Throughout history the riddle of the human condition has been thoroughly examined by every academic and artistic discipline, yet humanity is no closer to solving its riddle than it has ever been. The one point of agreement throughout all this inquiry is that our condition is much in need of improvement. If we take even a cursory look at world history, the current state of human affairs or the prospects for the future of human action, we observe a condition that wavers somewhere between the critical and the dire.
The irony is that men and women have always had access to a detailed description of their natures as well as a diagnosis of what the human ailments are, but this knowledge has been largely rejected out of hand. The knowledge I am speaking of is the biblical account of the origin and nature of humanity and creation. The dominant thinking of these same communities that have failed to discover practical answers to our most pressing questions tend to be antagonistic to the very idea that biblical truth is credible and of any value. And yet there remains a deep, basic primal need to understand our riddle by any means necessary. Christians and skeptics alike are grasping for the answer to the question: “What is my nature and purpose?”
To be fair the reason for some of this antagonism to biblical truth is self-inflicted. The biblical account of existence has been represented as myopic and lacking all credibility by many people who are recognized as Christians. For this reason, the realities and implications of scripture are largely misconstrued, underrepresented, or ignored completely in culture. For many of these Christians, scripture is impractical and functions in their day to day lives as empty habit.
Such a brand of Christianity is expressed into the world by those who practice it as a mere supplement to a personal philosophy. The Bible acting at best as a secondary contributor. Such a faith leads only to irreconcilable contradictions and inconsistencies of belief. These Christians, as well as those who encounter them, may come to believe that the Bible is not credible as a practical guide to live a human life or useful in understanding the truth of human experience.
The pervasive influence of this brand of Christianity has made it possible to devalue scriptural content in cultural discourse. This devaluing occurs even though biblical content has supplied the foundational truths for many of the stalwart intellectual pillars in Western culture. Our principals of charity, the inalienable rights of every individual and universal justice expressed as law have largely come to us from the Christian idea. These Christian principals transformed the Western world by displacing or infusing the pagan ideas expressed as culture that proceeded them. The recognition of this expanded value of biblical truth beyond religious practice is being largely lost and this loss is contributing to the overall dimming of culture.
Scripture once enjoyed the lofty position of foundational truth in the West but today has been degraded to the position of enshrined platitude. Platitudes that are quoted out of their original biblical context separate from all its underlying and supporting scriptures. In this way they have been made antagonistic to the very principles they originally represented. This is not only true of the above-mentioned Christian borne foundational truths of our secular institutions but also of the biblical principles and ideas that lead to salvation.
For instance, John 3:16 is ubiquitous in its enshrinement in popular culture. You would be hard pressed to find even an atheist who could not recognize and even quote it. However, all the underlying and supporting body of biblical knowledge is absent from this recognition and renders this monumental biblical truth empty of much of its original influence. Even the most important truths of the Christian faith when stripped of their underlying and supporting scriptures are robbed of their original context and become all but inaccessible.
In this way the post-modern world has been inoculated against the Christian faith. Just as a physician injects a patient with a small amount of a dead virus to build up in that patient resistance to the living virus so the world has been continuously exposed to small portions of dead Christian rhetoric, striped from its original scriptural context and cultural relevance. This rhetorical inoculated resistance to Christian faith is what is fueling the popular cultures callow form of Christianity as well as its misinformed atheistic tendencies.
Because of this secularization, the culture has succumbed to the mistaken idea that the Christian pursuit of truth is distinct from and inferior to the scientific pursuit of truth. The reality is that there is only the objective and uncompromising pursuit of truth facilitated through the tools, perspectives, and body of knowledge one is willing or able to bring to bear on that pursuit. The underlying assumption of true Christian faith is that God’s word, the Bible, is the repository of the truth of existence and any inquiry by any scientific, philosophical, or religious discipline that rejects or constrains its contributions is not bringing to bear the full arsenal of human knowledge.
What is needed is a credible and comprehensive representation of the Bible in culture. Accessing the culture in this way is not possible without an expansive exploration of scripture beyond the simple platitudes or theological jargon that has become popular in the Christian Church. Such an expanded exploration could provide context for the artifacts of biblical truth found in culture and push back against the scientific pretentions assaulting the Christion world.