Worldview Bulletin

Worldview Essentials brings together ten accessible chapters addressing some of the most important questions Christians encounter today: • scientific evidence for God and the possibility of miracles • God’s omnipotence and omniscience • human dignity and the image of God • love, sexuality, and the Christian understanding of marriage • gender ideology and its claims about human identity • helping children develop their identity in Christ • the meaning of genuine happiness • Christianity and the occult. And for a limited time, the book is only $1.99! bit.ly/4bZy9uL

Grateful to be able to contribute another article for the C. S. Lewis Institute's Challenging Questions series. The topic is "What Is a Worldview and Why Is It Important?" One interesting snippet: Very few people in the United States hold a Christian worldview today. According to research by George Barna in 2025, only 4 percent of the nation’s adult population possesses a biblical worldview. Among American adults who self-identify as Christians, only 6 percent have a biblical worldview. When we seek to develop a Christian worldview, we are aiming to view every aspect of human experience through the lens of God’s revealed truth in Scripture. As church historian Robert Louis Wilken points out, “Christianity is more than a set of devotional practices. It is also a way of thinking about God, about human beings, about the world, and history. For Christians, thinking is part of believing.” cslewisinstitute.org/resourc…

During our own times of asking “Why me?” questions, there are at least three major considerations from New Testament texts pertaining to Jesus’s life that could be applied directly to our lives during our struggles. Meditation on these passages could bring significant relief from our own pain. worldviewbulletin.substack.c…

While frustration is an understandable response to Greta Gerwig’s controversial adaptation of The Magician’s Nephew, the film will also open the door to gospel conversations for those who recognize the significant Christian themes and narrative pathways still embedded within the story. worldviewbulletin.substack.c…

Before embarking on the question of what we give up when we let go of God in the face of evil, we must consider a common misleading and damaging assumption—that a good God guarantees protection from all harm. This is an assumption made by a generation comprised largely of moralistic therapeutic deists.  According to sociologist Christian Smith’s book Soul-Searching, he observes that this prevailing worldview in the United States amounts this:  although God is removed from our everyday lives and concerns (deism), if we are nice to people and do good things (moralistic), then God will ensure that our lives will be happy, stress-free, trauma-free, and fulfilled (therapeutic). This, of course, doesn’t at all resemble the (non-deistic) God of Scripture. It affirms that some saints are delivered from harm and evil because of their faith, but others are persecuted, afflicted, and even put to death because of that same faith (Hebrews 11:32-38). The assumption that a good God will protect us from all physical and emotional harm is false. worldviewbulletin.substack.c…

On March 8, 1939, one year after publishing The Hobbit, Tolkien gave a lecture at the University of St. Andrews on the subject of fairy tales. Over the next couple of years, while working on the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Tolkien expanded that lecture into a rather lengthy essay, first published in 1947, called “Essay on Fairy-Stories.” In this essay, Tolkien sets out to answer three questions about fairy stories: What are fairy stories? What is their origin? What are their uses and value? I have found Tolkien’s discussion helpful not only to understand his views on fairy story in particular, but more broadly, they help us understand the point and power of just about all good stories, including the gospel story. worldviewbulletin.substack.c…

What is the chief value of fantasy or fairy-story, according to Tolkien? Here Tolkien famously argues that fairy stories provide recovery, escape, and consolation. I think that these values are true of any good story, but let’s first explore Tolkien’s understanding of them. First, recovery. As Tolkien describes it, “We should look at the green again, and be startled anew (but not be blinded) by blue and yellow and red.” Recovery is a kind of “re-gaining”—“a regaining of a clear view” of things. Here Tolkien is speaking of re-enchantment. In recovery, we begin to see things and delight in them (including the people around us) as Jesus does. Fantasy helps us to see “the wonder of things.” Fantasy helps us see clearly that which is right in front of us. The problem, according to Tolkien, is that when we think we know something, we cease to look at it; we acquire it and then grab onto it, and then lock it away, never really looking at it again. . . worldviewbulletin.substack.c…

In today’s world, loneliness and isolation haunt humanity.  In seeking a utopian society where technology caters to all of our needs, we often lose sight of what is essential to humanity.  God created us in His image for love and the stewardship of His creation. The old VHS tape of Hello, Dolly! that WALL•E finds in a pile of junk on the abandoned earth represents a treasure that humanity has forgotten—relational love.  The film reminds us of who we are and why we are here, and in turn serves as a cautionary tale to resist the bright allure of convenient dehumanization. worldviewbulletin.substack.c…

The single greatest contribution of Jesus' kingdom proclamation was the concept that God loved his creation and especially human beings. . . . [I]n the pre-Christian world the gods were indifferent to humanity. Indeed, sometimes the gods were jealous of humans. Humans feared the gods and tried to placate them, even bribe them. The Greco-Roman gods were jealous, petty, vengeful, easily offended, and lustful. The essence of these gods was power and immortality. But Christians proclaimed that "God is love" and that God sent his Son to bring reconciliation between God and humanity. Ancient pagans had never heard of such a thing. The idea that God actually loved them and was willing to send his Son to serve humanity, even die for humanity, was almost incomprehensible. worldviewbulletin.substack.c…

Somehow managed to clamber back to #1 (at least in this category). For a limited time, the Kindle book is discounted to $1.99. bit.ly/4bZy9uL

Worldview Bulletin: Why is the idea of a soul so controversial in academia today? Richard Swinburne: Given my view that the soul is the one essential part of every human being which makes them the person they are, this idea is not so much controversial among contemporary philosophers and scientists, but rather regarded as so obviously false as not to merit serious discussion. I doubt if more than 2% of contemporary philosophers and scientists would hold this view. The reason for its massive unpopularity is I think twofold. First, most contemporary intellectuals do not believe that there is a God and they think of that view of the soul as part of theism. My book [Are We Bodies or Souls?] was designed to produce arguments for the soul quite independent of any reliance on religious beliefs. The second source of this unpopularity is the view that the progress of science over the last 400 years has shown that everything can be explained by the operation of physical laws of nature on physical states of affairs. But the world of conscious experience is so different from the public world of physics that it would not be in the least surprising if quite different entities and principles of operation from those which apply to the physical world apply to the world of conscious experience. What is important about human beings is entirely dependent on their having a conscious life, and to suppose that physics can deal with that is to make a big and unjustified assumption. I believe that if we look at the data of conscious experience (as well as that of neuroscience) without that bias in favour of physicalism, we are led inescapably to my account of the soul. worldviewbulletin.substack.c…

The role of Jesus is crucial to an apologetic theology of religion. Jesus did not come to offer one path among many paths to God or to travel East and learn alternative teachings that enabled him to master the "Christ consciousness," as in new spirituality teachings. Jesus was not merely a man, as Islam claims, who just happened to be a great prophet as well. Instead, Jesus was the fulfillment of the prophesied Messiah of the Old Testament. His birth was miraculous and his ministry filled with supernatural events. Jesus spoke of a personal and transcendent God, creator of all that exists, who calls us to repentance and offers redemption through Christ's atoning work on the cross. Jesus claimed to be God in the flesh, who came to suffer and die for the sins of humanity, to be raised again from the dead after his crucifixion. No other religious leader or founder has made such claims that can be studied and demonstrated to be reliable from the perspectives of history, archaeology, internal consistency and trustworthiness of documents. worldviewbulletin.substack.c…

Had a great time talking with the erudite Lenny Esposito (@comereason) about numerous things related to apologetics, including my recently published book. For two weeks, people can get the book free using the link in his show notes. youtu.be/A4wNApEvVUo