Here is the problem stated up front. The fallacy of the modern mind is the failure to see the whole rather than just the parts. People participate in this fallacy in several ways today, though they may be unaware of how. This, likely, has a great deal to do with the way that modern culture has conditioned the way people think. The problem is not one that belongs only to atheists, but also to theists and Christians. Francis Schaeffer stated this well in the opening of his essay The Abolition of Truth and Morality: “The basic problem of the Christians in this country in the last eighty years or so, in regard to society and in regard to government, is that they have seen things in bits and pieces instead of totals.”
The issue is a worldview problem. As Schaeffer writes, people have become disturbed over “permissiveness, pornography, the public schools, the breakdown of the family, and finally abortion.” However, they “have not seen this as a totality — each thing being a part, a symptom, of a much larger problem.” The reason is that Christians have, in large part, bought into a worldview shift, one in which the material world has become more significant than the spiritual and has swallowed up spiritual values. It’s not so much that they don’t believe in a spiritual reality “out there” somewhere. Rather, many have accepted, at least in theory, that there is a spiritual reality without understanding how it ought to govern everything else in life. The Lordship of Jesus is limited to a handful of religious views or a list of doctrinal requirements, but beyond that people do as they wish. What’s left is looking at this material world in bits and pieces, but not really seeing the divine overarching umbrella under which all of reality resides.
The result of buying into this worldview shift is that Christians begin to separate the spiritual from the material in such a way that they cannot see how the two realms mesh at all. They start to think in terms of their religious life, their social life, their recreational life, their political life, etc., and do not see how these parts of life fit together, or how they are all to be governed by the same overarching principles of the Creator.
Three areas, all of which lend to the destruction of a biblical worldview, will illustrate the problem:
1. Morality. The parceling out of life was well illustrated on a talk show in which a woman, who claimed to be a Christian, was living with a man to whom she was not married. An audience member asked her how she could reconcile being a Christian with living in fornication. Her answer was telling. She basically said, “Well, that’s my religious life, and this is my secular life.” She bought into the fallacy of the modern mind. She separated her religion from everything else. She compartmentalized her life in a way that shut God off from other parts of her life.
People have been conditioned to accept this mentality. They are constantly being told that they must have a “separation of church and state.” While a secular government must have it so, the problem is that people have learned that their religion needs to stay out of the business of everything else. They need a separation of religion from state, a separation of religion from work, a separation of religion from recreation, a separation of religion from science, and even a separation of religion from morality. Religion is put in solitary confinement and must not have any influence over other spheres.
Religion, then, has become little more than a status symbol, and a sad one at that as far as culture is concerned. Once people deem the status symbol to be of little use, they feel free to abandon it altogether. People treat religion as if it is something that is occasionally done rather than what that they always are. “I am a Christian” gets replaced with, “I do Christian things sometimes.” Therefore, it is something that can be disregarded and laid aside for a time, and the world has come to expect that this is exactly what ought to be done. God was just a piece of the pie, as it were, and they feel free to leave Him out when He seems to infringe upon other parts of life that don’t seem to require His help. Moral decisions, then, are not so much subjected to God and His will, but to a more utilitarian concept of what works for the moment. This will almost always entail making moral decisions apart from God.
2. Bible study. Scripture is fascinating, not just in its parts, but as a whole. The entirety of Scripture tells an interwoven story and presents a beautiful tapestry of truth about God, mankind, sin, and salvation.
When the connections throughout Scripture are seen, Scripture can then be appreciated as it ought to be. Many have seen the connections by stepping back and seeing the whole through the parts. Scripture isn’t something to be picked apart, bit by bit. Rather, Scripture is meant to pick the recipients apart and put them back together properly (cf. Heb 4:12-13).
Yet people have become experts at picking Scripture apart, phrase by phrase, line by line, word by word. They zero in on the particulars, focusing on the questions and problems of the specifics. If this is what Bible study gets reduced to, there will be a failure to see the interconnections of the whole. This, perhaps, has become one of the biggest banes to Bible study as well as an aid to the disbelief of many.
The roots of this approach to Bible study are seen in the Enlightenment. Humanity has become so proud of their autonomous reason, the ability to figure it all out by themselves, with no particular help from the divine. The Bible began to be studied as if it were a piece of meat to be shredded. People eat it if they like it. They spit it out if they do not care for part of it. Scripture is pulled apart piece by piece, each little piece examined independently, sifted, and judged. The Bible is no longer appreciated for its entire picture. Instead, it is deconstructed, disassembled, left destroyed and shattered. Consequently, people do not know what to make of it. They see the little parts, alone unbelievable and incredible, with no thread to keep the whole together, and so conclude that the Bible cannot be trusted or seen as a viable authority for anything, much less religion. Likewise, the religion that comes from Scripture is left shattered and pathetic.
Deconstructed and destroyed, self-proclaimed scholars superimpose their theories about how the Bible was written. “This couldn’t have been spoken by Jesus.” “Matthew and Luke were just copying.” “We know that part was inserted by later Christians.” So sure of their autonomous reason, they chew up each little part and spit it back out, mangled and unrecognizable. Like Jehoiakim, people cut up the scroll of Scripture upon hearing a few lines and throw it all in the fire (Jer 36). They don’t see how the whole makes sense anymore because they have bought into the fallacy of the modern mind.
3. Individualism. People like to be able to do something on their own. They are proud of their individualism, trusting only themselves. While recognizing individuality is important, and that it will be as individuals that all stand before the throne of Christ on that final Day, Christians must also recognize that they are members of a larger unit called a body (1 Cor 12:12-27; Rom 12:4-8). This has tremendous implications.
