Nancy Pearcey on Worldviews

“Today’s Most influential world views are born in the universities, but they touch all of us through the books we read, the music we listen to, and the movies we watch. Ideas penetrate our minds most deeply when communicated through the imaginative language of image, story, and symbol. It is crucial for Christians to learn how to ‘read’ that language and to identify world views transmitted through cultural forms.” [1]

Unfortunately, she comments, that Christians over the past decades have taken a “inside the fortress mentality.” This is demonstrated later in her discussion of the satirical comedy “I love huckabees,”

Along the way, the movie pauses to take pot shots at Christianity. A Christian family is portrayed as self-righteous, hostile, and foul-mouthed. They have adopted a Sudanese orphan, but only, it seems, to give them more-charitable-than-thou bragging rights. The most telling exchange occurs when the main character has dinner with the family and asks, “If the forms of this world die, which is more real, the me that dies or the me that’s infinite? Can I trust my habitual mind, or do I need to learn to look beneath those things?”

The daughter looks blankly at her mother and says, “We don’t have to ask those question, do we, Mom?”

“No, honey,” Mom answers.

Sadly, the caricature contains some truth. Christians are paying the price for adopting the fortress mentality over the past century and not paying attention to the question people are asking. A better approach was suggested by C. S. Lewis when he said that in every subject area, it is Christians who should think the most deeply and be the most creative — until people wonder why it is that all the best books and movies are by Christians. [2]

Nancy Pearcey shows that Christians with the “fortress” mentality are unable to impact their culture for Christ because they are unable to identify the forces underlying other’s questions and doubts. She says that if we are going to be able to relate to people, we have to understand their worldview. Her book is a great place to start.

(Expect to see future quotes from this book and author — it is an outstanding work.)

_______________
[1] Nancy Pearcey, Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, and Meaning (Nashville, Tennessee: B & H Publishing Group, 2010) p. 11. (Kindle Location 428)

[2] Ibid., p. 254. (Kindle Location 6799)