I’m blogging through Nancy Pearcey’s excellent book Total Truth as part of a book discussion I’ve been doing. Last time, I covered the second chapter, which deals with living for God. This time, I’m hitting some highlights from Chapter 3, “Keeping Religion in its Place”. This chapter deals with how we typically end up being taught not to bring a Christian worldview into the workplace, and how critical it is to bring a unified perspective to our lives.

Pearcey starts off by talking about how she’d worked with some Christian lawyers, who noted how in their area, a Christian approach to law basically meant not to lie, cheat or steal – but it meant nothing about the underlying legal philosophy. Getting past this took working in small groups, because “it can be devastating to discover how much they have compromised with the secular mindset”.

Pearcey also notes that in many fields, the idea of “being professional” has come to be synonymous with approaching things from a secular mindset. She argues that believers in many areas bend over backwards to try not to sound Christian. It’s a kind of secular dualism, where essentially we’re allowed to believe what we want as long as we don’t let it come out into our workplace or actions. She spends some time tracing the thinking and philosophy which led us to this state, but I’ll jump to where we ended up, which is adopting some of the dichotomy set up by Kant, which she summarizes this way:

Another way to describe Kant’s dichotomy is to say that the lower story [ed: truth/objective reality] became the realm of publicly verifiable facts while the upper story became the realm of socially constructed values. This is the terminology that has become widespread in our own day throughout the work of social scientists.

This will probably seem familiar; again and again we’re told that we can believe what we want as long as we keep it to ourselves and don’t try and impose our beliefs on anyone else. In other words, we’re allowed to have our values – but we’d better not act like they are facts.

She goes on to note:

Today the fact/value dichotomy has become part fo the familiar landscape of the American mind. Children pick it up every day in the typical school class-room. Fields like the humanities and social studies have been taken over by postmodernism. In English classes, teachers have tossed out their red pencils, and act as though things like correct spelling or grammar were forms of oppression imposed by those in power.

On re-reading this book after 10+ years, I noted that in the interim since it was written, the situation has only gotten worse. However, she points out that people are perfectly willing to believe in objective truth in science, or sometimes even in history, but not in ethics or morality.

Different perspectives on the world

Pearcey goes on to examine the tension between scientific naturalism – the idea that, the material world is all there is and all that really matters and so essentially humans are just machines or creatures designed to survive – and the fact that most still try to hold on to some kind ofview of morals and ideals. If naturalism is true, then there is no real basis for human ideals and morals, but we affirm them anyway. Quoting John Searle, she says that science pictures the world as a machine, ordered and following law-like behavior like a machine. But this is inconsistent with our everday experience, where we feel capable of conscious, rational decision-making. She quotes Searle as saying, “we can’t give up our conviction of our own freedom, even though there is no ground for it,” or at least not within scientific materialism.

Pearcey notes Schaffer’s writings call this a type of denial – “Although man may say that he is no more than a machine, his whole life denies it.” This reminds me also of CS Lewis’s writings in Mere Christianity – that people can’t really live as if there is no right and wrong. They may say they do, but then if you cheat them or trip them, you’ll find them telling you how wrong it was. And, no culture lives as if cowardice is a virtue, etc.

Given this tension, it’s vital that we insist Christianity is not just subjective truth, dealing with personal beliefs, morals and values, Pearcey argues. If we do, we have nothing to offer to those who realize the tension in their worldview. Christianity presents a unified worldview that provides truth for all of life – not just personal truth, but truth about all of reality.

Liberalism attacks Christianity in the same way

Liberalism, Pearcey argues, attacks Christianity in essentially the same way, unmooring it from its basis in objective truth and historical fact. It turns Christianity into a series of metaphors, symbols, and illustrations, where it becomes just spiritual window dressing. As I was reading this, I noticed that in a way I see this happening with those who turn Christianity into a social gospel – something primarily about how we treat others. If that’s the case, it isn’t truth – it’s just a way to see how to be nice to other people.

Pearcey also notes that today, people have moved away from focusing on religion at all, to focusing on spiritual life. I suppose there is some truth to the famous statement “I’m into spirituality, not religion,” and some see religion as the problem and spiritual life as the solution. But Christianity is not just about “spirituality”; it’s truth about all of life.

Still, making such claims today feels like it runs near the type of religion viewed as dangerous, or “fundamentalist”. Our society, it seems, views vague, personal spirituality as healthy, but as long as it doesn’t make claims to be objectively true. Then, it’s viewed as dangerous and you’re seen as a radical, essentially almost a type of terrorist.

Beauty and true myth

Pearcey also devotes some time here to talking about CS Lewis’s idea of a true myth. Lewis had a strong intellectual side, but also cared deeply about emotions and imagination, and experienced deep longings. He wrote about his time as an atheist (Pearcey quotes):

Nearly all that I loved [poetry, beauty, mythology] I believed to be imaginary; nearly all that I believed to be real I thought grim and meaningless.

Ultimately, only when Lewis discovered Christianity was this resolved for him. Pearcey summarizes:

He saw that Christ’s incarnation was the fulfillment of the ancient myths that he had always loved – while at the same time a confirmable fact of history. Christianity was ‘the true myth to which all the others were pointing,’ explains one biographer.

Christianity is true, historically verifiable, objective reality, yet at the same time deals with deep spiritual issues and fundamental meaning. There’s no division into objective and subjective truth; it’s a unified truth, truth about all of life. It deals with our objective need for reconciliation with the holy God whom we have offended, and our subjective desires for meaning and value. All of that and more falls within the scope of the truth of the Bible.