Being an individual member does not mean that our individuality is more important than another’s, or more important than the function of the whole body. Christ is the head, and this means He is the One who decides the significance of each member. Being an individual member does not mean being free from the responsibilities that come with part of a whole body. If one is a hand, then he is not a hand unto himself, but must function in conjunction with and to the benefit of the whole body. If another is a foot, then she walks for the whole body, and not just for herself.
Somehow, many have convinced themselves, being individuals as they are, that their own wills and desires should be valued as much as, if not more so, than what is beneficial for the whole body. We are not seeing ourselves as part of the whole unit that is entirely under the headship of Christ. We are seeing ourselves as individuals whose wills should be able to override others when deemed necessary, and, when convenient to do so, perhaps we might submit to the head if what He asks makes sense to our autonomous reason. It’s our call, not His.
This mentality makes Christians unreliable parts of the body. If the head commands the hand to act, and the hand only acted occasionally as the head directed, then people would know immediately there is a serious problem with the hand. Yet how often do Christians treat the spiritual Head this way? Each one is an individual member, but that individuality is important as it functions to do its part as a member of a body that is entirely in subjection to the Head, Jesus Christ (Eph 4:16; Col 1:18). Blaise Pascal wrote, “For every member must be quite willing to perish for the body, for which alone the whole is” (Pensées 134). He further noted:
“The separate member, seeing no longer the body to which it belongs, has only a perishing and dying existence. Yet it believes it is a whole, and seeing not the body on which it depends, it believes it depends only on self, and desires to make itself both centre and body. But not having in itself a principle of life, it only goes astray, and is astonished in the uncertainty of its being; perceiving in fact that it is not a body, and still not seeing that it is a member of a body. In short, when it comes to know itself, it has returned as it were to its own home, and loves itself only for the body. It deplores its past wanderings.” (136)
The problem of individualism is an extension of this fallacy of the modern mind. People don’t see the whole for the parts, and end up acting according to their own selfish desires. Being experts at focusing on particulars, isolating only one thing, and failing to see it in its fuller sense, will create a sense of dissonance, disunity, and confusion. This seems to be the state of modern mankind. This also helps explain why many have accepted atheism. Francis Bacon saw this very problem:
“I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind. And therefore, God never wrought miracle, to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it. It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion. For while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them, confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity.”
A little philosophy, he observes, will incline a man toward atheism, but depth will bring minds about toward God. This is so because when men look “upon second causes scattered,” that is, the bits and pieces of information and concepts disassociated from each other, they may be tempted to stop short of searching deeper. They have not put the pieces together in a way that makes sense. Their worldview is not cohesive and comprehensive. However, when the mind sees the “chain” of the ideas and information, “confederate and linked together” into a comprehensive and cohesive worldview, it must fly to Deity. Where else could one go?
The danger, then, of parceling out life into bits and pieces and failing to see how everything fits together into a whole, is that people set themselves up for disbelief. The atheist might have an explanation for the part, but not for the whole, and this is his achilles’ heel. Ultimate foundations and universals belong to the divine, not to purposeless, mindless chance. Therefore, when Christians begin buying into the “bits and pieces” rather than the “totals,” they have unwittingly made themselves susceptible to losing their faith because they no longer have a firm foundation for anything.
The answer to the problem is the perspective God gives through Jesus Christ. He is the “beginning and the end,” the “alpha and the omega,” the “first and the last” (Rev 1:8, 17; 2:8; 3:14; 21:6; 22:13). Because He is “the beginning,” and all things were made through Him and for Him (John 1; Col 1:15-18), then all of reality is summed up in His being. “In Him we live and move and have our very being” (Acts 17:28). There is no existence apart from Him, and through Him all things hold together (Col 1:17; Heb. 1:3). Mankind, being the apex of His creation, was made in the image of God (Gen 1:26-27). In the exercise of self-will, mankind has sinned and become separated from the holy God. Yet God, not willing that any perish (2 Pet 3:9), came into the world Himself to suffer and die on behalf of all, that by His grace, forgiveness might be given and fellowship with God restored. Now, “it is the Lord Christ whom you serve” (Col 3:24). There is nothing hidden from His sight (Heb. 4:13). All that is, all that is done, all that is said, and all that is thought is under His Lordship. No Christian can afford to think that this can be laid aside for any reason whatsoever.
Indeed, Scripture ultimately makes sense when seen through the person of Jesus. Moral responsibility is understood through Him. What it means to be members of His body is understood through His headship. All of reality is bound up in Christ, “who is our life” (Col 3:4). As Pascal put it, “Jesus Christ is the end of all, and the centre to which all tends. Whoever knows Him knows the reason of everything” (Pensées 157).
There is no separating the religion of Christ from anything else. Christians must not parcel out bits and pieces and ignore the totals. Christ must be seen in and through everything, confederate and linked together. In Him, the whole makes sense, and the each part falls under His authority. This is the essence of the Christian’s worldview, grounded in God’s revelation, and completely immersed in Jesus Christ.
Doy Moyer
Works Cited
Bacon, Francis. The Essays of Francis Bacon (Kindle ed.), 2011.
Pascal, Blaise. Pensées (New York: E.P. Dutton), 1958.
Schaeffer, Francis. The Abolition of Truth and Morality (https://www.the-highway.com/articleOct01.html).
