Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - Owen Strachan - Worldview and the Christian life

Episode Date: December 2, 2021

Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis: Big Questions, Biblical Answers, is a series that seeks to provide biblical answers to some of the most prominent and fundamental questions regarding God, the Gospel, and the BibleIn this episode author and Professor Owen Strachan discusses worldview and the Christian life.Watch VideosVisit the Website Follow on InstagramFollow on Twitter

Hey guys, my name is Johnny Artavanis and this is Dylan. First of all, I want to thank you guys for faithfully listening to the show. It's been so cool to see the show grow over time, especially in the recent months. And with that being said, if you haven't already, if you would subscribe and rate the podcast, that helps get solid biblical content into more homes, more cars, more AirPods. I think you get the picture. Also, these interviews that are done on the show are available on my YouTube channel, so you can watch them there. That's under my name,

Johnny Artavanis. Well, without further ado, in this episode, I sit down with Dr. Owen Strand, who is the provost and research professor of theology at the Grace Bible Theological Seminary, and ask him to discuss with me worldview and how the Christian is to respond to the pervading forces shaping worldview today. You're not going to want to miss it. Let's dial in. Well, Owen, thanks for sitting down. I would love for you to introduce yourself first, who you are, where you work, and what do people need to know about Owen Strand? Wow.

I am Owen Strand. It's a Scottish last name with a Gaelic pronunciation. That's the first thing to say because everybody. It looks like Strachan. It looks like Strachan or Strachan or Strahan. It's Strand. I didn't come up with the pronunciation. I just want to put that on record. So it's a Scottish last name. So I am the provost and research professor of theology

at Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Conway, Arkansas. So that's what I do for a living. So I teach at a seminary and I'm married to my wife, Bethany. We've been married almost 16 years. I have three children. I write some books. I do a podcast called The Antithesis, which is not the single simplest podcast name ever, but we're working on it. You're going to abbreviate it? Yeah, with the ad agency. Spending millions on rebranding that. So yeah, those are some of the basics about me. I'm originally from Maine, coastal Maine, but I find myself in Arkansas now and I love God. I love His Word. I love the truth of God's Word. And I've staked eternity on those realities. So those are the basics. That's helpful, Owen. Well, I wanted to ask you in this episode, I want you to define for us worldview. I think a lot of people have grown up and in fifth grade, they get some introductory lesson on, hey, there are different factors and elements shaping your worldview, but I want you to

define that first and foremost. And then I would love for you to articulate what are some of the pervading forces shaping people's worldview today? And that is both outside of the church and inside of the church. What are the pervading forces shaping worldview? But first, would you define it for us? What is worldview? Yeah, worldview is, in the simplest form, the grid, usually an intellectual grid, through which you see the world. So how do you make sense of this world? World views typically answer several different questions, including what is the purpose of the world? What has gone wrong with the world? How can things be made right with the world? And what part do I and others have to play in this world?

There are other questions to ask and answer, but fundamentally, we trace the concept of a worldview to the German word Weltanschauung. It's always hard to say German, but go with it, okay? I won't even try. Don't even. Yeah, it's brutal. And that just, again, basically means world and life view. That's how the term was originally used. And then it got simplified to worldview. So worldview, again, is the way that you make sense of reality. And in the West, if you're thinking about the first 18 centuries, roughly after Christ came to earth, you basically see the world in terms of a theological or a theistic framework. So you

understand that God made things, you're a subject under God's rulership, you have certain duties to God, and the world is supposed to be stewarded in some sense for God's glory. What happens in the 18th and 19th centuries with what is called the Enlightenment is that there is this shift out of an expressly theistic or religious worldview to more of a kind of reason-driven perspective on life, such that God is no longer the center of my thinking and my religious expression. I can only know and exist if I start from myself.

You think of a Cartesian formulation there, I think, therefore I am, according to Rene Descartes, previous to the Enlightenment, but very influential on many Enlightenment thinkers. Instead of starting with God as the foundation of reality, you start with yourself, the thinking subject, as the foundation of reality. And then you try to deduce what you can prove rationally from there. And what you can prove rationally or scientifically is that which you can trust in. That's the solid ground underneath your feet. We have a third major shift. Charles Taylor and others have traced these shifts in recent years, recent decades even, away from any kind of conception of the world as rational

or stable, any kind of objective truth really, to a world that is now post-absolute truth or post-objective truth. So think about that shift. People believe basically that God is the foundation of their whole world, and they make sense of things according to a real, objectively true God. Then they make sense of the world according to their own reason, and confidence in the 20th century in reason, human reason, basically collapses. You have two world wars, you have major philosophical systems like nihilism and existentialism that gain a lot of traction in Europe and then influence America. Define what nihilism would be for someone that hasn't heard. Yeah, that's a good question. So nihilism would be for someone that hasn't heard.

Yeah, that's a good question. So nihilism is the view that everything reduces to nothing. There's no ultimate purpose in life. There's no greater meaning. Like a fatalist. A fatalist, basically. Existentialism would be similar to nihilism, and an existentialist would argue there is no greater meaning, there's no greater purpose that I'm here to serve, but I'll make up my own meaning. I'll live pretending, basically, as if there is a greater purpose that I serve. And so you can trace that kind of perspective to Sartre and others in the French philosophical school in the mid-20th century. That leads into that third and final movement that we were discussing, where it's not that God is the ground of truth and morality. It's not that your rationality is the ground of truth and morality. We're actually in a post-truth and post-morality context.

So that's famously called post-modernism. After that rationality phase, we come into this one. So a lot of people around us don't believe in any objective absolutes at all. There's nothing fundamentally true anymore that would define life. Exactly. You are walking in midair. You keep walking, but there's nothing beneath your feet. So you're saying during the Enlightenment, people started at least gauging reality based upon their own perception of the way the world was. But then there came a point where because of just the tragedy in the world, the loss of millions of lives because of World War II, no one could actually ascertain for sure and say, hey, this is the way the world is because it's

all broken, fragile, and futile. And so now we're living in an environment where no one can really put their thumb on the way the world actually is. Is that what you'd say would fare? Yeah, I think that's fair. Basically, people continue to live and, you know, in His common grace, God has allowed the human person, a man or woman, to experience a lot of fun and pleasure and even relative meaning just by virtue of being made in God's image and existing in this world. But in terms of worldview, people don't really have any major answer to why they're here, to what's behind all this, to what has gone wrong with the world and how it can be made right. Those basic

core elements of a worldview are still asked but are largely unanswered by a postmodern society. So how a lot of people end up living, okay, just functionally and practically. We're not talking about living out of a textbook, right? You know, thumbing to page, you know, 57, how do I live today? Most people just live according to their desires and their passions. And so we've seen a major anthropological shift over the last few centuries such that today people don't think of their identity as having any reference to God at all. So in the Christian worldview, we're made in God's image. That's the first truth about us.

We're created the image of God. So think about all that's pre-loaded in that conception of the human person. But if you don't find any reference point in God at all, what is your identity? What does it mean to be a human? You basically find your meaning in your desires, your passions, your inclinations. So the LGBT movement, for example, the transgender movement, even what we call the woke movement today, social justice. All of those movements are attempts to find meaning in me and my desires and my experience, not in God for many people. You mentioned some of the implications of living in a post-truth environment. And I was going to ask you this at some point, and I think it's fitting to do so now. What are some of the other implications or

signs that someone could be able to discern that they are indeed living in a post-truth environment? This is obviously so different than Jesus saying he is the truth. We now live in a world where people say, speak your truth, or there is no such thing as truth. What are some of the implications or signs where someone can discern that, and how do we live in light of that as Christians? Yeah, that's a very important question, and it goes lots of different ways. We'll try to track a few. One of the ways you can tell you're in a post-truth context is people are scared of sermonizing or preaching or even speaking declaratively. So you've lost

objective grounding in the truth in God. And so as a result of that, you're destabilized. You're a ship at sea and you don't know where to even ground your own arguments or your own beliefs. So one of the things you do is you qualify yourself, you soften your speech, you talk about how this is not necessarily true for everybody, but it's true for me. Everything's relative. Everything's relative. If you're hearing those kind of phrases or sentences, you're hearing a post-truth culture come to expression. You know that you're in a post-truth context when people upbraid you or

get angry at you for saying things that are declaratively true. So we've seen that shift in the West in recent years where those who dare to speak objectively, let's say, for example, about manhood and womanhood, if you in any way believe that there's such a thing as manhood or womanhood, you're declaring something as objectively true. And that draws a response. Again, people react to that in a post-truth way by saying, well, maybe that's your judgment, but that's not my judgment. A post-truth climate is a climate in which there is no one standard. There is no referee. We're playing a game, but no one's- It's a moving target. It's a moving target. If you don't want the goalposts

down there, you can... I guess this would be kind of hard to do, but you can put the goalposts on your shoulder and move them where you want. And no one calls a foul on you. No one kicks you out of the game. So that serves our flesh because we don't naturally want there to be an objective standard. As sinners, as those who really did fall through the real historical sin of a real historical Adam in Genesis 3, we don't want there to be a referee. Said more significantly, we don't want there to be a judge. We want to be the judge of our behavior, and we're very happy to judge ourselves on a curve, even as we hold others to an absolute standard. A post-truth culture then ultimately is really

a culture without justice. It's a culture, even more abstractly really, without resolution of any kind. People talk, people make arguments, people live their lives, but there's no greater purpose. There's no telos, to use a Greek word. There's no end. We're not headed anywhere. Maybe people do live their days on a 24-hour basis with some meaning or some purpose, but as I've said, there's no basis for that. You just choose to do it. You can see then in having this discussion how revolutionary it is to be a Christian who believes in absolute objective truth as grounded in the Word of God, to be in a church where pastors, for example, preach as if they're not giving their opinions, but they're giving God's own testimony, God's own

witness to the cosmos about different subjects. That's a very positive reality for you and me and the people at our schools and institutions, and praise God for that, our churches. But just let that sink in afresh as to how revolutionary that sounds to people who are post-truth. They really do think of us as arrogant, as intruding on their experience, because in a post-truth culture, I'll throw one more in, your experience is the norm. Or if I was going to say it even more simply, your feelings determine what is true. In a post-truth culture, the question isn't whether something's objectively right or wrong, good or evil. The question is, how does that make me feel?

