Subscribe to our Newsletter
|
The Colson Files
|
 By Chuck Colson|Published Date: March 08, 2010
Global Warming and CO2
Our particularly cold winter was not the first unseasonable season to challenge the claims of global warming advocates. Chuck reminds of our cool summer, and points to some implications – and a valuable resource – for the whole climate change debate. This BreakPoint commentary was first published in October, 2009.
Too bad the baseball playoff game between the Phillies and the Rockies was postponed last weekend...because of snow. It was kind of a cool summer, wouldn’t you say? And those folks enjoying the early snows out west this fall, well, they might actually be praying for a little global warming.
OK, global warming is no laughing matter. But it is also not a scientific fact, as the new movie Not Evil Just Wrong makes clear. But that’s not stopping leaders in wealthy Western nations from pushing radical “solutions” to this dubious problem. Not Evil Just Wrong does a great job of clearing the air over some contentious issues.
Take the hysteria over CO2 emissions, for example. CO2 is not a pollutant. It’s an odorless gas that every living being gives off when he or she exhales. As Patrick Moore, once a founder of Greenpeace, says in the film, “Anybody who knows anything about biology knows that carbon dioxide is the most important nutrient of all of life. It is the currency of life.”
Therefore, as MIT’s Richard Lindzen says, we must distinguish between pollutants and CO2. He says, “When you see smokestacks in this country, it is very rare that you see black soot. We have tons of environmental regulations designed to control real pollutants.”
Notice that he says “in this country.” Global warming activists would be happy to slap moratoriums on the building of coal burning plants here in the U.S. Even better, they’d like to see existing plants eliminated. This would crush American industry—maybe 7 million American jobs are associated with coal alone. And, ironically, it would boost industry and production in China and India, were there are virtually no environmental regulations, and where they use “dirtier” coal than we do in the United States!
The unintended consequence, of course, is that by shutting down coal and coal-based industries here, we end up increasing global air pollution, which comes from dirtier plants overseas.
The film also questions another global warming proposition—that is, that even slight rises in global temperatures would be catastrophic. Well, it would be catastrophic if you consider increased global food production and human flourishing a bad thing.
Europe, for example, thrived during the Medieval warm period. In the latter Middle Ages, when temperatures dropped dramatically, crops failed, malnutrition and disease was rampant—millions perished, and the human “herd” was culled, if you want to put it that way.
Which raises another issue addressed in the film. The proposed “solutions” to global warming are, in many ways, profoundly anti-human. The wealthy can afford expensive power. The poor and working poor cannot. Patrick Moore says, “The idea that Al Gore has proposed that we can stop using fossil fuels in 10 years is completely reckless...85 percent of global energy is fossil fuel today, and we depend on it for our survival.”
Lord Lawson, a member of the economics committee of Britain’s House of Lords, puts it plainly: “The people who are calling for massive carbon dioxide reductions are the enemies of poverty reduction in the developing world.”
I urge you to see the film Not Evil Just Wrong, being distributed by the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. Visit BreakPoint.org, and we’ll show you how you can get a copy for yourself, your friends—or maybe even for your congressman.
For additional perspective on this issue, get the book, Serve God, Save the Planet, by Dr. Matthew J. Sleeth, from our online store. Or read the article, “Don’t Make Her Mad?” by Chuck Colson. |
|
Christians and the Environment |
 By Chuck Colson|Published Date: March 01, 2010
It’s All Worldview
In this first installment in a new series, Chuck sets the foundation for beginning to think as Christians about issues relative to climate change and the environment.
In his World Peace Day message, Pope Benedict XVI included caring for the environment as an important part of promoting peace. Nothing controversial about that—environmental degradation has often led to conflict over resources.
What was controversial was the Pope’s speaking about environmental issues as if the Christian worldview were true. Benedict told his audience that “respecting the environment does not mean considering material or animal nature more important than man.”This statement should not have been controversial or even noteworthy.
