Year-End Letter to Listeners

Our Christmas PRINT newsletter that was mailed out in early December is now available for you to read online.

Just a reminder that donations to The Christian Worldview must be postmarked or received online on or before December 31st for the donation to be tax deductible for the 2010 tax year. As always, we are committed to operating The Christian Worldview as our financial condition allows and not presuming upon or pressuring listeners to meet certain budgetary “needs”.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from all of us at The Christian Worldview!

Giving The Gospel At Christmas

Podcast: Download (Duration: 50:46 — 8.7MB)

**SPECIAL NOTE: The Christian Worldview Radio Program for December 25th and January 1st will be rebroadcasts of previously aired programs. December 25th: “God’s Grace in Our Suffering” with Guest Joni Eareckson-Tada and January 1st: “What The Great Commission Means For You“

Guest:  Greg Gilbert, author, What Is the Gospel?

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16).

“Gospel” is a word that is bandied about almost everywhere nowadays.  So much so that “the gospel” has taken on different meanings for different people while the real meaning found in Scripture has become unclear, even amongst Christians.

So what is the gospel?  Is it limited in scope to the “good news” that God has offered to reconcile condemned sinners to Himself?  Or does it have a much broader definition Read more

The Sins of the Father

The suicide of Mark Madoff, the 46-year-old elder son of disgraced financier Bernard Madoff, has all the trappings of a Greek tragedy. Madoff hanged himself in his Manhattan apartment on Saturday, the second anniversary of his father’s arrest for what is now known as the world’s largest-ever Ponzi scheme.

Just before killing himself, Madoff called relatives and asked them to check on his two-year-old son, sleeping in the next room. His death came even as prosecutors and other legal authorities were considering legal charges against the sons of Bernard Madoff. At the same time, other authorities were seeking to go after the Madoff relatives in order to regain some of the vast losses suffered by investors in the senior Madoff’s $50 billion fraud.

The Madoff sons have insisted on their own innocence, and they had originally confronted their father with the concerns that led to his arrest and conviction. Bernard Madoff is now serving a 150-year federal prison sentence.

Was Mark Madoff guilty of complicity in his father’s criminal scheme? We may never know. He insisted on his innocence, but there can be no question that he profited from his father’s criminal acts. News reports on the Madoff scandal have introduced many Americans to terms like “noxious profits.”

Regardless of the legalities in this case, there is a tragic affirmation of a biblical principle here. In the Old Testament, God is said to visit the iniquities of fathers “upon the children to the third and fourth generation.”  [see, for example, Exodus 20:5, 34:7; Number 14:18; Deuteronomy 5:9]

Some Christians turn these passages into nonsensical and sensationalistic warnings about “generational curses” that must be removed by some kind of special prayer or ministry. The reality of the biblical warning is clear enough. We are warned that the consequences of our sins are not limited to ourselves, or even to our own generation.

Bernard Madoff did not ruin only his own name, but the name carried by his children and grandchildren. The moral, legal, and financial consequences of his sin will not be borne by Bernard Madoff alone, but by his descendants after him.

All of this is brought tragically to mind when we think of the despair of Mark Madoff — and even more so when we consider what this means for a two-year-old boy who had been sleeping in the next room. That grandson was not even conceived when Bernard Madoff was conducting his Ponzi scheme.

Cast aside the unbiblical nonsense about “generational curses” and reflect on the reality of the Bible’s teaching about the consequences of our sin — a sin indeed visited upon the children to the third and fourth generation.

That two-year-old grandson already represents the third generation. May God mercifully protect him.

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Diana B. Henriques and Al Baker, “A Madoff Son Hangs Himself on Father’s Arrest Anniversary,” The New York Times, Saturday, December 11, 2010.

Media Matters For Christians

Podcast: Download (Duration: 50:48 — 8.7MB)

Guest: Marvin Olasky, editor in chief, WORLD magazine

“See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ” (Colossians 2:8).

The news media is arguably the most powerful influence on what people think about any given issue. And today, news reporting and commentary bombards us from many different sources: network and cable television, radio, newspapers, and internet websites. Just change the channel and you are likely to hear a completely different opinion on the same news event.

No one is immune to being influenced by the media, including Christians. Where Christians get their news does matter. Marvin Olasky, the editor of WORLD Magazine, a Christian news publication, joins us this weekend on The Christian Worldview to talk about how the media is changing in America and what Christians should be doing to separate truth from error.

Transgressing the Transgressive–Why Modern Art No Longer Shocks

The great code word for art meant to scandalize is “transgressive.” The term was well established by the end of the 1960s, when artists sought to scandalize middle-class morality by “transgressing” moral boundaries. Artists and writers began pushing and pushing through the moral limits, seeking the thrill that comes by shocking the masses.

All this was part of the Marxist dream of destroying bourgeois morality and values in order to liberate humanity from the constraints of the Christian worldview. In some ways, the effort was stunningly successful. But, transgressive artists have run into a wall of sorts. How do you scandalize when every moral conviction has already been transgressed and trampled upon?

