NOTES ON GETTING A GRIP II: THINKING RIGHTLY IN A WORLD GOING INSANE

SCRIPTURE. “Finally, believers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable and worthy of respect, whatever is right and confirmed by God’s word, whatever is pure and wholesome, whatever is lovely and brings peace, whatever is admirable and of good repute; if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think continually on these things [center your mind on them, and implant them in your heart].” – PHILIPPIANS 4:8, AMP

KEY WORDS: True; Honorable; Right; Pure; Wholesome; Lovely; Repute; Excellence; Praiseworthy

QUOTATIONS

ADAMS. “‘We have been afraid to think.’ We have felt a reluctance to examining into the grounds of our privileges, and the extent in which we have an indisputable right to demand them against all the power and authority, on earth. And many who have not scrupled to examine for themselves, have yet for certain prudent reasons been cautious, and diffident of declaring the result of their enquiries.” – John Adams, “A Dissertation on the Canon and the Feudal Law,” No. 4, Oct. 21, 1765; edited [cf. Dr. Norman Geisler]

SKINNER. “‘The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do.’ The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.” ― B.F. Skinner, Contingencies of Reinforcement: A Theoretical Analysis, 1969; edited

COLSON. “Genuine Christianity is more than a relationship with Jesus,as expressed in personal piety, church attendance, Bible study, and works of charity. It is more than discipleship, more than believing a system of doctrines about God. ‘Genuine Christianity is a way of seeing and comprehending all reality. It is a Worldview.’” ― Charles W. Colson (with Nancy Pearcey), How Now Shall We Live?, 2004; edited

1. FIRST THOUGHTS

ORIGINS. My personal story about ‘Thinking rightly’ began with DR. FRANCIS SCHAEFFER, who with King David more than once joyfully declared “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein” (Psalm 24:1, King James). I was a strange kid: Long before I discovered Christianity, I wanted to know how everything worked. And I mean, everything!

My Quest in earnest began in 1970 at Bowling Green State University (Ohio) on the 7th floor of the University library in my small doctoral study carrel with a cool vertical window that overlooked the beautiful, sprawling campus for inspiration.

What happened was quite amazing, and here’s why.

As I began research for my dissertation during those ‘raw pagan days’ before Christ, I was combing the literature in social psychology since my subject matter would deal with the way human beings processed information, making decisions along the way about what to ‘disclose’ to other humans and what to withhold.

Professor SIDNEY JOURARD, then of the University of Florida, named this process, “Transparency” (1964).

One momentous day I will never forget is when I stumbled across a two-volume treatise by research psychologist GEORGE KELLY (no relation), A Theory of Personal Constructs (1955). In his introduction, he quoted Proverbs 23:7 in the King James translation:

          “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.”

Even though Kelly pioneered ‘Constructivism’ whereby humans create their own Reality or Truth, those lines ripped through me like thunder and lightning – very possibly my very first Epiphany. I instantly realized I had discovered something profound in those ten little words, well beyond my knowledge at the time, even though I didn’t immediately grasp why or how.

THE BIG IDEA. As one who would specialize in something called “Worldview” much later in my career, those words come to serve as a Foundation, the theological benchmark for everything I would do from that day forward. Its meaning is powerful, and bears down directly upon our study today some fifty plus years later.

Here’s how a favorite classic theologian put it.

“‘For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he’ – He is not the man his mouth speaks or declares him to be, but what his heart thinks; ‘which is discovered by his looks and actions,’ and by which he is to be judged of, and not by his words.” – JOHN GILL, An Exposition of the Old and New Testament, 9 vols., 1746-1763; edited

DK. In the ensuing years of my matriculation as a scholar, I would refine this Principle of Human Conduct in both scientific and theological terms in the following MAXIM: Our Worldview is the determinative Framework that structures our overt behavior.

That means, among other things, that if we want to know what a person is truly all about, deep down in their core, we must come to understand their Personal Worldview. It is there that we will find what mental health professionals would call their ‘Authentic Self’ – the Truth of who they really are, and what motivates or animates their pattern of behavior over a long period of time.

