NOW SHALL WE LIVE?

CHAPTER 30 - THE KNOCKOUT PUNCH

*284  those first nights of his imprisonment in the Plymouth County Correctional Facility, Danny Croce couldn't settle into sleep. couldn't even come close. he watched and listened  as his fellow inmates muttered and the building's old pipes complained.  the prison itself seemed restless. vapory shadows swirled around the bare concrete ceiling, jaundiced by the low light in the hallway.

wide awake on his bunk, Danny kept descending into deeper shadows, reliving the night that had brought him to this cell. a 'village boy' from Brockton, Massachusetts, home of the famous middleweight fighter Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Danny had fought professionally himself. now the scenes from that night hit him like short punches with plenty of leverage. a pounding he couldn't fend off.
once again he saw the bus swinging into his lane, its high beams lighting up  the curtain of falling rain. he swerved to the right. his car suddenly heaved into the air, the engine racing as the tires spun free. the night's quiet was sheared by the sound of scissoring metal. Danny peered into the sudden blackness, trying to search is way through it. What's Blocking My Vision? the Chevy Nova's wheels touched down at last, thumping into soft earth. the steering wheel played wildly in his hands. still he could not see. What is That? he hit the interior dome light, which only intensified the nearness of the thick black covering across his windshield. his blindness lasted a moment's

*284  full horrible eternity before the windshield suddenly cleared  and he skidded to a stop.\\stumbling out of his car, he saw a splintered police barrier and a man crumpled on the ground. he asked onlookers what had knocked the man down.
'You did, they said.
he looked again and felt  horrible stab of recognition. the man  on the ground was police officer John Gilbert. the same John Gilbert who played pool with him in the bar and teased him about keeping in shape for the ring.
Danny's  car had carried Gilbert 30 yards, they said. splayed across the windshield in a black oilskin raincoat, it was Gilbert's body that had blotted out Danny's vision.

remembering the episode, Danny felt as if that raincoat were covering his own face like a shroud, the rain running down  like tears of remorse. through the nights, the scene played over and over in Danny's head as if God, or maybe the devil, had looped the tape, setting it to replay without end. it was his own hell, which he knew he deserved. and in hell the 'IF ONLYs' go on forever.

IF ONLY he had left the bar after the first time he nodded off.
IF ONLY his ironworker friend Sully hadn't been juiced up worse than he was and had been able to drive.
IF ONLY it hadn't rained that day and he and Sully had been able to stay and finish out the 8th floor of that building they had been working on.
IF ONLY they had been able to follow the motto of the ironworker:
Look where you want to go and let your feet follow.
IF ONLY he had been able to see the consequences,
he would never have followed where that day led.
but he hadn't seen a thing.

Danny often wondered whether the freebasing had started the whole chain of events. that was something else he saw in the darkness.
the pure white cocaine crystals left after the ethyl ether evaporated.
the first of a series of bad choices that had landed Gilbert spread-eagled across Danny's windshield.

when Danny turned in his bunk to stare at the opposite wall, he saw Gilberts family - his wife, his 2 kids, the empty chair  at their dinner table. he had wanted to apologize to Jeanie Gilbert 1000 times before the sentencing, but his lawyers had said no. so he remained their ghost...and they remained his nightmare.
the video begin to replay...midnight...2:00 A.M...4:30. sometimes it felt to Danny as if he were directing the scenes, looking for that undiscovered bridge to a different ending. sometimes he could only cover up