Eric Felten of The Wall Street Journal wrote about this in his recent column, “After the Shock is Gone.” Felten argues that artists who seek the transgressive approach today are often frustrated. “But once all the boundaries have been blurred, what’s left?,” he asks.

Felten cites leftist philosopher Slavoj Zizek, who observes that perversion itself “is not longer subversive.” It has all been seen already. Perversion no longer shocks. As Zizek notes, “transgressive excess loses its shock value.” It is hard to invent a new perversion that someone else has not already exhibited in a museum or presented on the theater stage.

This reality frames many of the artistic worlds around us, ranging from the local art museum to the television set. It all becomes boring as it loses its shock value, leaving the artist looking increasingly pathetic. “How many decades will Madonna continue to wear that same costume as if it were a racy innovation?,” Felten asks.

The inability to transgress or shock is a sign of cultural decadence, but it is also a signifier of the foolishness of sinful humanity. Left to our own devices, we will do our best to shock ourselves until we can shock ourselves no longer. Then we grow frustrated.

Transgressive art is exactly what we should expect from trangessors, is it not?

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Eric Felten, “After the Shock is Gone,” The Wall Street Journal, Friday, December 3, 2010.

Who’s Afraid of Noah’s Ark?

A proposal to build a theme park that would feature a life-size replica of Noah’s Ark has set off a controversy in Kentucky that is worth watching. Within days, the controversy had spread to the pages of The New York Times and USA Today.

So, who’s afraid of Noah’s Ark? Lots of folks, it seems, but the editors of the state’s two largest newspapers in particular.

The “Ark Encounter” is a major project to be undertaken by a partnership led by Answers in Genesis, the group that built the Creation Museum in northern Kentucky — an attraction that has now recorded over a million visitors by some reports. The attraction, also to be built in Kentucky, is to include live animals and a 100-ft tower of Bable.

The partnership has applied for incentives under the Kentucky Tourism Development Act, and Governor Steve Beshear announced plans for the park at a news conference in the Kentucky State Capitol.

Then . . . the deluge.

The Courier-Journal of Louisville editorialized that the project would amount to “creationist tourism” that would embarrass the state by featuring “a fundamentalist view resting on biblical inerrancy [that] indirectly promotes a religious dogma.”

The editors asked, “Why stop with creationism? How about a Flat-Earth Museum? Or one devoted to the notion that the sun revolves around the Earth?”

An op-ed column in the same paper lamented with frustration the fact that the proposed theme park was just another reminder that “only 39 percent of Americans believe in the theory of evolution.”

Meanwhile, the state’s second-largest paper, the Lexington Herald-Leader, declared: “Anyone who wants to believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible has that right.” But, the paper added, the state would be embarrassed by appearing through its governor to embrace “such thinking.”

The paper reported that Daniel Phelps, president of the Kentucky Paleontological Society, called Gov. Beshear’s support of the project “embarrassing for the state.”

The editorial boards of the state’s two largest newspapers seem to be very embarrassed indeed. Gov. Beshear kept his comments fixed on economics: “The people of Kentucky didn’t elect me governor to debate religion,” he said. “They elected me governor to create jobs.”

The proposed theme park is expected to attract 1.6 million visitors in its first year, bringing a $250 million annual economic impact within five years.

The most interesting aspect of this controversy isn’t the proposed theme park, but the panic among the commonwealth’s self-appointed guardians of evolutionary theory.

So who’s afraid of Noah’s Ark? Now, we know.

Stephanie Steitzer, “Theme Park for Creationism Proposed for Kentucky,” The Courier-Journal [Louisville, Kentucky], Wednesday, December 1, 2010.

“Creationist Tourism,” The Courier-Journal [Louisville, Kentucky], Thursday, December 2, 2010.

Pam Platt, “A Whirlwind of Ignorance,” The Courier-Journal [Louisville, Kentucky], Sunday, December 5, 2010.

Shawntaye Hopkins, “Governor Defends Tax Incentives for Religious Theme Park“, The Lexington Herald-Leader [Lexington, Kentucky], Thursday, December 2, 2010.

“Ark Incentives: Cheap Jobs, Poor State Image,” The Lexington Herald-Leader [Lexington, Kentucky], Friday, December 3, 2010.

Laurie Goodstein, “In Kentucky, Noah’s Ark Theme Park Is Planned,” The New York Times, Monday, December 6, 2010.

What Secularism’s Rise Means for Christians and the Culture

Podcast: Download (Duration: 50:47 — 8.7MB)

Guest:  Nancy Pearcey, author, Saving Leonardo

“See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ” (Colossians 2:8).

There’s no doubt that secularism, a God-less worldview based on the ideas of man instead of the Bible, has affected every area of our society: education, media, entertainment, and politics.

But the big question is: As our nation’s worldview continues to transform from Christian-based to secular, from the mind of God to the mind of man, what will the future look like for society in general and Christians in particular?

Nancy Pearcey, author of the new book, Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, and Meaning, joins us this weekend on The Christian Worldview to inform us just how much our culture and the church have been affected by secularism and how Christians should respond.

Read more