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Outline How Now Shall We Live was the heart cry of a people who lived during the Jewish exile from the Promised Land, yet it is no less the unspoken prayer of the faithful today. As author Chuck Colson puts it, "We live in a culture that is at best morally indifferent ... in which Judeo-Christian values are mocked ... in which violence, banality, meanness, and disintegrating personal behavior are destroying civility and endangering the very life of our communities." It is no small wonder that Colson--the founder of Prison Fellowship Ministries and author of several renowned Christian works--considers this book the most important work of his life.
America, Colson states, is now in a post-Judeo-Christian era. Technically, this is what "postmodernism" means. In a generation in which the most respected brands of thought about reality declare that "God is dead," it is clear that a faith-based worldview does not prevail. So how do we teach our children that belief in God is respectable and intelligent? How do we fulfill our mandate to make "disciples of all nations" when friends and coworkers find the Christian perspective foolhardy and--in terms of rational thought--almost insane? Most important, how do we renew our entire culture, especially as it infects the global community, with the "common grace" of reinstating a prevailing belief in God and in His moral order?
These questions' implications are far-reaching, and Colson's thorough inquiry is a ready match for the challenge. In effect, this book delivers a logical, more than just "because the Bible says so" framework for interpreting the Gospel to the postmodern world, while also illustrating the vision for a culture based entirely on Biblical principles--powerful tools, indeed.
Christians are taught to love God with all their hearts, all their strength, and all their minds. How Now Shall We Live emphasizes that not to use one's mind in this idea-saturated culture is to abandon dying neighbors to bleed by the side of the road while going about one's religious way. As Colson puts it, "turning our backs on the culture ... denies God's sovereignty over all of life." It's this compassionate severity and prodding intelligence that make this book not only a good read, but a life-changing one as well. --Courtenay Gebhardt
Book Description Christianity is more than a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. It is also a worldview that answers life's basic questions and shows us how we should live as a result of those answers. How Now Shall We Live? equips Christians to confront false worldviews and live redemptively in contemporary culture.
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.
In How Now Shall We Live?, the 2000 Gold Medallion winner for best book about Christianity and society, Chuck Colson and Nancy Pearcey show that the great spiritual battle today is a cosmic struggle between competing worldviews. Through inspiring true stories and compelling teaching, they demonstrate how to * Expose the false views and values of modern culture * Live a more fulfilling life the way God created us to live * Contend for the faith by understanding how nonbelievers think * Build a society that reflects biblical principles
Download Description Non-Fiction: This books gives people the understanding, confidence, and tools to confront the world's bankrupt worldviews. Charles Colson is a leader and known authority on these issues.
Item Specifications...
Pages 656
Dimensions: Length: 8.2" Width: 5.8" Height: 1.2" Weight: 1.7 lbs.
Release Date Oct 25, 2004
PublisherTYNDALE HOUSE PUBLISHERS #37 ISBN 084235588X EAN 9780842355889
Availability 29 units. Availability accurate as of Sep 06, 2010 04:47.
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I have rarely despised a book as much as this one. A commenter on the reviews for The God Delusion suggested I read this book for another view. What I got was a series of self-important anecdotes, adequately (but hardly stunningly) written, with a massive overdose of smugness and self-delusion.
The book expounds a useful concept, that of the 'worldview'. The descriptions of the naturalistic worldview were by and large accurate (IMO), and they were the only paragraphs I could agree with. By asking irrelevant questions (Which worldview supports human dignity?), the authors hope to convince the reader of the truth of christianity, but only convince us of the power of suggestion. By making several true statements in succession, the unprepared mind accepts blindly the unsupported conclusion. (See the discussion of the finite vs eternal universe, for example.)
I imagine a christian would be nodding like a toy dog hung in the back of a car at almost every paragraph and sentence. There is little that can be shown outright to be false, after all. But only if you ALREADY hold the christian worldview would you ever connect-the-dots to create the conclusion.
That this book could be used as an argument for the christian worldview only goes to show just how bankrupt it is. I wish I could get my money back (can't resell it--been thrown against the wall too often). Had I not agreed to read this disaster of an apologetic, I could have several days of my life back too.
Zero (or fewer) stars.
How now shall we live Jan 15, 2007
The book is very well written, rational informative and inspiring. It conveys a message of mere Christianity in a world which is becoming allways nore secular and shows clearly the sharp contrast between the two diametrically opposed cultures.
Less artful than C.S. Lewis, but Colson's defense is just as solid Dec 23, 2006
Author Charles Colson derives the title of this book from the Jews' long-heard cry to their God during the great exile from the Promised Land. It's a fitting title for the age we`re living in, especially for the Christian who often feels alienated while pondering life in such changing times. I read this book nearly in accordance to reading the C.S. Lewis classic "Mere Christianity." Both books more or less try to explain the central tenets of Christian doctrine by setting up their relationship to the `revolutionized' worldviews now underpinning society to some sort of foundation. This book is refreshing especially in context of our own `information age,' where knowledge (and lies) can now make it across continents in a matter of seconds. In a way, Colson's book is a logical extension of Lewis's work, both using personal experience to frame the Christian faith for others. However, Colson does not have the eloquence that an Oxford professor of religion might weave into his personal defense of Christianity. Nonetheless, "How Now Shall We Live" does have the great convenience of updating the information-consuming lay reader about how Christianity establishes a rational worldview for modern day.