*285  against the assault, both fists clenched over his brow. the memories swung at him -roundhouses, overhands, uppercuts.
even before Danny got Sully's call about John Gilbert's condition, he had expected the bad news . the same way he had known how the bout would end that time he fought Tommy Rose. Tommy had been the number 12-ranked bantamweight at the time and the matchup was Danny's one moment of boxing glory. Tommy Rose was a fighter going places.
at first Danny thought he had Tommy cornered and he kept trying to cut him off. he tried to make Tommy think the right was his best shot; that way Tommy would counter weakly and Danny could step through it and deliver his bomb of a left hook. he did connect with a few shots, but by the end of the third round - or was it the second?- Danny's arms and legs were gone. he kept standing, like a cow too stupid to fall after the slaughterhouse jolt, as Tommy gave him the most vicious beating of his life.
that's what Sully's telephone call was like: knowing his legs were gone, knowing what was coming.
'It's bad,' Sully said.
'He's dead, isn't he?
'Yeah, he's dead'.
except there was a difference. Danny couldn't remember Tommy's punch that put out his lights, but he would never forget the impatient way Sully said 'dead' - as if he couldn't wait to clear out of Danny's life.
during Danny's first week in prison, he was assigned to a work detail out in the fields, cultivating the hard New England soil, still almost frozen in April. at the end of one shift, as the men drifted toward the water tower to be recounted and escorted back to their cells, Danny heard someone calling him.

'Hey, Croce! Come over here! a guy by the hay cart. Danny didn't know him,  so he kept on walking toward the water tower .  but the guy moved out to block his way. he was big in the upper arms and thick through the gut. Danny saw other inmates glancing over their shoulders at the guards in the distance, then converging on the 2 of them.
'So, Croce, I heard you fought Tommy Rose. herd you were tough. but the thing is, I don't remember and Croce fighting Rose'.
'the promoter called Rivaro for that one.
'Why? You ashamed of your name? Your wop name -Cro-chay.  that's why your family says it's'Crose', I bet. your whole family's ashamed,

*286  with a killer like you in it'.  the guy turned to grin at the onlookers.  'A killer everywhere but in the ring.'
Danny had known he would have to use his hands in prison . he was surprised only at how soon. 'I know the game well enough, he said. Get out of my way'.

'I'm In your way, you puke. a real killer, you are. as long as you're driving a car.'

the guys around them laughed and the man rocked his weight back like Goliath. they he rushed Danny, throwing a looping right toward his temple.

he threw it as if  he had a wrench in his hand, which gave Danny enough time to decide against the typical crossing counter. he didn't want  any extra time tacked on to  his sentence, so he hoped to take this guy down without marking him too much. he threw a triple combination into the guy's gut - bm, bm, bm - and the man's face drained.
he came back at Danny, though. this time he faked with a jab or threw it so weakly Danny couldn't tell the difference.
Danny popped him in the side of the head with the right, then jabbed him with a left hook. lifting the oaf clean off the back of his heels. he fell dead out like concrete - not even a bounce.

usually when a fight ended, whether in a bar or in the ring, there was cheering and shouting.  but Danny's fellow inmates kept this one quiet.  then something even stranger happened. the onlookers began crowding closer. for a moment Danny thought he was going to have to fight them all. then he understood. they were waling him away, protecting him.
'The water tower's got a spigot', someone said. they shielded him from view as he washed the blood from his hands. then they all lined up for the count.
'O'Brien, the guard called out.
'he fell down, someone said 'Back by the hay cart'.
' Always sleeping, that mick,  the guard said.
everyone laughed, hearty and false.
At least i Won't Have To Fight Again For A While, Danny thought.

unable to sleep at night, Danny was groggy during the day. he had to find a way to rest, or one of the new arrivals would challenge him ad he would lose his reputation. he dreaded the guards' call of lock down, the haul

*287  and clang of the closing cell block doors and time slowing once more  as the black moments in that car drained the sweat out of him.
one night, about 3 months into Danny's cell just before lock down. Danny was not overjoyed to see him. he knew Dunn thought of himself as spiritual.
'We're starting a vehicular-homicide group, Dunn said.
'Like an AA group?' asked Danny.
'Dunn nodded. 'You get 'good time' for it  - time off your sentence, he added.  'a day for an hour'.

Danny thought about the 18 month stretch still ahead of him. 'I guess you'll be seeing me, then, he said.
eventually Danny told his story to the group. when he finished, several of the men said, in one way or another, 'It was his time. everyone's ticked gets punched'.
the process was supposed to provide some relief, but Danny felt none. it Wasn't John Gilbert's time. that was the whole point.
afterward, a longhaired hippie type cam up to him. 'Have you ever prayed to God?

