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Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity QUOTES

Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity QUOTES

1 " Artists are often the barometers of society. "

― Nancy R. Pearcey , Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

2 " Morality is always derivative. It stems from one's worldview. "

― Nancy R. Pearcey , Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

3 " Beginning with sin instead of creation is like trying to read a book by opening it in the middle: You don’t know the characters and can’t make sense of the plot. "

― Nancy R. Pearcey , Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

4 " We tend to have a limited concept of spiritual death as saying no only to things we want or covet -- our guilty pleasures and selfish ambitions. But in reality, it means dying inwardly to whatever has control over us. The thing that really controls us may not be what we want. It may be what we fear. Fear can dominate our lives just as strongly as desire. "

― Nancy R. Pearcey , Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

5 " In every historical period, the religious groups that grow most rapidly are those that set believers at odds with the surrounding culture. "

― Nancy R. Pearcey , Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

6 " All of science is largely formalized common sense. "

― Nancy R. Pearcey , Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

7 " As with every aspect of our sanctification, the renewal of the mind may be painful and difficult. It requires hard work and discipline, inspired by a sacrificial love for Christ and a burning desire to build up His body, the Church. Developing a Christian worldview means submitting our entire self to God, in an act of devotion and service to Him. "

― Nancy R. Pearcey , Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

8 " Knowing the truth has meaning only as a first step to living the truth day by day. "

― Nancy R. Pearcey , Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

9 " Having a Christian worldview means being utterly convinced that biblical principles are not only true but also work better in the grit and grime of the real world. "

― Nancy R. Pearcey , Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

10 " For many women today, on a personal level, the problem is not male dominance so much as male desertion. "

― Nancy R. Pearcey , Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

11 " The gospel is like a caged lion,' said the great baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon. 'It does not need to be defended, it simply needs to be let out of it's cage' Today, the cage is our accommodation to the secular/sacred split that reduces Christianity to a matter of personal belief. To unlock the cage, we need to become utterly convinced that, as Francis Schaeffer said, Christianity is not merely religious truth, it is total truth- truth about the whole of reality. "

― Nancy R. Pearcey , Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

12 " The danger is that is Christians do not consciously develop a biblical approach to a subject, then we will unconsciously absorb some other philosophical approach. "

― Nancy R. Pearcey , Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

13 " Redemption is not just about being saved *from* the consequences of sin, it is also about being saved *to* something- to resume the task for which we were originally created. And what was that task? In Genesis, God gives what we might call the first job description: "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it."

"Be fruitful and multiply", means to develop the social world: build families, churches, cities, governments, laws.

The second phrase, "subdue the earth" means to harness the natural world: plant crops, build bridges, design computers, compose music.

This passage is sometimes called the "cultural mandate" because it tells us that our original purpose was to create cultures and build civilizations- nothing less. "

― Nancy R. Pearcey , Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

14 " Redemption is as comprehensive as Creation and Fall. God does not save our souls while leaving our minds to function on their own. He redeems the whole person. Conversion is meant to give new direction to our thoughts, emotions, wills and habits. "

― Nancy R. Pearcey , Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

15 " The great historian of religion Martin Marty once said every religion serves two functions: First, it is a message of personal salvation telling is how to get right with God; and second, it is a lens for interpreting the world.

Historically, evangelicals have been good at the first functions- at "saving souls". But they have not been nearly so good at helping people to interpret the world around them- at providing a set of interrelated concepts that function as a lens to give a biblical view of areas like science, politics, economics, or bioethics.

As Marty puts it, evangelicals have typically "accentuated personal piety and individual salvation, leaving men to their own devices to interpret the world around them. "

― Nancy R. Pearcey , Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

16 " A school superintendent once told me that most educators define "a Christian teacher" as strictly in terms of personal behavior: things like setting a good example and showing concern for the students. Almost none define it in terms of conveying a biblical worldview on the subjects they teach, whether literature, science, social studies, or the arts.

In other words, they are concerned about being a Christian *in* their work, but they don't think in terms of having a biblical framework *on* the work itself. "

― Nancy R. Pearcey , Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

17 " Christianity is the key that fits the lock of the universe. "

― Nancy R. Pearcey , Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

18 " Redemption is as comprehensive as creation or fall. "

― Nancy R. Pearcey , Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

19 " A merely symbolic religion does not threaten the ruling regime of materialistic science. "

― Nancy R. Pearcey , Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity

20 " If Christians do not develop their own tools of analysis , then when issues come up that they want to understand, they'll reach over and borrow someone else's tools- whatever concepts are generally accepted in their general field or in the culture at large.

But when they do that, Os Guiness writes, they don't realize that "They are borrowing not an isolated tool, but a whole philosophical toolbox laden with tools which have their own particular bias to every problem." They may even end up absorbing an entire set of alien principles without even realizing it.

In other words, not only do we fail to be salt and light to a lost culture, but we ourselves may end up being shaped by our culture. "

― Nancy R. Pearcey , Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity