No one man since the beginning of the cosmos as known today is closer to an accurate understanding of purpose, reason, and position than was the first man known as Adam. The assumption could be made, although scripture does not reveal the subject, that Adam had a deeper understanding of the Creator, creation, and the cosmos. However, since the disobedience that occurred in the Garden and the subsequent death by separation, humanity was thrust into a world alienated from the Source. Sentient man would now, somewhere deep within the bowels of their being, have a faint but inescapable residue of what had once been.
Humanity from henceforth would become, and is, consumed with understanding questions which cannot be answered through scientific observation and detached philosophical jargon. These questions, based upon an empty isolation magnified by the residual traces left in the spirit, would seek to reach towards understanding: Where did man come from? What is man’s purpose? How did the world come into existence? In this indefatigable search, humanity in its attempt to shed light on such questions, has produced humanistic ideologies which convolute and distort any change future generations may have in the search for the Truth.
Mankind in an attempt to understand creation has rejected the notion of a Creator, or at the very least, has often has attempted to grasp the intricacies of the cosmos without a pertinent knowledge of its Creator. Doing this, in example, is the same as attempting to explain natural light without knowledge of, detached understanding of, or denying, the existence of the sun. At best, man will live (if he can live at all) in the laboratory of cold, sterile speculation, “ever learning but never coming to the knowledge of the truth (2 Tim. 3:7).
It is an infinite spiral that produces a culture of humanistic reasoning that attempts to birth solutions from the beakers of scientific observation. From the stagnant pools of humanistic philosophies, man without God, in that indefatigable search to explain order, reason, purpose, and life itself; man will continue to grope blindly never coming to the realization of their condition. That condition, above all other words and thoughts, can be summed up in one word; lost. Man is lost and cannot know his/her world apart from God.
The solution
When God accomplished His work of creation, as found in the account of Genesis, the summation of it all was that it was “very good” (Gen. 1:31). This encompassed all that God had made both through active formation and spoken word. When God created man, man was created in the image and likeness of God. He was created as a cognitive being with intellectual and relational abilities. Man had the ability to think and reason and thus to make moral decisions. However, contrary to much that is discussed, Adam and Eve did not know the concept of good, but rather all they knew was life. To know good would be to also know its counterpart evil. In a more accurate sense, to better describe the condition of man as it was in the Garden it is more adequately stated that they operated in the concepts of true and false.
Adam and Eve lived in an environment of objective and absolute truth. It was a world of truth and anything which contrasted in the slightest was false. Therefore, the moral consequence of disobedience stemmed from a willful choice of false. Scripture explicitly tells us that God “hates every false way” (Ps. 119,128). Literally, false is the antithesis to truth, or better stated, false is untruth. When the woman was questioned by God, “what have you done,” she responded, “the serpent beguiled (deceived) me.” The very nature of deception is to lead astray by causing one to believe what is not true. In the moment they partook of a falsehood, death occurred and subsequently, separation from God. It is important to note that they “willfully” chose the deception and thus as holds to the definition of the world, they chose to be led astray.
The very definition of astray is: “out of the right way; off the correct or known path, or route. Despite specific instructions, they went astray and got lost” (Dictonary.com). Man lost the “Way, the Truth, and the Life,” (Jn. 14:6) and thus the Revealer of the Path, the Truth, and the Source of life, which John declared “was the Light” (Jn. 1:4). God is Light (1 Jn. 1:5) whose Word is a Lamp and a Light (Ps. 119:105). Therefore, to walk in the Light (1 Jn. 1:7) is to live and thus walk in the Spirit (Gal. 5:25) and thus to walk in Truth (Jn. 14:17; 15:26; 16:13; 1 Jn. 4:6). Thus the present condition of man without the Spirit of God is one that is lost.
Man gropes in darkness, ultimately lost, regardless of all of his cognitive abilities, until he receives a subjective revelation of the only Way out. It is the voice of Truth that calls and it is Truth which stands as the door and it is Truth which reveals the True Way. This is only possible through the infilling of the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Truth. It is that Light which shines in darkness (2 Cor. 4:6) which causes a metamorphosis from death to life. In that moment children of false become children of truth.
It was that Light which burst onto the scene of a man named Saul (Acts 9:3). Saul was a man that thought he knew his world, understood purpose, and believed strongly in his pedigree of education and sphere of influence (Phi. 3:5). However, on the road to Damascus carrying the letters of man’s authority, Saul came face to face with Truth. Instantly, blindness from that Light stripped him of natural sight, revealing the condition of his life. He was lost, groping in the darkness, attempting to administer judgment and live separate and apart from the affective experience of the Holy Ghost. How revealing it was, that when the man of God Ananias came to the broken, seeking, and desperate Saul, that upon the declaration of the Way, the Truth, the Life that the blindness, as though it were scales, fell from his eyes and he received sight (Acts 9:19).