Danny hadn't prayed since he was a kid. he hadn't even thought much about religion. but later that night, back in his cell, he found himself begging, more out of desperation than anything else, 'Please, God, let me sleep'.
that was the last thing he remembered. suddenly it was morning and for the first time in months, he had an appetite for breakfast.
the insomnia returned, though. he waited it out for several nights, then prayed once more, just as simply. 'Please, god, let me sleep'.
again, the next thing he knew, it was morning.
this was so curious that he felt compelled to talk with the longhair.  Danny knew almost nothing about religion. he knew only that whether it was Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses, or the Four Squares, when they talked at you or handed you a tract, they were carrying 'that Book'. so he asked the hippie if he had a Bible, and the man loaned Danny his New Testament.

as Danny read the gospels, he discovered that the Jesus they described appealed to him. Jesus was straight with everyone and although he was always being set up, he stood his ground. he told people so clearly what was in their hearts that he knocked them out with his words, without throwing a punch - unlike Danny, who had been fighting ever since his family moved into the town of Brockton. ' So you think you're too good for us', one of the

*288  bigger kids would shout. or they would yell nasty things about his mother. anything to start a fight. the first time, he had refused to fight and they had dropped him into  garbage bin. so he had learned to use his fists. now, reading the Bible reminded him of how he had become such a tough guy - and what an act it was.
the more Danny felt drawn to Jesus, the more he saw himself in a new light. he was used to comparing himself to the guy on the next bar stool, and that way he usually didn't look so bad. but when he compared himself to Jesus, he started to feel afraid. this man who never raised his fists scared him as nobody else ever had.
he also read passages about people being 'cast into outer darkness', where there was 'weeping' and 'gnashing of teeth'. Danny knew something about darkness. in his mind, he was shut in that car, unable to see, unable to change directions, carrying death along with him - not only John Gilbert's death but also his own.
lying on his bunk at night, Danny began to review his whole life, horrified by the person he had become. he saw himself living for his next drink, his next coke party; he saw himself using women. his last girlfriend had been good to  him, but he would have thrown her away for the next quarter ounce of coke. in fact, he probably had.
that net Sunday, when the guard called out for people who wanted to be let out of their cells to attend chapel, Danny shouted, 'Cell 16'.  but he sat like a stone through the service, hearing little. he was there to ask a question. afterward, he approached Chaplain Bob Hansen and asked him if the passages he had read about outer darkness were really about hell.
'yes, ' said the chaplain.
'Then I'm in big trouble, Danny said.
'When you get back to your cell, get on your knees by your bunk, said the chaplain. 'Confess your sins to God and pray for Jesus Christ to come into your heart'.

Danny did just that.in his cell, he knelt, confessed that he was a sinner, and asked Christ to be his Lord. as he did, he kept remembering horrible things he had done and the memories brought other pain and an eagerness to be forgiven. talking to God seemed like carrying on a conversation with someone he had missed all along without knowing it. he could almost hear god replying through a silence that echoed  his sorrow and embraced it. Danny not only felt heard, he also felt understood, received.
he slept that night. and every night afterward.

*289 Danny began wearing a cross. he walked the cellblocks with a spiritual strut, a pugnacious witness to the truth he had found. he pumped along with a new confidence, asking everyone he met to come to chapel. some prisoners even took a step back when he passed, as if he would slam them against a wall if they didn't become Christians. 
inside, Danny resolved that he wouldn't take any abuse for his new convictions. they could call him a Jesus freak, but no one was going to get in his face. he prayed that no one would touch him. he could control himself if they left him alone.
the only fights that broke out were the ones inside him - a war between his new convictions and his old habits.
one day when he was playing Ping-Pong, Danny flipped his usual cigarette into his mouth and flicked his lighter. suddenly, something said, 'Stop'.  the filter no longer tasted clean. he slipped the cigarette back in the pack and wondered what was going on.
Chaplain Hansen always said to LOOK TO THE BIBLE FOR ANSWERS, so Danny actually did  a concordance search that night.he found only one passage that said anything at all about smoking; it was in Isaiah and had to do with 'smoking flax',  yet he didn't doubt that he had heard a voice say 'stop'.
eventually, he discovered I Corinthians and gained an understanding that his body was God's house. he shouldn't deliberately damage it. so he prayed for the willpower to stop smoking. the first day he had to pray 20 times...as he sat in the mess hall having coffee...as he worked in the fields...as he prayed cards at a table in the yard - all the places and times that prompted him to light up again.

the next day he prayed 19 times. the smoking battle kept him on his knees for weeks.

