by Karla Perry

Created on: April 28, 2009   Last Updated: July 12, 2010

I believe in Jesus and all that truly follows that way of looking at the world. The Christian worldview is an over-arching story that binds together all the various facets of life and knowledge. I am realizing that I have not done justice to isolate an aspect of this worldview without reference to the context of the full story. To do so is like analyzing a piece of a puzzle without the box top to guide where it fits into the whole.

To quote Saul Bellow's 1976 Noble Laureate lecture, "The intelligent public is waiting to hear from art what it does not hear from theology, philosophy, and social theory and what it cannot hear from pure science: a broader, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are, and what this life is for. If writers do not come into the center, it will not be because the center is pre-empted; it is not."

Bellow invokes the need for artisans and writers to paint the picture of the story that all these things fit into to provide the more coherent, comprehensive picture of who we are and what this life is all about.

For too long we have kept our knowledge separated from the grand story thereby keeping it secular and distinct from anything religious in nature. However, knowledge was never intended to be learned in a vacuum. It is to be gained to tell us more about the story we are living in, and not just to fodder our minds with more interesting facts. At the same time, it has been problematic for the Church to siphon off theology and religious knowledge and hold it separate from the whole picture as if it is irrelevant to the world's systems. There needs to be a reemergence of knowledge that interconnects to tell the story that gives meaning to all the systems of this world.

The picture I would like to paint for you is one that starts with the eternally good and relational God who out of His love and glory created the universe and all that is in it with great splendor. He created a habitat for man on earth that is finely tuned for life. He created man in His image and likeness and gave him dominion over the world to cultivate the earth without the sweat of the brow. Man was to live in peace and harmony with the animals caring for them as well as tending the earth. But something happened to interrupt this paradise when man, who had it all, was allured by Satan to have knowledge that was outside the good and he chose to taste that knowledge and took into himself the poison of sin which corrupted not

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