Colson, as a prominent chief counsel to President Richard Nixon, spent a life-changing, seven-month prison term for his involvement with the Watergate scandal. Inside the pressing and disheartening prison walls, Colson found God through a critical examination of his own life, and when he left a free man, founded the Prison Fellowship ministry foundation. His co-author of "How Now Shall We Live," Nancy Pearcey, is currently a Francis A. Schaeffer scholar at World Journalism Institute.
Although even as a Christian I am not particularly knowledgeable about all the intricacies of apologetics, Colson's book was one of the most refreshing defenses I've read so far. Clearly accessible to the layman yet delightfully working its case with reality, "How Now Shall We Live" dismantles various nineteenth and twentieth century philosophies brick by brick while establishing Christianity as the true "city on a hill." I was somewhat surprised at the clarity of Colson's message, part of it translated to powerful anecdotes and parables, and how I responded to his thesis. While I was reading it, the book made me feel as though someone was nudging me gently while whispering, "Do you see? Do you get it now?" Nothing about it rang false, and the delicateness of the book's vast implications, not to mention their logical cohesiveness, kept dawning on me like endless surprises one after another. This is a book that paid off in spades when I finished it, so it helps if you don`t rush through it.
Colson presents a concise realization that today's culture war has everything to do with competing worldviews. On one end of the spectrum, Christianity and God's Truth, and on the other, secularism and humankind's wants. The authors present the three fundamental questions imbedded in the structure of every worldview: "Where did we come from and who are we?", "What has gone wrong with the world?", and "What can we do to fix it?" Contrary to the Publishers Weekly review, I think Colson accurately presents the worldviews currently opposing Christianity and puts the debate in a fair context. I'm sure Colson picked up a few ideas along the way from the greater Christian thinkers out there today, but that hardly hampers the message.
Sometimes Scripture can only take you to an abrupt end of the road, and there are times when matters simply do not make sense, especially within the confines of an ever-changing world. "How Now Shall We Live" confirmed and, indeed, renewed my faith in a way that nothing really has yet before. At best, I can say it has delivered to me a new spark of life, a spark that may allow for a fresh look at the state of affairs to grow and cultivate. And thank you for that, Mr. Colson.
daily reading Nov 11, 2006
I read some daily. Try to review and do the worksheet. I am on chapter 8 and consider this to be an excellant study book.
The Way We See The World Can Change The World Jun 21, 2006
Centuries ago, when the Jews were in exile and despair, they cried out to God, "How should we then live?" The same question rings down through the ages. How shall we live today? Pearcey and Colson's primary observation is that "the way we see the world can change the world." (pg. 13) This is because our choices are shaped by what we believe is real and true, right and wrong, or good and beautiful. In short, our choices are shaped by what Pearcey and Colson call our "worldview."
Every worldview attempts to answer three basic questions: (1) Where did we come from and who are we? (2) What has gone wrong with the world? And (3) What can we do to fix it? According to Colson and Pearcey, the culture wars are not about extraneous issues like abortion or public education. Fundamentally, they are about worldviews--between competing secular and spiritual answers to those three basic questions.
The demise of objective truth, profoundly expressed in the halls of academia, also extends into the popular press and culture. The result has been a postmodern worldview which embraces relativism and reduces all ideas to social constructions shaped by class, gender, and ethnicity. Under this view, the world is just a power struggle for meaningless prizes. Their one absolute is that morality is not absolute. Other existing worldviews include "traditionalism," found in many small towns filled with churches; and modernism, found among pragmatic social and business leaders interested in personal material gain, but less interested in philosophical questions and social issues. Against this backdrop, Christians are challenged to provide answers to those three basic questions in a compelling manner.
C. S. Lewis observed, "The Christian and the materialist hold different beliefs about the universe. They both can't be right. The one who is wrong will act in a way which simply doesn't fit the real universe." Thus Colson and Pearcy observe that choices are not without consequences. The Christian worldview says we were created by God. Compelling evidence that life does not have a random origin can be found in the current arguments for intelligent design. Christianity claims that God created the universe with a material order and a moral order. If we live contrary to that order, we sin against God. Thus, what has gone wrong with the universe is human sin.
The way to redeem our culture is to help people realize which universe they're living in. If it's a materialist's universe, then the answers don't revolve around taking moral principles seriously. But if the real universe was made with a moral law (as Colson and Pearcey argue), then it stands to reason that the solutions to our problems begin with recognizing that fact, and taking steps to educate people in ways that will help them live lives that are not inimical to the way we were designed to live. This, Colson and Pearcey argue, is how we should live.
