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How do we reach Millennials?
Format: Kindle
โHow do we reach Millennials?โ is the burning question of the day among churches everywhere. They seem to be the lost generation. For my part, I think it comes down to showing that Christianity is a relevant, vibrant, and intellectually robust worldview that directly bears on life in meaningful and practical ways. The inclination to dismiss Christianity as irrelevant to oneโs life or as intellectually insipid must be patiently and systematically refuted. This is done by engaging the mind, and showing that there are sound reasons for biblical admonitions. Christianityโs moral demands are not ad hoc or capricious, as many believe. Godโs laws have specific purposes, and there are distinct, predictable consequences for ignoring them. A person desiring to change his or her actions must start with the mind, for it is the root of habit. Henry David Thoreau once said, โThere are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.โ I fear the same can be said of the Christian church in confronting our culture. We hack at the branches (symptoms) while ignoring the root (the mind and its underlying philosophy.) Or we engage in theatrics to โbring them inโ and have nothing to offer when they come. Chesterton wrote, โMerely having an open mind is nothing; the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.โ We must have something solid to offer those we wish to win. Scripture tells us that one eager to escape the prison of worldly philosophy must begin by transforming himself through renewing the mind (Rom 12:2.) Enter Nancy Pearcey with her new book, Love Thy Body.
All of Pearceyโs books are thought-provoking and readable, and Love Thy Body is no exception. Quoting C.S. Lewis from Love Thy Body, โThe Christian and the Materialist hold different beliefs about the universe. They canโt both be right. The one who is wrong will act in a way which simply doesnโt fit the real universe.โ And this is the crux of the matter. Pearcey demonstrates throughout her book how and why secular philosophies fail to fit reality, while the Christian worldview fits. To our great misfortune, many are so far gone that they explicitly disavow reality as binding or that we must rely on it as a guide. Many, but not all. There remains a remnant who still care about objective reality and it is for them that this book is written. The lynchpin of the book is Pearceyโs description and analysis of the fact/value split, which manifests itself in a body/person dualism. I learned many paradigm-shifting things by reading the book, but in the next paragraph Iโll give one example.
Christians are often accused, in knee-jerk fashion, of โirrationallyโ introducing religion (metaphysics) into moral questions such as transgenderism, a.k.a. โimposing religious views.โ However, it does not take a great deal of reflection to realize that the science of biology (reality) agrees with the Christian view. A personโs sex is an undeniable, objective, biological fact all the way down to the cellular level, as a recent controversial TED Talk attests. It is in fact the secularist who seeks to introduce religion or metaphysics to the question by insisting that โpersonhoodโ (whatever sex an individual wants to โidentifyโ as at any given moment) trumps biological fact. The secularist has often trumpeted, loudly and belligerently, his allegiance to science and reason, while accusing the Christian of superstition. But we see that this is a mere caricature. The transgender apologist downplays and ignores objective reality to prefer subjective spiritualism, AND seeks to IMPOSE that view on all others. So, the secularist, in this instance, is guilty of the very thing of which he accuses others. (Forgive me for using broad nomenclature here, I know that not all secularists are on board with the anti-science transgender movement.)
There is much more substance within that I could go on about, but this review is lengthy enough as is. Youโll just have to read the book. Buy it now!
[Full disclosure: I received a free preview copy of the book as part of the #LoveThyBody launch team, for which I enthusiastically volunteered. This review represents my unbiased opinion, nonetheless.]
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Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2018
