Finding Truth

I have understood Paul’s warnings of idolatry in Romans 1 to be pertaining to the heart level of humanity. When we do not worship God with our hearts and, instead, worship idol substitutes, God gives us over to the self-destruction of our desires. This happens to individuals as well as societies; both micro and macro levels. Nancy Pearcey takes this same passage and applies it to the realm of the mind and worldview. What happens when we reject God in our philosophy and input some limited substitute in His place? The short answer is: things do not work.

Pearcey shows that every alternative worldview is at some point unable to answer the questions that are fundamental to human experience. Something self-evident to human existence has to be sacrificed at the altar: “at some point, every idol-based worldview contradicts reality.” Religious Science sacrifices free will. Post-modernism sacrifices obvious reality. Limited constructs cannot contain the majestic whole of the world we live in, forcing their adherents to exist with a false dichotomy: to believe their worldview in theory while denying it in practice.

Because of this observation, Pearcey proposes in this book a very simple apologetic method:

Many stop short of working out the full implications of their worldview. They simply live with a patchwork of conflicting ideas. An effective strategy in apologetics is to help people see more clearly where their worldview really leads. When they realize that idol-centric worldviews fail the practical test, that insight may open them to the case for a biblical worldview.

Pearcey also shows the contradictions inherent in the idolatrous worldviews themselves. Proponents are quick to debunk everything else, but their worldview is unable to pass their own “debunking” test. Logical positivism says all truth is a value judgement. But isn’t that statement also a value judgement? Marxism claims that truth claims are nothing but “rationalizations of economic interests.” But is Marx only rationalizing his own economic interests in proposing this view? Darwinists claim God is just an idea that appears in the human mind when the "electrical circuitry of the brain has evolved to a certain point." But do these Darwinists critique their own theory on the same basis? They are unable because their worldview cannot handle its own skepticism.

For the all the lofty ideas and deep thinkers analyzed in this book, Finding Truth is a very easy read. Pearcey does an impressive job of condensing worldviews to their bare essence, in a way that most everyone will be able to understand. I would recommend this book to almost anyone, especially high schoolers and college students—who are already struggling with the subject matter discussed.