As Frank Furedi of the British magazine, Spiked, pointed out, the fact that the Pope “felt it was necessary to remind people of the unique status of the human species” was “telling, indeed.”
Telling, but not surprising. There is a misanthropic strain in modern environmentalism. The message is often that there is nothing wrong with the environment that fewer and poorer humans would not cure.
What is also not surprising is the lack of real interest about Christian worldview and the environment. There is plenty of interest in the environment
Look at the climate change issue, for example. In that case, the media was so anxious to learn what different Christians thought about the environment, they could not wait to tell their readers that the “environmental issue splits evangelical ranks.”
Sure, there are differences on how best to address the issue, but the press ignored the bigger story: Evangelicals of all stripes agree that caring for the environment is our Christian duty. And articulating this care is an important part of a Christian worldview.
That is why I was happy to sign the statement produced by the National Association of Evangelicals titled, “For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility.” One of the priorities listed was working to protect God’s creation.
The statement declared “God-given dominion” is a “sacred responsibility” that rejects “depletion” and “destruction” of creation. Instead, “our uses of the Earth must be designed to conserve and renew the Earth.”
Thirty years ago, statements like that were not possible, because nobody saw Biblical Christianity as a worldview. They saw it as an isolated movement, concerned only with personal salvation. Bible-believing Christians now understand that their worldview affects all of life, not just personal salvation. It deals with the work place, the neighborhood, politics, arts, and, yes, the environment.
When environmentalists and others criticize Christians for not doing enough or not doing the “right” thing, at least they are acknowledging that there is a place for the Biblical worldview in public life. The problem is, as in the case of the Pope, when that worldview contradicts their worldview, then they insist that faith and the insights it produces are a private matter.
It is a blatant inconsistency. If we are concerned about the environment, we ought to be concerned about the unborn in the womb, or the human rights of people around the world. The source of the concerns is the same in each instance: our Christian worldview. That our critics cannot—or do not—get it is telling, indeed.
For more information on this topic, get the book, Redeeming Creation, by Fred Van Dyke, et al. Or read the article, “Christian Environmentalism” by Dr. Ray Bohlin.
Give us your feedback on this article.
|
|
By Chuck Colson|Published Date: February 22, 2010
Huxley and the Postmoderns
Originally published on March 25, 1999.
One of the best barometers for critiquing attitudes in today's culture is to tune into The Diane Rhem Show on National Public Radio. A few days ago Rhem and a panel of distinguished guests discussed the book, Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley. And if you happened to tune in, you found out a lot about how our opinion elites think—or maybe don't think.
You may remember the plot of the book: Brave New World describes a future society where children are conceived in test tubes in laboratories and then are assigned to a strict caste system. No family attachments are allowed. Everyone is encouraged, however, to have free sex and to take "happy pills." They are controlled by being kept in a state of perpetual bliss. No one questions his place in the state.
The book is, of course, a powerful warning against the spread of totalitarianism.
But in the Rhem discussion, one panelist seemed to take some of the satire seriously, saying that people in the story, after all, were well off. Another speculated only on the politically incorrect characterizations.
But what was lost on the whole group were the ironies of it all.
The first irony was that someone named Huxley could even write this book. Aldous Huxley was the grandson of T. H. Huxley, the nineteenth-century biologist who was nicknamed "Darwin's Bulldog." No man apart from Darwin himself is more responsible for the spread of philosophical materialism—the belief that everything around us can explained by purely material processes.
It was T. H. Huxley who defended Darwin against his critics, including those who warned of the moral and cultural collapse that Darwinism would eventually create. In addition, Aldous was, as well, the nephew of Julian Huxley, who took Darwinism to its logical extreme, calling for a one-world government and even eugenics.