Canny soon heard that same voice countering most of his lifelong habits. it was a patient voice and said stop to only one thing at a time, but the list was long, beginning with smoking and drinking, then going on to using dope and swearing. he discovered that when he began to clean up his language, he lost half his vocabulary. he also discovered that his first victories produced and overconfidence born of spiritual pride.
one day while paying cards, he said to another Christian inmate, 'What are you putting that cigarette in your mouth for, brother? Don't you know that God will deliver you from that if you ask?

'Well, I believe it, Danny, but I'm not there yet, his friend said.

not too long afterward Danny cruised by the showers, where guys smoked dope during the day, back in a hidden area. he could smell the

*290  sweet, heavy scent. an inner yearning taunted him, What Would It Be Like To Take Just a Few More Tokes? he couldn't resist finding out.
when Danny ducked back out, the first person he saw was the brother he had just jumped on for smoking. 'Hey, Danny,' the guy ginned, gesturing with his cigarette, 'guess you're not so perfect either'.
Danny went to his bunk and cried out to God for strength. these inner battles with himself were tougher than anything he'd faced in the ring.
eventually, though, after umpteen prayers a day, the old habits started to fade and Danny began to feel something like the 'new creation' spoken of in the Scriptures.

then, just before he went into chapel one day, while he was still  out in the yard, one of the new inmates started ragging a frail 19 year old called Squeaky. the nickname was apt. the kid, who was in the joint for writing bad checks, really was a mouse. he even looked like one, with his colorless hair and flappy ears.
in contrast, the new inmate looked like a real bad boy, slim but muscled, with things to prove. he pushed Squeaky's shoulder hard with the butt of his hand.

Squeaky did nothing but grab for the place where it hurt.

'You're a tough guy,  Danny said, stepping in.
'This punk's been looking at me like he's queer or something'.
'He hasn't been looking at you. Squeaky never looks at anything but the ground.
'You calling me a liar?
'You want to fight someone, fight someone who knows how. Me'.

'This shrimp's your whore?
Danny made no reply.
'Well, I'll fight you, you queer freak. You...' he loosed a flood of curses, working up a fighting rage.

his first jab snapped out with greater skill than Danny expected. it went through the block Danny put up and caught him on the side of the head. for a moment Danny anticipated another left, a right, whatever combination the guy's rhythm dictated.
but the newcomer just threw one and stepped away. threw another and stepped away. Danny blocked and feinted.
when the newcomer yawed the next time, Danny stepped forward quickly and caught him with three close-in shots to the  head Bm, Bm, Bm.  that left the guy's face a blank, with blood trickling from the brow, the old fury rose up within Danny, and he cleaned the guy with a crossing right.

*291 totally pure. the guy fell on the seat of his pants, bleeding heavily from the mouth. he didn't get up.
'Squeaky's one of Danny's boys now', someone said. 'You're gonna have to get born again, Squeaky'.

'Squeaky's one of Danny's boys now, someone said.  'You're gonna have to get born again, Squeaky'.

'You don't owe me nothing, Squeaky', Danny said, suddenly feeling as if he had lost the fight.'

the buzzer sounded. Time for chapel.
Danny sat through the service, preoccupied with his own thoughts. afterward, he went up to Chaplain Hansen and asked what he should do.
'You know what you have to do,  the chaplain said. 'When you offend your brother, you have to make it right. You have to go to the guy'.
When Danny appeared at the newcomer's cell, the guy snarled at him, and Danny could hardly bring himself to put his hand forward.  'I came by to see how you're doing. I'm sorry for laying you out. I know what I'm doing - too much to hit you like that'.
'You proved it', the newcomer said. his mouth was swollen and distorted .