In an age of overwhelming deception, hypocrisy, high tech image-branding and aggressive marketing mentalities, it becomes absolutely vital to apply this Principle to our pursuit of the Truth in an Age of the Lie.

Selah.

1. THE POWER OF WORLDVIEW

As I began to systematize my thinking over the decades as a professor specializing in Comparative Worldview Analysis, I came to construct a TAXONOMY OF FOUR WORLDVIEWS into which we can pretty much cast anyone’s Evaluative

Framework for making significant life choices.

Kind of a big deal, I would come to discover.

I borrow this review of the Taxonomy from its presentation in my first book, The Sixth Seal (“The Importance of a Christian Worldview,” 2017, pp. 45-49; edited).

INTRODUCTION. CHARLES COLSON offers us a concise Definition of Worldview in his excellent book, How Now Shall We Live? (1999). He writes, “It is simply the sum total of our beliefs about the world, the Big Picture that directs our daily decisions and actions” (p. 14). So, a worldview’s major function, as alluded to above, is to determine for us what is True and what is False, what is Good and what is Evil, and what is Right and what is Wrong – and what is, as a consequence, the very best way to order our lives.

Once again, a pretty big deal. So here are the Four Worldview Systems I devised over a ten year period in the 1980s and 90s.

1. JUDEO-CHRISTIAN THEISM. This perspective begins with a stated belief in God as the infinite and personal, triune, transcendent and imminent, omniscient, sovereign and the Ultimate Good (Summum Bonum). Second, that same God created the Cosmos ex nihilo (or from nothing) to operate with a Uniformity of cause and effect in an open system. Third, human beings are created in His image and thus possess personality, self-transcendence, intelligence, morality, gregariousness and creativity. Fourth, humans can know God and the world He created because Man was given the ability for cognitive understanding and a language through which he can commune and communicate with its Creator. Fifth, human beings were created good, but through a catastrophic Fall, the image of God was defaced, but through the work of Christ, God redeemed humanity and began the long process of Redemption from Original Sin. Sixth, all men die but will live eternally in the presence of God in Heaven or eternally separate from God in a fiery Hell. Seventh, Ethics are transcendent and based on the character of God as good, holy and loving. Finally, History is linear, meaningful, and sequential in nature and is filled with events leading to an Eschaton, or perfected fulfillment of God’s purposes for humanity in the entire Universe.

2. CLASSICAL DEISM. In this framework, God is regarded not so much as a Person as a First Cause who created all things, then left it to run according to immutable Laws and Principles. He is thus no longer imminent, sovereign, or providential over human affairs. Second, the Cosmos God created is determined as a Uniformity of cause and effect in a closed system and therefore no miracles are possible. Third, human beings, though personal, are a part of a massive Clockwork Universe and as such have no personal relationship to or commerce with God. Fourth, the created Universe is regarded as normal and not fallen, and we can know the Universe and its Creator to some extent by studying it. Fifth, Ethics is limited to General Revelation; because the Universe is normal, it reveals what is right. To restate it in somewhat startling terms, “Whatever is, is right.” NOTE. Most authorities place Islam somewhere within the Deistic framework because Islamic conceptions of God or Allah closely resemble a rather dark version of the God of Deism.

3. ATHEISTIC NATURALISM. Wisely pointing out that Deism serves as an “Isthmus to Naturalism,” [JAMES] SIRE begins to describe this third worldview as one in which matter exists eternally, and is all there is; God does not exist. Second, the Cosmos exists again as a Uniformity of cause and effect in a completely closed system; ‘there is nothing out there’ that is transcendent. Third, human beings are nothing more than complex machines, a combination of chemical and physical properties we do not yet fully understand. Fourth, Death is simply the extinction of personality, individuality and being. There is no Afterlife. Fifth, history is a stream of linear events by cause and effect, with no overarching purpose. The ultimate implication of this kind of thought is that Truth is either nonexistent or irrelevant and thus personally defined; therefore, human existence has no particular meaning outside of one’s own construction of it [cf. Kelly, 1955].

