Chuck Colson's The Faith Blog Tour
Zondervan is sponsoring a blog tour for Chuck Colson's latest book The Faith.
I have been pre-reading Chuck's book in anticipation of hosting today's stop on the blog tour.
I sent some questions to Chuck Colson. If all goes according to plan, he will send me a response and then stop by to see if any commenters have responded to his answer.
Now, my question for Chuck Colson.
Mr. Colson, you make the point in several places that Christianity is a worldview. The term worldview is becoming common in the Christian vernacular. Many associate worldview with learning "isms". How do you recommend we keep "worldview" from becoming just another cerebral exercise? How do we connect it to the heart? Also, in the chapter on becoming holy, you discuss social holiness. "We are to bring God's holiness to bear in every area of life. This understanding of holiness has moved Christians throughout history to some of the greatest advances in human dignity and freedom." How do you recommend we protect against losing the focus on God's holiness as our motivation for engaging culture? In other words, it can become easy to slide into pursuing political or social causes for reasons having nothing to do with God's holiness. What are good ways to guard against that?
Once I receive Chuck's answer, I will post it here. In the meantime, feel free to comment on the thread.
UPDATE :
Chuck Colson's response :
I argue that Christianity is a worldview because a worldview is a way of explaining reality, understanding the moral order and the physical order of the world in which we live. It may be becoming common in Christian vernacular today, but it wasn’t for much of the 20th century. The concept of seeing Christianity as the explanation of all reality in life was largely lost during the Separatist/Fundamentalist era.
Worldview should never be just a cerebral exercise. It isn’t simply studying different systems of thought and how they interact and how Christianity interacts with culture and politics; it is understanding the totality of our faith, which is useless knowledge unless it is carried to the human heart. That’s why in the Centurions Program we teach that people have to be transformed in the process of studying of Christianity, both our doctrines and how our doctrines affect all of life.
Yes, indeed, there is a risk that you lose the focus on God’s holiness when you get so involved in the issues of culture. That’s why we need to be constantly checking one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. It’s a very good caution that you have raised, and is one that over the years has thrown a lot of solid believers off course. Always remember that politics is simply an expression of culture, and that engaging culture is only successful if we do it in the name of, under the authority of, and with the leading of our Sovereign God.
Chuck Colson