'you don't need to make your rep on guys like Squeaky. now that you fought me, people will leave you alone. you landed that first shot'.
'Didn't slow you down much.
'Like I said, I know what I'm doing. we square?'
'Square',  the newcomer said, he stood and shook Danny's hand quickly, then scrambled back to his bunk.
Danny thought of asking the guy to chapel, but he knew that was not the moment for invitations, He'll Be Asking About Me, Danny thought. There'll Be Other Times.

Back in the dormitory, where he had been permitted to live for the last several months, Danny stood and looked out the window. he could see the water tower and the fields beyond. the rows were filled with lettuce heads,  the back fields with waist-high corn. the day was settling down as night came on with  a watery blue sky, the clouds blushed with sunset.

all at once, Danny felt free. standing in the middle of the Plymouth County Correctional Facility, with months still to serve, he felt unfettered as he never had on the outside. there, he had made a prison of his world. here in prison, god had set him free. Look where You Want To Do and Let Your Feet Follow.  he now saw where the old ways would lead him and he was free to turn and walk the other way - free to choose the good, even when his wold ways still called to him.

looking at the water tower, he remembered his first fight here, remembering washing the blood off his hands after hammering O'Brien. but it

*292  had taken more than the whole water tower to wash John Gilbert's blood off his hands. it had taken Christ's blood - the living water.
10 years after his release, Danny Croce once again entered the Plymouth County Correctional Facility. although the government had closed the old building and built a new one, the Plymouth facility was essentially the same.
he stood in the lock, between the double doors operated by security. the first door had closed behind him. the second refused to open. he buzzed again.
Who are you? a voice said over the intercom.
for  a panicky moment he wondered. he remembered being  in the old prison. was he the man who had killed John Gilbert? yes.
who else was he? Faces and events rushed through his memory like a video  in fast-forward. the day he was released from prison. was he the man who had killed John Gilbert? Yes.

who else was he? faces and events rushed through his memory like a video in fast forward. the day he was released from prison. his marriage.  his 5 children. the years working with troubled kids in Boston. then the big break:  being accepted at Wheaton College and receiving the Charles W. Colson Scholarship for ex-offenders. his graduation. his ordination. ye, he remembered. both who he had been and who he now was.
Who are you? the voice repeated.
'I'm the new prison chaplain, Danny answered.

CHAPTER 31 - SAVED TO WHAT?

Culture in the broadest sense is  the purpose for which God created man after His image...(which) includes not only the most ancient callings of...hunting and fishing, agriculture and stock raising, but also trade and commerce and science and art.  Herman Bavinck

*293  Danny Croce's 'wake -up punch' is the perfect punch line for this book. not because it's a heartwarming conversion story - though it is that - but because of what Danny did After his broken life was redeemed. it's the kind of wake-up punch that contemporary Christians urgently need, as well as an apt metaphor for the theme that well be woven through the rest of this book.

when Danny Croce became a Christian, he embarked on an adventure to change the world. first to be transformed was his won life: He cleaned up his act, got out of prison, got married, settled down into a respectable life, and earned a college degree. but changing his own life wasn't the end of things for Danny. after his graduation, he didn't tuck his Wheaton diploma under his arm  and head off for the comfortable life that his education might have given him. no, he set out to transform the world he had known. he went back to prison.
and transform it he did. the Plymouth County Correctional Facility houses 1400 inmates in 22 units, 4 or which are the 'holes',  the dreaded segregation and protective-custody units. in each unit, Danny located an on-fire Christian believer, or else he preached and witnessed until God converted someone. Danny then appointed these men to function as elders to help and lead others; to equip them, he continues to disciple and teach them, giving courses on theology and doctrine, often using seminary-level materials. he also  holds weekly Bible studies throughout the 

*294  prison, assisted by Prison Fellowship volunteers. and every day Danny talks with inmates one-on-one, teaching, encouraging and helping them solve personal problems.

he helps inmates like Peter, who received a letter from his wife telling him she was filing for divorce. Danny prayed with peter, then drove 60 miles to meet the estranged wife. many meetings later, Peter and his wife were reconciled and they are now growing together in Christ.

when God makes us new creations, we are meant to help crate a new world around us and Danny Croce's work at the Plymouth prison, like Jorge
Crespo's  at Garcia Morena, offers a striking example. again and again, I have witnessed this kind of transformation within a rotting prison culture, and the results are measurable in terms of reduced disciplinary problems and reduced recidivism.
yes, cultures can be renewed  - even those typically considered the most corrupt and intractable, but if we are to restore our world, we first have to shake off the comfortable notion that Christianity is merely a personal experience, applying only to one's private life. no man is an island, wrote the Christian poet John Donne. yet one of the great myths of our day is that we Are islands - that our decisions are personal and that no one has a right to tell us what to do in our private lives. we easily forget that every private decision contributes to the moral and cultural climate in which we live, rippling out in ever widening circles - first in our personal and family lives, and then in the broader society.
that's because every decision we make reflects our worldview. every choice, every action, either expresses a false worldview and thus contributes to a disordered and broken world, or expresses God's truth and helps build a world that reflects his created order. our purpose in this final section of the book is to show you how to make genuinely biblical choices in every area of your life. the 3 worldview categories examined in the earlier sections  - Creation, Fall and Redemption - provide a conceptual structure by which we can identify what is wrong with non-Christian ways of thinking and then formulate a Christian perspective on every subject.

the first task, then, is to be discerning, to examine various worldviews by measuring how well they answer the fundamental questions of life: Creation - Where did we come from and who are we?  Fall - What has gone wrong with the world? Redemption -What can we do to fix it? trace out the way any worldview answers these 3 questions and you will be able to see how nonBiblical ideas fail to fit reality. by contrast, the biblical worldview provides answers that are internally consistent and really work.
finally, when we apply this 3-part analysis, we learn how to put

*295  biblical principles into practice in every area of life. as we have seen with Danny Croce and Joge Crespo, TRANSFORMED PEOPLE TRANSFORM CULTURES.  and that is what every believer is called to do, as Scripture makes clear. 

THE CULTURAL COMMISSION

the scriptural justification for culture building states with Genesis. at the dawn of creation, the earth is unformed, empty, dark and undeveloped. then, in a series of steps, God established the basic creational distinctives: light and dark, 'above the expanse' and 'below the expanse', sea and land and so on. but then God changes his strategy.
until the sixth day, God has done the works of creation directly. but now he creates the first human beings and orders them to carry on where he leaves off:  they are to reflect His image and to have dominion  (Gen. 1.26). from then on, the development of the creation will be primarily social and cultural: it will be the work of humans as they obey God' command to fill and subdue the earth. Gen.  1.28
Sometimes called the 'cultural commission' or 'cultural mandate', God's command is the culmination of His work in creation. the curtain has risen on the stage and the director gives the characters their opening cure in the drama of history. though the creation itself is 'very good', the task of exploring and developing its powers and potentialities,  the  task of building  a civilization, God turns over to his image bearers. 'By being fruitful they must fill it even more;  by subduing, it thy must form it even more', explains Al Wolters in Creation Regained.

the same command is still binding on us today. though the Fall introduced sin and evil into human history, it did not erase the cultural mandate. the generations since Adam and Eve, still bear children, build families and spread across the earth. they still tend animals and plant fields. they still construct cities and governments . they still make music and works of art.

sin introduces a destructive power into God's crated order, but it does not obliterate that order. and when we are redeemed, we are not only freed from the sinful motivations that drive us but also restored to fulfill our original purpose, empowered to do what we were created to do: to build societies and create culture - and, in doing so, to restore the created order.

it is our contention in this book that the Lord's cultural commission is inseparable from the great commission. that may be a jarring statement for many conservative Christians, who, through much of the  20th century,  have shunned the notion of reforming culture, associating that concept with

*296  the liberal social gospel. the only task of the church, many fundamentalists and evangelicals have believed, is to save as many lost souls as possible from a world literally going to hell. but this implicit denial of a Christian worldview in unbiblical and is the reason we have lost so much of our influence in the world. salvation does not consist simply of freedom from sin; salvation also means being restored to THE TASK WE WERE GIVEN  IN THE BEGINNING - THE JOB OF CREATING CULTURE.