4. PAGAN MYSTICISM. This is a system of thought that Potpourri of largely Eastern religious conceptions of reality usually known as the ‘New Age Worldview.’ Its presuppositions are so obfuscated, the followers will likely confuse the reader as much as it does its adherents! Nonetheless, here we go. First, whatever its definition of the nature of being, the Self is central- the Prime Reality – and there is an underlying assumption that something transformative is about to take place which will result in all Self’s within humanity reaching a heightened state of unified existence in this Utopian New Age. Second, the Cosmos, while unified in the all-important Self, is accessible through altered states of consciousness, whether through meditation or chemically assisted inducements. Third, the core experience therefore is something called, ‘Cosmic Consciousness,’ in which ordinary categories of space-time and morality are transcended. Fourth, physical death is not the end of the Self; through the experience of Cosmic Consciousness the fear of Death is removed with the expectation that the Self will really ‘re-emerge’ in another form or dimension. Finally, in an impossibly complicated set of vague attitudinal predispositions, the nature of Reality is regarded mystically through altered consciousness of the individual which, in turn, ‘construes or constructs Reality’ to conform to a highly individualized and increasingly mystical definition. Thus, the phrase popular today, “I am spiritual” usually reflects this perspective [cf. Kelly, 1955].

BATTLE OF WORLDIEWS. The core nature therefore of all that is surrounding us these Days of Crisis in America is what professor RONALD NASH refers to as, ‘Worldviews in Conflict’ in his book of the same title (1992).

Perhaps you can see now the terrible importance of understanding the idea of Worldview, recognizing the worldview perspective in others, and especially knowing one’s own, personal ‘Truth Framework.’

Again, it’s a pretty big deal.

1. THE TEACHING

SCRIPTURE. “Finally, believers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable and worthy of respect, whatever is right and confirmed by God’s word, whatever is pure and wholesome, whatever is lovely and brings peace, whatever is admirable and of good repute; if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think continually on these things [center your mind on them, and implant them in your heart].” – PHILIPPIANS 4:8, AMP

KEY TERMS. We now move into our necessary deep dive into the Central Concepts that serve as the understructure of this passage. Importantly, each of these terms FOCUS ON VIRTUE.

• TRUE. ‘Aléthés’ [ἀληθής]: “Refers primarily to one who cannot lie; real; genuine; the opposite of idols and all other falsehoods or false gods; fully worthy of credit; factual; ‘in agreement with Final Reality;’ that which cannot be hidden; authentic; tested and found to be reliable; [i.e., ‘transparent;’ can refer to that which is good or evil].”

• HONORABLE. ‘Semnos’ [σεμνός]: “Reverent, venerable, serious, honorable, grave, serious, dignified; owes modestly to the Higher Citizenship; one who inspires respect; holding a distinguished rank in society; illustrious or noble; possessing a high mind; scrupulous, given to probity, rectitude or reputation.”

• RIGHT. ‘Diakaios’ [δίκαιος]: “‘Just;’ that which is conformable to what is righteous; that which is expected of proper duty; a direct reference to character; the rules of life; coordinates with the Pauline Doctrine of Justification; brings forth good fruit; that which is regarded is right and true in the eyes of God; manifests in works of goodness; straight in morals or religion.”

• PURE. ‘Hagnos’ [ἁγνός]: “Chaste, pure, free from defilement; holy, sacred; (originally, in a condition prepared for worship); sanctified; uncontaminated 

(undefiled from sin), i.e. without spoilation even within (even down to the center of one’s being); not mixed with guilt or anything condemnable; separate; free from moral defilement; without spot; not sullied or tarnished; incorrupt; undebased by moral turpitude; holy.”

• LOVELY. ‘Prosphilés [προσφιλής]: “Agreeable; pleasing, acceptable, grateful; friendly (towards); worthy of personal affection; dearly prized; worthy to embrace; amiable; that may excite love; possessing qualities which may invite affection; delightful, beautiful; wonderful; excellent; of the very best kind; exceptional; superior; highly satisfying; splendid.”

