“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
It was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
It was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,
It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”
CHARLES DICKENS, A Tale of Two Cities
Thus did Charles Dickens describe another revolutionary time when all presuppositions and values were challenged and denied. We latter 20th-century and early 21st-century Christians have been called upon to follow the Lord Jesus and to be His faithful disciples in a supremely strategic moment in human history. It is a moment replete with perilous problems and ripe with promising opportunities.
Numerous scholars have commented on the increasing dominance of what Carl F. H. Henry in 1946 called “the secular philosophy of humanism or naturalism.”[1] One of the most incisive analyses was provided by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Russian exile many consider (including myself) one of the 20th century’s greatest and bravest men. Solzhenitsyn warned of the grievous consequences of this fallacious worldview:
“The humanistic way of thinking, which has proclaimed itself our guide, did not admit the existence of intrinsic evil in man, nor did it see any task higher than the attainment of happiness on earth. It started modern western civilization on the dangerous trend of worshipping man and his material needs…As if human life did not have any higher meaning.”[2]
Carl F. H. Henry has described the drastic extent to which modern philosophies and educational theories have succumbed to a man-centered, rather than God-centered, focus and orientation.[3] Henry observed that man rather than God “now defines ‘truth’ and ‘goodness’ in most modern universities” and that this is the culmination of the present century’s having experienced “the greatest overturn of ideas and ideals in the history of human thought.”[4]
Click Here to Read More (Originally Published at The Christian Post)
