Gary discusses the providential history of his life after high school and college.
The War of the Worlds depicts a clash between very alien societies—one planetary world hell-bent on destroying another. The fictionalized Martian attack was relentless. Cobra-like periscopes emitted pulverizing beams of energy that ravaged the countryside. The sleek and deceptively beautiful Martian flying machines destroyed everything in their path.
A similar war rages in our own day. The invasion is not extraterrestrial in the usual sense. Alien worldviews, however, have made their way to planet Earth bringing with them even greater devastation than that depicted in the fictional War of the Worlds. Today’s real-life battle is between the worldview of biblical Christianity where the infinite and sovereign God of the universe reigns and rules and the worldview of the many varieties of man-centered belief systems where finite and dependent creatures work to rule and reign independent of God.
Man-centered worldviews oppose the biblical worldview at every point. Truth is turned into a lie (Rom. 1:25); good becomes evil, and evil good (Isa. 5:20); darkness is substituted for light, and light for darkness (Matt. 6:23; John 3:19; Isa. 5:20); a “futile” and “depraved mind” (Eph. 4:17; Rom. 1:28) is preferred over a “renewed mind” (Rom. 12:2). “It must be emphasized that it is not just a question of the mental rejection of the truth, for what is involved is nothing less than the rebellion of the whole man, man in the totality of his being, mind, emotion, and will, against God. It is the refusal to give God the glory which is his due.”[1]
The Bible tells us that those who parade their alien, anti-biblical worldviews “are without excuse. . . . For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God, or give thanks” (Rom. 1:20–21). The rejection of the sovereign God of the Bible leads to a downward spiral that begins with perverse thinking and degenerates into corrupt action. What was originally designed to be straight, man has made crooked by suppressing the truth in unrighteousness (Deut. 32:5; Psalm 125:5; Prov. 2:15; 3:32; 14:2; 17:20; 21:8; Phil. 2:15).
Thinking Straight in a Crooked World
The nursery rhyme ‘There Was a Crooked Man’ is an appropriate description of how sin affects us and our world. We live in a crooked world of ideas evaluated by crooked people. Left to our crooked nature, we can never fully understand what God has planned for us and His world. God has not left us without a corrective solution. He has given us a reliable reference point in the Bible so we can identify the crookedness and straighten it.
Buy NowGary discusses the providential history of his life after high school and college and how he met and worked with Greg Bahnsen, David Chilton, Ken Gentry, and many others. This excerpt is from the Burros of Berea podcast.
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[1] Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, “Crucial Biblical Passages for Christian Apologetics,” in Jerusalem and Athens: Critical Discussions on the Philosophy and Apologetics of Cornelius Van Til, ed. E.R. Geehan (Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1971), 136.