• GOOD. ‘Euphémos’ [εὔφημος]: “Well reported of, spoken in a kindly spirit, laudable, reputable; sounding well; uttering words of good omen, speaking auspiciously; gracious, commendable; held in esteem as a person of strong character; trustworthy, truthful; distinguished, eminent, illustrious; honorable, respectable.”

• EXCELLENCE. ‘Areté’ [ἀρετή]: “From the root word for ‘being pleasing to God’ [cf. J. Piper and E. Liddell]; refers to that which gives man his worth; virtue; moral goodness, virtue, goodness; a gracious act; uprightness; possessed of a perfecting spirit; courage, fortitude, resoluteness; an eminent endowment, property or quality; purity of heart, uprightness of mind, sincerity, virtue, piety.”

• PRAISEWORTHY. ‘Epainos’ [ἔπαινο]: “Laudable, commendable; raised up, exalted, poised; deserving of [special] recognition; salubrious; worthy of approval and admiration; healthy, wholesome; exemplary, meritorious; excellent.”

THINK ON THESE! The Divine Command here through the Apostle Paul is captured in the Greek word, ‘Logizomai’ [λογίζομαι]: “Human reason; a reckoning or calculation; an account that one must answer for; if properly constructed, results in freedom from guilt, fear and confusion; meditate or ponder; to suppose, deem, judge [or conclude].” DK: ‘For all intents and purposes, this refers to one’s ‘Personal Worldview Preferences’ through which we assess the world and all of life.’

Note. Do not miss the crucial point concerning Free Will here. Worldview is a personal construction of our view of Reality that we build over a lifetime. It represents, at its base, our Framework for Judgin – Right from Wrong, Good from Evil, and True from False.

Importantly, it ‘Governs our behavior,’ a very big deal indeed when it comes to our Final Accountability before Christ. By it we shall live, or by it we shall die.

Thus by this biblical and scientific reasoning, our day-to-day Cognitive Perspective, our Social-Emotional Outlook and overall Viewpoint largely rests on another Free Will Decision:

What to dwell on, and what not to dwell on.

I am reminded here of a classic Christian work be two psychologists, MINIRTH AND MEIER, Happiness is a Choice (1994). Since its original publication, a mountain of science has supported its Core Thesis that to a large extent we have enormous control over our mood on a day-to-day basis. Barring of course deep-seated clinical pathology, this remains true for the Christian as well as the unsaved.

SCRIPTURAL SUPPORT. It virtually leaps from the pages of the Old Testament, beloved:

“I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore CHOOSE LIFE, that both you and your descendants may live; that you may love the Lord your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days; and that you may dwell in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them.” – DEUTERONOMY 30:19-20, NKJV; emph. my own

In the words of master theologian MATTHEW HENRY: “What could be said more moving, and more likely to make deep and lasting impressions? Every man wishes to obtain life and good, and to escape death and evil; he desires happiness, and dreads misery. So great is the compassion of the Lord, that He has favoured men, by His Word, with such a knowledge of Good and Evil as will make them forever happy, if it be not their own fault. Let us hear the sum of the whole matter. ‘If they and theirs would love God, and serve Him, they should live and be happy. If they or theirs should turn from God, desert His service, and worship other gods, that would certainly be their ruin.’” – Exposition of the Old and New Testaments, 6 vols., 1708-1710; edited

This is the Simplest Praxis in the entire Universe of men, and yet few are those who find it. Selah.

1. HOW AMERICA THINKS

Now we come to the meat of this analysis that I have never carried out before. Based on the FOUR WORLDVIEW SYSTEMS that I constructed over a period of about 10 years, I now apply that Taxonomy to American Culture in 2023.

What I hope to achieve in this examination as they proposed RELIGIOUS WORLDVIEW MAP of what the Nation looks like in this momentous year of division, conflict and warring ideologies.