when we turn to the New Testament, admittedly we do not find verses specifically commanding believers to be engaged in politics or the law or education or the arts. but we don't need to, because the cultural mandate given to Adam  still applies. every part of creation came from God's hand, every part was drawn into the mutiny of the human race and its enmity toward God, and every part will someday be redeemed. this is the apostle Paul's message to the Romans , in which he promises that 'the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay (Rom. 8.21) Redemption is not just for individuals; it is for all God's creation.
Paul makes the point most strongly in Col. 1.15-20,  where he describes the lordship of Christ in 3 ways:
1. Everything Was Made By And For Christ:  'By Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible...all things were crated by Him and for Him';
2. Everything Holds Together in Christ:  'he is before all things  and in Him all things hold together:
3. Everything Will Be Reconciled by Christ:  'For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him and through Him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven'. redemption covers all aspects  of creation and the end of time will not signal an end to the creation but the beginning of a new heaven and a new earth: God will make all things new. Rev. 21.5 

the lesson is clear: Christians are saved not only From something (sin) but also To something (Christ's lordship over all of life). the Christian life begins with spiritual restoration, which God works through the preaching of His Word, prayer, the sacraments, worship and the exercise of spiritual gifts within a local church. this is the indispensable beginning, for only the redeemed person is filled with God's Spirit and can be genuinely know and fulfill God's plan. but then we are meant to proceed to the restoration of all God's creation, which include private and pubic virtue; individual and family life; education and community; work, politics and law; science and medicine; literature, art and music. this redemptive goal permeates everything we do. for there is no invisible dividing line between sacred and secular.we are to bring 'all things' under the lordship of Christ, in the home and the school,

*297  in the workshop and the corporate boardroom, on the movie screen and the concert stage, in the city council and the legislative chamber.
this is what we mean when we say a Christian must have a comprehensive worldview:  a View or perspective that covers all aspects of the World. for every aspect of the world was created with a structure, a character, a norm. these underlying principles are god's 'laws' - god' design and purpose for creation - and can be known through both Special revelation (God's words given in scripture ) and General Revelation (the structure of the world he made). they include both laws of nature and norms for human life.
this point must e pressed, because most people today operate on a fact/value distinction, believing that science uncovers 'facts', which they believe to be reliable and true, while morality and religion are based on 'values', which they believe to be subjective and relative to the individual. unfortunately, Christians often mirror this secular attitude. we tend to be confident about God's laws for nature, such as the laws of gravity, motion, and heredity; but we seem far less confident about God's laws for the family, education or the state. yet a truly Christian worldview draws no such distinction.  it insists that God's law of gravity, so, too, we must learn to live in accord with God's norms for society.

the reason these 2 types of laws seem quite different is that norms for society are obeyed by choice. in the physical world, stones fall, planets move in their orbits, seasons come and go and the electron circles the nucleus - all without any choice in the matter - because here God rules directly. but in culture and society, God rules indirectly, entrusting human beings with the task of making tools, doing justice, producing art and music, educating children and building houses. and though a stone cannot defy God's law of gravity, human beings Can rebel against God's created order  - and they often do so. yet that should not blind us to the fact that there is a single objective, universal order covering both nature and human nature.
all major cultures since the beginning of history have understood this concept of a universal order - all, that is, except postmodern Western culture. despite the differences among them, all major civilizations have believed in a divine order that lays down the law for both natural and human realms. in the Far East it was called Tao; in ancient Egypt it was called Ma'at; in Greek philosophy it was called Logos.
likewise, in the Old Testament the psalmist speaks almost in a single breath of God's spreading the now like wool an revealing His laws and decrees to Jacob, suggesting that there is no essential difference between God's laws for nature and those for people (see Ps.147.16-9) both types of law

*298  are part of a single universal order. John's Gospel borrows the Greek word for this universal plan of creation (logos) and in a startling move, identifies it with a personal being - Jesus Christ Himself.  'in the beginning was the Word (Logos),' which is the source of creation (John 1.1) 'through Him  all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made'. John 1.3 In other words. Jesus Himself is the source of the comprehensive plan or design of creation.

