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How Now Shall We Live?
Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, Tyndale House 1999.
[hb: $39.95, pb: $17.95, study guide: $11.00 (Koorong)]
Review by Rev. Don Baird
Those familiar with Watergate will remember Charles
Colson as the former aide of Richard Nixon who went to gaol for a bit
and afterwards founded Prison Fellowship.
During the trial he had been converted to Christ through reading Mere
Christianity by C.S.Lewis. In the seventies many of us read of this in
Colson’s Born Again. Since then Colson has written other things, but, to
be honest, I haven’t been taking much notice. Until now!
On holidays in Kiama, where my mother lives, I usually pay a visit to
the local Christian bookshop. This time I noticed this book by Colson
and read on the dust jacket, “True Christianity goes far beyond John
3:16 – beyond private faith and personal salvation. It is nothing less
than a framework for understanding all of reality. It is a worldview.“
Over the past year the pressure has been building to do more with a
Christian world-view. The Forum 2000 studies have had something to do
with that, plus a growing frustration that past emphases were
inadequate. So, Charles Colson – who is neither a theologian nor a
philosopher, but a lawyer – has written a 500 page book on a Christian
worldview. It came as a bit of a surprise. He has, however, been
assisted by his co-author Nancey Pearcey, who studied under Francis
Schaeffer, earned a Master’s degree from Covenant Theological Seminary,
and did graduate work at the Christian Studies Institute in Toronto.
Someone more qualified than I may want to provide a serious review of
this book. What encourages me, though, is that Colson and Pearcey have
tackled this project and come up with a book which is most readable.
Explanation is illustrated with story. The headings of the bite sized
chapters grab your attention. However that doesn’t make it a populist
work. The extensive end-notes reveal thorough and comprehensive
research, as do the 15 pages of recommended reading divided into:
worldview, apologetics, creation, life, individual choices, marriage and
family, education, neighbourhood, work and economics, ethics, law and
politics, the arts, and pop culture.
A couple of quotes: “We will be delighted if you are inspired to read
the works on which we have relied most heavily. Our controlling source
is Scripture. Beyond that, we are indebted to many who have gone before
us and upon whose shoulders we stand, especially John Calvin, Abraham
Kuyper, C. S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer.” (xiv)
“This understanding of life’s laws is what Scripture calls wisdom.
‘Wisdom in Scripture is, broadly speaking, the knowledge of God’s world
and the knack of fitting oneself into it’, says Calvin College professor
Cornelius Plantinga. A wise person is one who knows the boundaries and
limits, the laws and rhythms and seasons of the created order, both in
the physical and the social world. ‘To be wise is to know reality and
then accommodate yourself to it.’” (16)
Colson writes well of Christ’s role in creation (Col 1:1-17), but little
is said of “God being pleased… through him, to reconcile to himself all
things.” (Col 1:20) Also, how we, as the Lord’s people, are involved now
in that, needs to be developed. Nonetheless this book is readable and
valuable in stimulating us towards developing a Christian world and life
view in a practical way.
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