The Effect of a Christian Worldview
The world may present the argument that one’s worldview, at least in relation to God and man, is not important. In fact, Secular Humanism posts that humanity alone is capable of both moral and ethical good, apart and without a god. However, as man constantly probes into the various arenas of philosophical reasoning, scientific theories, and materialistic ideologies; without the Spirit of God humanity is lost and as stated prior; man is blind.
Truth cannot be known apart from God and no matter how elaborate man attempts to gloss over the absence of a Supreme Deity in their postulations, the fact remains; God is the Primal Constant necessary in every equation and without Him, man can do nothing. Yet, despite the mounting evidence; the irreducible complexity that is found in the details of Creation, much of humanity still cries the denials that such a thing as God can exist.
The breakdown that results from this denial is positively devastating. If humanity was not created by an Intellectual Creator then life suddenly ceases to have any real purpose and value. Thus the many theories which result from the secular worldviews which continually posit Big Bangs, Cambrian Explosions, and damnable heresies which posture humanity on the same scale as amoeba. This is indeed the direct danger of such theories as macroevolution. If secularism can convince the world that man is indeed derived from a spontaneous, unintelligent, and random act of mindless formation then the value for life becomes subject to cultural preference and relativistic reasoning.
When one fails to embrace the Christian worldview and its many implications on humanity and the world, human life and purpose becomes relative to the subjective whims of fickle humanity. Arising out of the murky depths of these humanistic ideologies such concepts as the Big Bang and evolution emerge. Both concepts are a desperate attempt to explain the origins of life, the world, and the development of man and all creative life apart from a Divine Originator.
This is what stands at the very heart of the attack on humanity, which strains against the bulwarks of a Christian worldview; a worldview that declares the sanctity, specialization, wonder, and Divine Intent that is found in ever living human being. It is a worldview which declares, based upon the Word of God, that humanity is “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps. 139:14). That every living person on the Earth has a purpose and that purpose is directly tied to a Divine Originator. However, disconnect man from these basic truths and the world becomes a cesspool of dilapidated and warped ideologies and beliefs.
Take for example the subject of Evolution, which is the belief that all life has a common ancestor and has evolved over-time, which is now taught in every major public school and secular institution of higher-learning as observable fact. There are many that do not see this as a major problem yet this is an insight to their ignorance. At the heart of evolution there is an attack against God, and yet even greater, an attack against humanity. Scripture, as shown, reveals that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps. 139:14). “In the image and likeness of God,” man was created (Gen. 1:26). Man was “crowned with glory and honor” (Ps. 8:5) and made to have dominion over all of God’s creation (vs. 6). Humanity was God’s crowning achievement, the goal of Creation, the extended agent of Divine dominion on this Earth.
However, convince man that he is but a product of chance and no different than a tree-climbing ape, but rather just “luckier,” and instantly you produce a generational worldview that reduces the sanctity of life. The trickle-down effects of such anti-Christian worldviews are staggering and give rise to bloodthirsty and wicked dictators whose value of life is substantiated (at least in their mind) by the base and despicable beliefs of philosophies such as evolution.
Modern Trickle-Down Effects
One very prevalent result from these worldviews is the common practice of infanticide. Across the world the practice of sex-selected infanticide has been the result of countless murder of innocent life. However, in the backyard of American soil, a country that in its fledging youth was strongly built upon values which fought for the rights of people based upon a strong belief in God, there was an estimated 1.2 million abortions in 2008 (Guttmacher, 2013). The results of this are staggering to think of the progressive incline that will occur as time moves forward. Within ten years alone, well over ten million innocent lives will be taken, all sacrificed on the tables of humanistic worldviews that stand in direct opposition to the Word of God and the value of humanity.
Another startling trickle-down effect which is the direct result of a worldview contrary to that of a Christian is the increasing number of issues relating to gender and sexual identity. First, along the train of thought in relation to origins, if humanity can believe there is no God, no specific and Divine order, and that everything is a part of a chaotic process of natural selection then man can develop aspects of science which argue for certain genetic tendencies and mistakes in the genome.
In 1993, a study was published in the journal Science which proclaimed that families with two homosexual brothers were highly likely to have genetic markers on a region of the X chromosome known as Xq28. Instantly, the nation was enveloped in a biological “I was born this way,” as supposed science touted the existence of a gay gene (Hamer, Hu, Magnuson, Hu, & Pattatucci, 1993). This of course led to the supposed existence of alcoholism, drug dependency, and other various issues in humanity that were considered a part of a genetic code that man could not escape from.
Society as a whole, beyond the science alone, based upon the mindset of worldviews that ignores God has plummeted deeper and deeper into moral filth. Children are now being told they can choose their gender, adults are coming to the realization they were mistakenly born a boy or a girl, and medical fields across the nation are providing the procedures considered necessary to correct what was done wrong at birth. The trickle-down effects of a worldview have effected marriage, child-raising, education, sex, gender, and some of the most basic principles of moral ethics instilled in every man, woman, and child of this Earth.