as a result, obedience to Christ means living in accord with that plan in all aspects of life. family and church, business and commerce, art and education, politics and law are institutions grounded in God's created order; they are not arbitrary in their configuration. a school is not a business and shouldn't be run like one; a family is not a state and shouldn't be run like one. each has its own normative structure, ordained by God, and each has its own sphere of authority under God. for the Christian, there must be no dichotomy between the sacred and the secular because nothing lies outside of God's created order. our tasks is to reclaim that entire created order for His dominion.

the world is a spiritual battleground, with 2 powers contending for the same territory. God's adversary, Satan, has invaded creation and now attempts to hold it as occupied territory. with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God launched a counter offensive to reclaim his rightful domain, and we are God's soldiers in that ongoing battle. 'He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves' Col. 1.13 redeemed, we are armed for the fight to extend that kingdom and push back the forces of Satan. the fighting may be fierce, but we must not lose hope, for what we are waging is essentially a mop-up operation because of the Resurrection the war has been won; the victory is assured.

the history of Christianity is filed with glorious demonstrations of the truth and power of the gospel. through the centuries, when Christians have lived out their faith by putting both the cultural commission and the  great commission to work, they have renewed, restored and, on occasions, even built new cultures. they have literally turned the world upside down.

ALL TRUTH IS GOD'S TRUTH

in the first century, a tiny group o Jewish dissidents spread a preposterous message about a condemned felon who rose from the dead. from such ignoble beginnings, Christianity grew into a force that dominated Western culture nd eventually the world How? by believers' dramatic testimony under

persecution. witnessing the peace and joy shining from the faces of ordinary  men and women put to death for their convictions, pagans were drawn to Christ and His church.

in the second century, the church father Tertullian even reproached the secular authorities for  the failure of their harsh policies:  'Your cruelty (against us) does not profit you, however exquisite. instead, it tempts people to our sect. as often as you mow us down, the more we grow in number. the blood of the Christians is the seed (of the church'.' as a result of their striking witness, Christians soon filled every corner of ancient society. 'We have filled all you have -cities, islands, forts, towns, assembly halls, even military camps, tribes, town councils, the  palace, senate and forum,' Tertullian said, mocking the Romans 'We have left you nothing but the temples.'

as a young man, Justin decided to become a philosopher and studied with teachers of the various philosophical schools of the ancient world from Stocism to Aristotelianism to Patonism. finally he realized that the truth he sought was found in scripture and he became a believer, but he did not abandon philosophy. by becoming a Christian, he argued, he had simply become a Better philospher: He was now able to gather all the individual truths discovered by various philosphers and make sense of them within the framework of the one perfect truth provided by divine revelation. 'whatever things were rightly said by any man, belong to us Christians', he wrote.

Justin wasn't urging Christians to be complacent relativists, as if all paths lead to God. He was resolutely opposed  to the paganism of his day, and he was even put on trial for being a Christian, where he refused to renounce his faith and was executed. No, Justin wasn't one to compromise the truths of Christianity. yet he did believe that pagans perceive reality in part and he taught that Christ is the fulfillment of all the partial truths embodied in pagan philosophy and culture.

following Justin's lead, the early church sought to fulfill both the great commission and the cultural commission, to redeem both souls and society. and when the Roman Empire fell, it was Christians who saved civilization in one of the most inspiring chapters of Western history.

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the Dark Ages began with a cold snap. in A.D. 406 the Rhine River froze, forming a bridge of ice that allowed a band of barbarians to cross from the

*300  Germanic territories into Roman territory. in the following years, successive waves of Vandals and Visgoths, Sueves and Alans, overran the Roman Empire and Europe, reducing cities to rubble  and decimating populations. the entire substructure of Roan civilization was destroyed, to be replace by small kingdoms ruled by illiterate, barbaric warrior-kings.

as the shadow of the Dark Ages fell over Western Europe, who emerged from the rubble? who rebuilt Western civilization"  the Christian church.
in A.D. 401 a 16 year old British boy named Paticius was seized