Our world is in free fall these days. And there are probably as many explanations for all our problems as there are people. 

But it occurred to me this morning that no matter what happens, it doesn't surprise me. Oh, sure, there are new outrages coming out of Washington every day, new natural disasters to gape at, horrifying new examples of evil being called good and good evil, new acts of incredible human kindness or courage to warm the heart.

But I can’t remember the last time I was really astounded by any development.

The reason? My worldview is entirely biblical. And when you view the world through the lens of the Bible, everything makes sense.

Take, for example, the deterioration in how we deal with each other. Rudeness and violence are on the upswing, civility is long gone. Abortion is a right. The latest amusement for thugs is The Knockout Game. The “do your own thing” siren call of the ‘60s has matured into a way of life for most people. And the very idea of obeying or even respecting a higher authority has become a joke.

Or consider the death of truth. Hardly anyone believes in it anymore, at least not the absolute kind. Everything’s relative, everything’s conditional, and we have grown used to hearing partial truths put forth as explanations when we know, if we’ll just think about it, that a partial truth is most often nothing more than a lie.

Or think about our love affair with the material, our obsession with outward appearance, our worship of celebrities, our demand for 24x7 entertainment, our glorification of the intellect. 

Or even the way old cars rust out and fall apart.

I could cite Bible passage after Bible passage explaining each of these phenomena, and just about everything else that we see happening today. That’s because, quite simply, the Bible is truth, and the biblical worldview is the only way to recognize it in this post-modern world.

That’s the thing about truth. It always rings ... true. 

Am I wrong? Does your non-biblical worldview do an equally fine job of explaining this world? Or does it explain part of it, but require a lot of “just so” stories to make sense of the rest?

Let’s give it a test.

Does your non-biblical worldview explain poverty in America, in spite of the trillions of dollars that have been poured into eradicating it over the last 50+ years?

Does it explain the dramatic increase in crime, in suicide, in mental illness?

How about the drive to globalization?

Or the dramatic increase in information and travel?

How about the growth of greed? Or the escalating tensions in the Middle East and the return of the horrors of antisemitism?  

And how about the stubborn refusal of man to quit believing in a purpose for this life, and an afterlife to follow?

If your non-biblical worldview can explain all of these phenomena, I’d love to hear about it.

But if it doesn’t, I invite you to take a close look at mine.

One of the best introductions I’ve ever come across is in James Sire’s amazing book The Universe Next Door. You’ll find a glimpse of a synopsis of it in my library, and used and new copies of it wherever books are sold.

Why not give it a shot? What have you got to lose, except a view of the world that leaves you scratching your head whenever you pause to ponder it. 

"He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts ..." (Ecclesiastes 3:11a)  

I've long thought that this is one of the most beautiful verses that wise King Solomon ever wrote. Pondering it tonight, I wondered if the world would at least grant us that it's a natural instinct -- that belief in an afterlife seems to be something that most people, in most cultures, have embraced over history.

So I did a little searching. No surprise, I came across a lot of atheist bilge about weak-minded people inventing God to soothe their fears about death.

But then I stumbled across a CNN report from 2011 -- a report entitled "Religious belief is human nature, huge new study claims."

The subject of this very sketchy article was a three-year Oxford University study which concluded that a belief in purpose and afterlife is pretty much universal. And apparently this wasn't the first time such researchers have come to this conclusion: "Studies around the world came up with similar findings," the article reports, "including widespread belief in some kind of afterlife and an instinctive tendency to suggest that natural phenomena happen for a purpose."
 
This study did not attempt to prove or disprove God's existence, according to one of its co-directors.

No surprise there, either, but what a pity: A bunch of academics spend three years studying whether a belief in the afterlife is common ... yet apparently spend not a moment trying to determine whether such a belief is true.

Wouldn't it have been more profitable for everyone concerned if they'd searched for absolute truth rather than wasting their time on what is, at least to an unbeliever, absolute opinion?

I guarantee that any reasonably intelligent researcher -- one who was willing to follow the evidence wherever it led -- would discover the truth in far less than three years. And it would lead him or her directly to that narrow gate, with an eternally important decision to make.

Does this sound like anyone you know?

"Perhaps not so coincidentally, my resolve to search out the unvarnished truth would be tested just a few months later, as I began investigating my mother’s faith. 
 
"Once again, I was being forced to consider the possibility that something I had long refused to believe might actually be true. 
 
"In the very early going, I kept stumbling over my virtual certainty that my mother’s religion was ugly and prudish and intolerant; that it was arrogant beyond belief with its claims of absolute and exclusive truth; and that it starred a Creator who, if He existed,  took great pleasure in giving His creatures good things like food and drink and money and sex and then telling them 'Hands off!' 
 
"These were among the reasons I had developed my own little theological system over the decades – one that could be adjusted whenever necessary to accommodate some fun idea put forth in a conversation or book or even a movie like the too-cool afterlife fantasy 'What Dreams May Come,' with its resident-run, 'they all lived happily ever after' portrayal of heaven. 
 
"Even though I was sort of leaning towards the existence of a God by the mid-1990s, my personal theology certainly didn’t depend on such a being. Mine was a passive-tense theology: We were put here to reach our full potential as human beings.  We would be judged based on our characters and good deeds. Those who were allowed into heaven (if it existed) would include just about everyone except Adolf Hitler and Christian fundamentalists. 
 
"If I didn’t want to address the issue of who, if anyone, would do the putting, judging and allowing, well, that was my business; it was my afterlife scenario, after all. And it was just as valid as anyone else’s, because no one could possibly know for sure what happens to us after we die. No one." (Heaven Without Her, pp 94-95)

If you're a Christian who cares about someone whose thinking runs along these lines, take heart: at least he or she is giving an afterlife some consideration. Pray, make yourself available as someone who has already figured it out, and be ready to prove your position. Of course, I recommend Heaven Without Her as the book I wish I'd had on the darkest night of my life -- but there are scores of other great resources out there, some of which I've summarized in my library.