1. AMERICAN THEISTS. We begin by stating that theologically, only ‘God’s Remnant’ constitutes the True Church in America that loves and obeys God consistently (cf. Matt. 22:37-40).  Loosely defined by pastor and Bible scholar STEVE MEYER as, “what is left of a community after it undergoes a catastrophe [or severe test],” Divine Remnants are Small. Very, very small: The Flood-8; Sodom-3; Exodus-2; Isaiah 6:13-The Terebinth (10%). By these precedents, with a population of approximately 340,000,000, only 34,000,000 Americans (or far fewer since The Apostasy; Matt. 24:12) are likely members of the True Church, as distinct from the number that claim to be Christians. Surveys show that amounts to about 63% of Americans who do so, or 214,000,000. IN SUM: ‘No, beloved, not everyone gets to go who believes that they are going’ (Matt. 7:21-23).

2. AMERICAN DEISTS. Given the data reported just above, it would appear that ‘Nominal Christians’ (in name only) who do not actually follow the Messiah but who likely attend church and even serve as pastors and leaders number around 214,000,000. These are those at The Judgment to whom Christ will declare: “And then I will declare to them publicly, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me [you are banished from My presence], you who act wickedly [disregarding My commands]!’” (Matt. 7:23, Amp.). In 1776, the year of the American Declaration of Independence, there were 2.5 million inhabitants. Translated by the criteria cited thus far, America consisted very likely of no more than 250,000 actually, born again, orthodox Christians who followed the Messiah faithfully. So, when we claim to be a “Christian Nation,” we had well remain very careful about what we claim here, just as with our claims of being “a Christian” just because we said the prayer, attend church, act nicely and pay our taxes.

3. AMERICAN ATHEISTS. Here the calculations become quite simple by deductive reasoning, since if you combine the 214 million Americans who are “professing” believers only (‘Functional Atheists’)with the roughly ten percent who surveys show are practicing, ‘Actual Atheists’ (34,000,000, a mirror of genuine believers), we come up with 246,000,000 citizens. Do the math: This number plus the 34,000,000 Christian Theists equals 280,000,000, leaving about 60,000,000 American unaccounted for. Please be ready for a conclusion that I have never before proposed, since I have never before looked at these numbers this closely.

4. AMERICAN MYSTICS. Almost all of you know by now how stridently I have been writing about the rapid rise of Trump Christian Nationalism in America. I have proposed and shown copious documentation to support the claim that this Movement promises to overwhelm American politics and spirituality in the years ahead. I can simply see no evidence whatsoever of reform or revival or repentance anywhere in the Church. NOTE: The Public Religion Research Institute recently found that “One in five Americans are QAnon supporters” (Feb. 24, 2022). Do the math again: 20% of 340,000,000 is – wait for it – 66,000,000 Americans are Q-Cultists! And beloved, this was one year ago in February 2022. What do the trends suggest for today in 2023? Both the Pew Research Center and the Cook Political Report showed that 66% of Americans cast their ballot in the 2020 Presidential Election. Biden won 81,282,916 million and Trump 74,223,369 validated votes. This means that the Nation turned on a mere 7,000,000 votes. Thus a Voting Bloc of 66,000,000 can control the Destiny of America in the next Presidential Election of Tuesday November 5, 2024 – inarguably a Day of Destiny for the American Republic. Selah.

DK. Beloved, I have spent nearly 35 years of study, writing, lecturing and rethinking all these matters in order to arrive at this one analysis that I have never conducted before. While these are estimates, these proposals are in no way arbitrary, but rather based on hard data, verifiable American cultural and political trends, and most importantly, the Wisdom of God’s Canon.

In the last section that follows, I will discuss the drastic implications of these findings for the American Order between now and the End of the Decade.

• LAST THOUGHTS

“JAMI.” Stemming from an online e-bay scam forcing this old man to run around trying to recoup about $900 from a false auto parts manufacturing company based in China, I had occasion to visit the UPS central location on the south side of the city. As I explained my situation to a sweet, diminutive 60-something lady from Abilene, Texas, we got to chatting about this, that and the other thing as I quickly found out she was a Christian.

Told her a bit about me and my writing and we both quickly agreed that we’re living in a tumultuous and dangerous hour, and that’s ‘something is coming to America’ that not many of us would like to see happen. We happily began to agree on those vital issues, but then the inevitable Big Fork in the Road did its worst once again.