You can even understand how a doctor in such a setting would be seen as harming people in speaking truly about their condition. Because if what you say makes me feel bad, you're harming me. A post-truth culture is really a therapeutic culture. It's impossible to overestimate just how therapeutic modern America is. We've really swapped out our theological language of righteousness, truth, goodness, God, justification, salvation. We've swapped that out for harm, abuse, toxicity, feeling, experience, wellness. It's not that when we use these terms, we would never be referencing something that is happening in reality. Someone may be wronging someone and we may call it abuse, right? And we would as Christians be against that. But notice

how in a post-truth culture, you swap out hard and fast objective biblical language for soft, malleable, therapeutic language. And you don't just use those terms. You approach the world therapeutically as if all the world is supposed to make you feel better. And when it doesn't make you feel better, you're victimized and you're angry. So the ministry of truth is a profound rebuke to the therapeutic culture and is really, along with the gospel of divine grace, our greatest need. You've got to spring people out of a therapeutic mindset where they're a victim and you've got to bring them in through proclamation, through witness, loving witness into the world where yes, we sin

against one another, but we're not fundamentally victims. We're fundamentally criminals in need of God's grace. And I've noticed even Christians can fall prey to this type of construct because on a quest of humility, they start explicitly doubting what God has declared to be true in his word. And it's done in this like hermeneutic of humility. I don't know who am I to answer with such boldness from what is clear or unclear in the word. And it's done in this like hermeneutic of humility. I don't know who am I to answer with such boldness from what is clear or unclear in the scripture. So Owen, just as we close, what would be your encouragement to someone on how best to fortify their own thinking and their own conviction and commitment to the truth in an environment that hates truth. Man, that was such an important point about doubt.

Doubt really becomes the currency of authenticity in a post-truth culture. It's not faith. It's not trust in God, which is the biblical currency of a righteous life funded by God's grace. Doubt in a therapeutic man-centered context is that which establishes me as authentic and as real. Doubt is that which shows I'm actually thinking when it's the opposite. It's not wrong to have questions in life and reason through things, but it's not doubt that shows that you're authentically human. It's actually trust.

We're creatures. We're made by God. We're not little gods. We're made by God in a creaturely way to know God. So you're never more authentically or truly human than when you are thinking God's thoughts after him. And the way to do that, now to get to the actual substance of that last question, is to stock your mind full of the truth, but not just the expressly propositional passages of the

Bible. God has given us truth in multiple forms. He's given it to us in historical form, in poetic form, in prophetic form in terms of the genres of Scripture, eschatological form in terms of prediction of the end times. I mean, man, there's just such rich depth and drama, beauty, wisdom in the whole counsel of God. There's a whole genre of Scripture called wisdom literature. And the way you and I and everyone watching this can reject and push away from a post-truth culture is to embrace the truth culture of the Scripture.

It's to submit to God's truth. It's to immerse ourselves in the Word of God. It's to make the Word a lamp to our feet and a light unto our path, not just once a month but on a day-by-day basis. And we've never been more in a context of lies and myths and disinformation and doubt, like we were just talking about, than this one. That's all, those problems have always been around, it's not new. But this is an age in which right is wrong and wrong is right. And it is doubly essential that we get into the Word and then that we, not just in our own individual quiet time, we submit to the Word of God in an ecclesial sense, in a congregational

sense. And you find a strong preacher of the Word who is going to not tentatively offer some humble suggestions about a passage, but stand on the truth, always recognizing he himself is not perfect, but declare that truth to you. I find myself in the 21st century just feeding upon sound doctrinal preaching like I rarely have in my life. Not because I'm getting gold stars, you know, every day, but because I'm truth starved. I think a lot of people are truth starved, and some pastors will start to get a following for preaching the truth, and then they'll

tragically think people are really drawn preaching the truth, and then they'll tragically think people are really drawn to them personally and their magnetism or attractiveness or charm or intellectual power. In a lot of cases, people aren't drawn to the trappings of a given man. They're drawn to somebody. They're drawn to a man who will lead according to Scripture's design in declaring truth no matter the consequence, no matter the cost. We are hardwired to want objective truth, and we're hardwired in a human sense to want men in the home, in the church, and in society who will put it all on the line in order to stand up, speak the truth, and love society, who will put it all on the line in order to stand up,

speak the truth, and love, Ephesians 4.15. When people witness that, it's rare, they respond to it. So we can trust God that as we submit to His Word and put ourselves in that kind of church, God will bless that and feed us and strengthen us by His grace. That's so helpful. Owen, I love what you said that doubt is the currency of our culture, but trust is the currency of the Christ follower, and we trust something that is objectively true. And so I'm thankful that in a world of lies, confusion, ambiguity, and obscurity, the Christian has truth. And I'm thankful for the helpful input and perspective that you've brought to this subject. So thank you. Thank you.