Based on "Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption" by Dr. Mark L. Ward, et. al., this lesson examines how we segregate our thinking, often keeping science and religion separate. This lesson shows the weakness of the two-story view by going back to the Christian worldview and the Christian story of Creation, Fall, and Redemption

1. The Two-Story View
Colossians 1:19-20
Based on Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption by Dr. Mark L. Ward, et. al.

2. There are several ways to win an argument.
 You can diligently research a topic and carefully listen to your opponent(s).
 You can diligently knock your opponent down and take his or her lunch money.
 Arguments about worldviews are often settled with the latter because a biblical
worldview is a minority pretty much everywhere.
 The intellectual climate in most of academia is not friendly to biblical Christianity.
In fact, Christians are often intimidated by the hostility they find in the academic
world.
 This intimidation is a big reason why some Christians drift into thinking that the
Christian life is only about spiritual things – such as Bible reading, prayer, and
helping those in need – and not about science, politics, and academics.

3.  Some Christians see the areas like science, politics, and academic subjects as part
of a so-called secular realm that should be kept separate from the sacred parts of
life.
 They do this with good motivations in their hearts: to protect the sacred things
they value, moral corruption in those areas, or to avoid becoming morally tainted
by the influence of non-Christians.
 This is called dualism: dividing something into two opposing parts.
 Think of it as a two story house with science, math, and everyday life on the lower
floor and Bible reading, prayer, and spiritual life on the top floor.
 The implication of this is that real-life stuff can’t be holy and that true Christians
will spend as little time in the lower story as possible.
 Secularists have a two-story view as well. The lower story contains science, math,
and the facts. Everything else, stuff we can’t really know, goes in the upper story.
This would include religion, morals, and aesthetics (beauty).

4. Private Sphere:
Personal
preferences
Values:
Individual choices
Nonrational:
noncognitive
Private Sphere:
Personal
preferences
Private Sphere:
Personal
preferences
Private Sphere:
Personal
preferences
Upper Story
Lower Story

5.  If you were a Senator speaking to Senate of the United States about teen
pregnancy, you could say “teens should not have premarital sex because teen
pregnancy is associated with lower high school graduation rates” and have no
push-back because this is a fact-based argument.
 However, if you were to say “God says sex before marriage is a sin” you would lose
the argument because you cited the Bible or God. You would be accused of trying
to impose your religion on the rational, scientifically verifiable facts downstairs in
the living room.
 You’re supposed to keep your religion private because it’s not a public fact; its just
an unverifiable, unknowable personal preference.
 The fact is you cannot live without your values. Your values – your principles, what
you think is important and worth protecting and promoting – guide all your
decisions.
 You can try to shove them all upstairs, but they will always sneak downstairs.

6.  “Justice is inescapably judgmental. Whether we’re arguing about . . . Surrogate
motherhood, or same-sex marriage, affirmative action, or military service, the size
of CEO pay or the right of a disabled golfer to use a golf cart, questions of justice
are bound up with competing notions of honor and virtue, pride and recognition.
Justice is not only about the right way to distribute things. It is also about the right
way to value things.” – Michael Sandel
 “The right way to value things” stands at the very heart of Christianity.
 Matthew 22:34-40
 Without God standing at the appropriate place on my value scale, I won’t know
how to value other things. Justice is inescapably judgmental because we all make
judgments every day based on what we value.
 Some Christians think you should avoid anything to do with the world. You should
only read Christians books, leave science to the atheists, and live as much as
possible in that upper story.

7.  Others say that the heart is what we use for religion, while the brain is what we use
for science, thus keeping them out of each other’s reach.
 Here’s the problem: If God’s Word speaks to all of life, the Christian is not free to
ignore or be silent about what God says concerning science, mathematics,
literature, ethics, and everything else in His world.
 The two-story view has some strengths, but it also has some fatal flaws. We see
those flaws if we go back to the Christian worldview: the Christian story of
Creation, Fall, and Redemption.

8. Creation
 God created this world and therefore owns it, so the biggest flaw in the two-story
view is this: the Bible just won’t let us divide the world into things God owns and
things He doesn’t.
 Psalm 24:1; 50:12; 89:11
 Job 41:11
 I Corinthians 10:31
 God owns everything He created, and it’s possible to glorify Him (or not) with every
decision we make.
 That has to include politics and scholarship, music and sports. There are no areas
of neutrality over which God is not King.

9. Fall
 Because the whole of creation in in the same ziplock bag, it was all contaminated
when Adam fell into sin. This creates two more problems for the two-story view.
 1. it sometimes seems to forget that sin comes with us into the upper story.
 2. The Christian version of the two-story view fails to recognize something about
non-Christian worldviews. Those worldviews stand opposed to God’s claims in
both the upper and lower stories.
 God has just as much a claim to newspapers and high school curricula as he does
to sex and speech.
 God speaks to every aspect of individual and cultural human life.

10. Redemption
 Jesus died on the cross to satisfy God the Father’s anger for your sins. Titus 2:14
 Romans 3:24
 Jesus descended into the dirty slave market of sin where we were all in chains, and
He’s the one who paid the money to buy us out of slavery. That’s what
“redeeming” means.
 The Bible is the story of what God is doing to glorify Himself by redeeming His
fallen creation, and redeeming fallen humans is the culmination of that story.
 But that’s not the only redemption He’ll ever accomplish. God intends to redeem
all of creation. Romans 8:19-23

11.  Revelation 21:1-5
 One day, God will reestablish His rule over all creation I Corinthians 15:28.
 If God has a future plan for all creation, then there will be a time when everything
in creation is set right. Colossians 1:19-20
 All things means everything, including institutions and academic disciplines like
sports, cooking, advertising, biology, agriculture, sociology, medical science, high
finance, political science, etc.
 If there’s a right way to run these things in the future God will set up for us, there’s
a right way to run them NOW.
 Without a biblical worldview there’s no way you’ll know how your own career is
supposed to be run.
 There are God-honoring ways to be a writer, politician, farmer, teacher, artist, mom,
or whatever.
 It’s our duty to view all life from a biblical perspective. And if a worldview includes
practical action, then it’s possible to live all of life, to make every choice, in
obedience to God.