It is a society that is mirroring the mindset of those living in the time of the Judges in which “every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (Jdg. 17:6). It is a society that has shrugged off the restraints of a Christian worldview, violently opposing natural limitations and Godly ordinances which were meant to heal, mend, and restore. The worlds answer to sin results in more sin. Pedophilia, bestiality, murder, incest, rape, abuse, and the unnatural vices of the flesh have reached epidemic stages. Disease and pestilence increases every year and still the humanistic worldviews posits that the answers are to be found in man’s ingenuity, man’s philosophies, and man’s machinations.
Dominion Living
How then, in light of the predominant nature of the secular worldviews which stand in sharp contrast to the Christian worldview, does one stand resolute and strong as a Christian? This question is a serious question that needs to be addressed. It must first be pointed out that ultimately the battle is not one that is solely comprised on an anthropic scale, but rather as scripture points out, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places”(Eph. 6:12).
What is also important to understand is that the Christian and his or her worldview are predominately centered on the concept of the Kingdom of God. It is upon the infilling of the Holy Ghost, whereby we cry “Abba Father,” (Rom. 8:15) that those born again are adopted into the Kingdom of God. At that point we become heirs with God and not only heirs, but joint-heirs with Christ (Rom. 8:17). As children of the Kingdom we become administrators, stewards, of that Kingdom (1 Cor. 4:1-2) and subsequently the mysteries that come with the Kingdom of God.
Robert Mumford, in The King and You, discusses many dominant themes in relation to the Kingdom of God. In fact, one could call the Sermon the Mount the Magna Carta of the Kingdom of God. Mumford, before dealing with the teachings he referred to as the Bylaws of the Kingdom, revealed that Jesus had to first deal with three concepts in relation to those connected to His Kingdom. The first involved the character of those that would qualify to enter into Kingdom service. Second, the conduct of those involved, and thirdly, the influence they would have in their own individual realms of ministry (Mumford, 1974).
These three concepts, character, conduct, and influence, were addressed in what is commonly known as the Beatitudes. At face value the Beatitudes appear to present a theme which deals with the blessedness of those who are a part of the Kingdom of God. However, after a deeper look Robert Mumford reveals that at the heart of the Beatitudes is a strong thread that reveals a commonality between them all. The tread revealed is nothing more than the concept of taking dominion in a world that will despise, ridicule, fight, and stand in strong opposition to the Kingdom of God.
However, taking dominion is far more than just a declaration of the name of Jesus or a dynamic of strong-arming the enemy. In fact, when looking closer at the underlying principles of the Beatitudes a strong picture of a leader emerges. It is a leadership which is meant to reflect the dominion which had been given many in the book of Genesis and it is the only possible way that a child of God can live and operative victorious in the world they live in. In fact, if anything, Jesus was a prime example of this dominion in His actions, responses, and character as He walked the Earth in flesh.
First and foremost, through the teachings of Jesus in the Beatitudes, Jesus was declaring that the starting point of dominion first begins in the denial of one’s self. This is revealed further in the writings of the Apostle Paul, a man that understood well this concept of leadership when he wrote, “every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things” (1 Cor. 9:25). Before man can operate in dominion in the world around him, he must first take dominion over his own spirit. He must operate in self-control which Paul places in the list of the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:23). One that has temperance (self-control) masters his own spirit. He masters his anger, his emotions, his attitudes, his words; everything in his life is subject to an obedient spirit that is aligned with the Spirit of God.
The prime example of this was revealed in the man Jesus the Christ. At every challenge of the religious leaders, instead of anger and spite, He responded with a diffusing answer that in a sense turned the tables in the conversation. When looking closely at the actions of Christ the implications are astounding. Luke speaks of this principle in the brutal trial and judgment of Jesus. “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and like a lamb dumb before his shearer, so opened he not his mouth” (Acts 8:32). Jesus understood well that by remaining obedient to the Spirit of God and suppressing the desires that perhaps warred within Him, that He constantly kept dominion from the hands of His enemies. When they cried, “If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross,” (Mk. 15:30), Jesus resolutely denied self with the understanding that through this level obedience and control would come a dominion.
Bibliography
Guttmacher Institute. (2013). Facts on Induced Abortion in the United States. Retrieved from http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.pdf
Hamer, DH, Hu, S, Magnuson, VL, Hu, N, & Pattatucci, AM. (1993). A linkage between DNA markers on the X chromosome and male sexual orientation. Science, 261(5119), 321-327. doi: 10.1126/science.8332896
Mumford, Bob. (1974). The King and you. Old Tappan, N.J.,: Revell.