Well, ironically, in Brave New World, grandson Aldous Huxley is protesting against the world that the other Huxleys made possible. Totalitarianism becomes inevitable when people believe there is nothing intrinsically special about being human and when they believe there is no God. But the elites don't even get it—they've been blissfully sucked into the Brave New World themselves, and they can't even see what is happening.
The other irony lost on the participants was the parallels between Huxley's Brave New World and our own postmodern culture. Just like in the book, people fill the void in their lives through various distractions like pills and sex. Postmodern people seek pleasure and sensation because our rejection of God and His moral order leaves us feeling empty.
The fact that these ironies were lost on the panel shows just how blind our elites have become to the truth. When faced with a prophetic book like Huxley's, they don't see they have become the very pitiful creatures prophetically created in its pages. But they are like lots of other folks in our society who do not see that naturalism and evolution have finally brought us to the brink of the very horrors Huxley warned of.
The postmodern culture has led us to a precipice—and it is Christians who must sound the alarm.
Today, Brave New World surprisingly is turning up on best-seller lists for teenagers—and that's marvelous news. It's a great book, and it opens the door for us to explain what the elites can't see: what the loss of a Christian worldview leads to.
For more information on this topic, read the article, "Christians and Postmoderns," by Joseph Bottum. Or read the book, Solomon Among the Postmoderns, by Peter J. Leithart, available in our online bookstore.
Give us your feedback on this article.
|
|
The Spirit of Wilberforce |
 By Chuck Colson|Published Date: February 15, 2010
Worldview in Action
Originally published on February 19, 2007.
Few men have changed history as profoundly as the English parliamentarian William Wilberforce. Beginning in 1791, and moved by his conversion to Christ, he began the crusade to abolish the slave trade in Great Britain. It was a crusade that would try his soul and cost him his health for the next twenty years.
Though his name was on the lips of America’s founding fathers, and his actions inspired abolitionists in this country, Wilberforce has been all but lost to history on this side of the Atlantic.
|
|
Read more...
|
By Chuck Colson|Published Date: February 08, 2010
Paving the Way
We need to understand the worldviews that we’re up against in our day – as well as our own Christian worldview. This BreakPoint commentary first appeared last fall.
To reach people with the Gospel, we have to be able to speak their language: be it Swahili, Chinese...or the language of postmodern secularism. I’ll explain more.
This past fall we launched a major and exciting initiative: the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Its purpose is to teach and pass on what I’ve learned through my 36 years as a Christian, and 33 years working in prisons and teaching worldview.
Through this project, we hope to both revitalize the American church and see the Center become a long-term resource for people coming along after me.It’s a big vision. But I see no hope for our culture if the Church is not revitalized.
Culture is religion incarnate; culture shapes politics. So if we’re going to change the direction of our society, the Church has to fulfill its role as the conscience of society.Well, I can already hear you saying, “Isn’t worldview just an abstract subject that tweedy professors like to talk about?”
Emphatically, no! Everybody’s got a worldview that determines how he lives his life. The sum total of all the worldviews in our culture determines the kind of society we have. And frankly, Christians are losing the worldview battle.We need to teach the next generation what we believe, why we believe it, why it matters, and how it plays out in every walk of life.
Worldview determines how we form our families, what is taught in schools, what laws our communities pass, what kind of music we listen to, and what we believe about art and science.The great apologist Francis Schaeffer was right when he said that Christians must be missionaries to their own culture.
Our culture speaks a different language, and thinks differently, than Christians do. And if we don’t understand this, we can’t communicate effectively with our non-believing neighbors.Some people think all we must do is evangelize.
But you can’t evangelize without understanding the cultural context. It would be like a missionary attempting to work in a foreign country without understanding its language or customs. He’d make a fool of himself.
The early church understood this, and it developed different evangelistic approaches to Jews and Greeks. The Jews knew the Scriptures, so the apostles could begin directly with the message of Christ as the long-awaited Messiah.
