Brad Alles

In the last blog I mentioned Nancy Pearcey calling Christianity ‘Total Truth.” This total truth, a Christian worldview, is a biblically informed perspective on the world. Christianity starts with the presupposition that God exists due to the order in the universe and the moral order in the world. God reveals Himself generally through nature and more specifically through His Word. He who is absolute and unchanging is the source of all truth. Even though God created a perfect world, humans rebelled in sin against Him and ruined it. To restore the relationship with God, Jesus Christ came to save sinners. In Luke 19:10, Jesus told Zacchaeus the tax collector, “‘For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.’” But Jesus also came to testify to the truth. In John 18:37, Jesus said on trial before Pontius Pilate, “‘In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.’” There is either the Truth or the Lies. Which side will you be on?

The hard truth is that all people are sinners—everyone has broken God’s law and deserves nothing but punishment for evil. People feel guilty over the bad things they’ve done since “the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them” (Romans 2:14). Reading God’s Word, the Bible, will reveal the specific laws that they’ve broken, adding more guilt, since “no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin” (Romans 3:20). However, continuing to read God’s Word will not only show people their sin; it will show them their Savior. Romans 3:21-24 says, “But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”

So Christianity is what Nancy Pearcey calls “Total Truth”—it is truth about all reality, for all people and all times. And it is “The Map” to navigate the world effectively so we live in line with God’s intentions when it comes to ethics and our behavior. God exists and made everything. In love He redeemed humanity through Jesus’ death and resurrection after we rebelled. He knows what is best for our lives since He made us. But if Adam and Eve rejecting God and His perfect world weren’t bad enough, today we continue to reject His Son and the plan to bring perfection to our sinful souls. The Apostle Paul says in Romans 1:25, “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator.” Just like Adam and Eve, we reject God and His plan, thinking our way is better, and exchange the true worldview for false ones.