In ominous tones, she talked about how President Biden was probably the Antichrist, and that if we don’t get rid of him, there will literally be hell to pay for it. As I gently inserted my view about “the other guy”, and related to her why I now carry a 9-millimeter Smith and Wesson wherever I go against dozens of death threats from that Other Guy, her response blew me away:

“Well, that’s probably because he does what he says he’ll do.”

LESSONS FROM TEXAS. Jami is a Representative Microcosm of what has taken place in American Christianity since 2016 – nothing less than a Sea Change in our Religious Worldview. As I grapple to understand what can only be called, ‘The Collapse of Reason’ in the Church today, I look to a brilliant analysis by editor and religion writer, MICHAEL LUO.

Writing for New Yorker magazine on March 4, 2021, he entitled his piece, appropriately, “The Wasting of the Evangelical Mind.” Please listen closely to his incisive review of our rapid Decline, and where we are likely headed.

“A recent survey, conducted by the American Enterprise Institute, found that more than a quarter of White Evangelicals believe that Donald Trump has been secretly battling ‘a group of child sex traffickers that include prominent Democrats and Hollywood elites,’ a core tenet of the QAnon Conspiracy Theory. The data suggest a ‘Faith-based Reality Divide’ emerging within the Republican Party: Nearly three-quarters of White Evangelical Republicans believe widespread voter fraud took place in the 2020 election [.75 X = 57M = 42 million], compared with fifty-four per cent of non-evangelical Republicans; sixty per cent of White Evangelical Republicans believe that Antifa, the antifascist group, was mostly responsible for the violence in the Capitol riot .60 X 57M = 34 million], compared with forty-two per cent of non-evangelical Republicans. Other surveys have found that White Evangelicals are much more skeptical of the covid-19 vaccine and are less likely than other Americans to get it, potentially jeopardizing the country’s recovery from the Pandemic …

‘[Thus] Evangelicalism in America … has come to be defined by its Anti-intellectualism.’ The style of the most popular and influential pastors tend to correlate with shallowness: charisma trumps expertise; scientific authority is often viewed with suspicion. So it is of little surprise that American Evangelicals have become vulnerable to demagoguery and misinformation … In 1994, Mark Noll, a historian who was then a professor at Wheaton College in Illinois, the preëminent Evangelical liberal-arts institution, publishedThe Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. In the opening sentence of the book’s first chapter, he writes, ‘The Scandal of the Evangelical mind is there is not much of an Evangelical mind.’”

CODA. Let me go straight now to the chase as I conclude. The American Church started scrapping the Canon and Orthodoxy at least since the 1960s, and very likely from earlier theological trends in the West since the turn of the 20th century. Next came the birth of Political Christianity via Jerry Falwell Sr.’s “Moral Majority” in 1979, followed by rapid proliferation of other Christian political activism groups.

Before you knew it, we had an unholy marriage between the Republican Party and the Protestant Church in 1980 to bolster the presidency of Ronald Reagan, the subsequent Bill Clinton years convincing us that we had to have a good man back in the chair who was defined by George W. Bush in the year 2000. Then the Barack Obama presidency was viewed as nothing less than Antichrist [shamefully, I was one of them!], until America’s Great White Hope finally emerged:

DONALD JOHN TRUMP. The man who was effusively named the nation’s “Dream President” by Falwell’s eldest son Jerry, in May 2017. Neither America [nor Mr. Falwell] have ever been the same since. Or as the old prophet once so searingly stated it:

“‘For they sow the wind [in evil] and they reap the whirlwind [in disaster].’ The standing grain has no growth; it yields no grain. If it were to yield, strangers would swallow it up.” – HOSEA 8:7, AMP

Thus, we are now brought to the very Edge of what I continue to describe as, “The End of History as we know it.” Everything beloved, and I mean everything, lies before us, just over an Historical Horizon.

THE QUESTION: Are you ready, beloved, to let God make you ready by Changing your mind for Him for what lies ahead?  How I pray so!

Ever your servant, DK.

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