But the Greeks had no prior knowledge of Scripture; the apostles had to find a starting point familiar to them.For example, while preaching on Mars Hill in Athens, Paul discusses the Greeks’ altar to an unknown god. He quotes Greek poetry, and he appeals to the Athenians’ own experience in order to create a common ground before presenting the Gospel.
Today we live in the midst of a great struggle between good and evil. We’re not only battling radical Islam, on the one hand, we’re also battling for the heart and soul of our own culture. Only a resurgence of Christian truth flooding into our society can save it from collapse.
This is the cause God has called me to—the work I will be doing through the Colson Center. I pray fervently that there will be a mighty movement of God’s people learning and then teaching Christian worldview to others.If we don’t, if we sit passively in our pews, we’re going to witness the world collapsing—or perhaps I should say finish collapsing—around us.
For more information on Christian worldview, get Chuck and Nancy Pearcey’s book, How Now Shall We Live? from our online store. Or read the article, “William Cowper, the Big Questions, and Worldview” by David Naugle.
|
 By Chuck Colson|Published Date: February 01, 2010
Absolutes Without Absolutism
Originally published on June 11, 2004
Have you ever tried to debate moral principles with someone who doesn't believe they exist? If you have, you know it's an exercise in frustration. In our anything-goes society, even mentioning that there might be such a thing as a moral absolute truth is a good way to get branded intolerant, anachronistic, and a killjoy. And the more frustrated we get with this state of affairs, the more likely we are to turn the stereotype into a self-fulfilling prophecy. That is, our frustration can easily turn into anger, and our anger can begin to look very much like the arrogance that we're already accused of harboring.
The goal that Christians need to strive for, argues scholar Art Lindsley of the C. S. Lewis Institute, is "absolutes without absolutism." In his excellent book, True Truth: Defending Absolute Truth in a Relativistic World, Lindsley writes, "Just as a need to relate truth to all areas of life does not make us relativists, so believing that there are some moral absolutes does not make us absolutists. . . . Absolutism might be defined as being synonymous with a cluster of characteristics: arrogance, close-mindedness, intolerance, self-righteousness, bigotry, and the like."
These are characteristics that many people already associate with Christianity, unfairly. And so these are the very characteristics that Christians need to work especially hard to avoid. After all, as Lindsley reminds us, the most fundamental doctrines of our faith -- our fallen state and our desperate need for a Savior -- are doctrines that make for humility, not pride.
But at the same time, we still need to be able to talk about absolutes. An explanation of the Christian worldview makes no sense without them. So how do we do it? Well, first remember that we can believe that there are absolutes -- that is, moral truth binding on us -- without being absolutists -- that is, closing our minds to other propositions.
And Lindsley suggests that one of the best ways is to turn the tables on relativists. For instance, we can point out the absolutism in their own thinking. As Lindsley writes, "Relativists consistently stand guilty of the philosophical sin of making exceptions to their own absolute rules." They claim that Christianity is a religion of intolerance, that Christians have committed abuses in the name of their faith, that Christians shouldn't impose their values on others, but leave them free to choose their own value systems.
But where did they get their ideas of tolerance and justice -- of right and wrong in general -- if they genuinely don't believe in moral absolutes? Without such ideas, how can anyone formulate a meaningful system of values?
This kind of argument was effective with as brilliant a thinker as C. S. Lewis. Many years after his conversion, he wrote of his days as an atheist: "How had I got this idea of just and unjust? . . . A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line."
If we're patient and persistent, it's not as hard as it might seem to make a relativist begin to see the truth about the "straight line." But we must never forget exactly who and what we're defending. Jesus was the embodiment of absolute truth, but never an absolutist. And so as Art Lindsley puts it: "The defense of the Gospel is most effective when combined with the demeanor of Christ."
For more information on this subject, get the book, True Truth, by Dr. Art Lindsley, or read the article, “Truth on Trial” by Regis Nicoll. |
|
|
|
|
<< Start < Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 Next > End >>
|
|
Page 1 of 6 |
|
