Elie Wiesel’s book Night proved to be too dark for the podcast. It is one of the more chilling, horrific and stirring accounts from the Holocaust. Wiesel documents in short, clear, unvarnished terms how he lost his family and his faith. But atheism is a worldview which, ultimately, makes no distinction between putting a Jew or a pizza in an oven.
Dostoyevsky said that without God, nihilism will reign, and so we must return to classical Christianity. Nietzsche said without God, nihilism will reign, and so we must create our own values. Carl Jung said that values seem to be built into our consciences, and we must reach into our mythological roots to discover meaning. Jordan Peterson, like his intellectual predecessors, offers the next stepping stone for the future of Western philosophy, which is an answer to existentialism and postmodernism.
In The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis argues that relativism will destroy the youth of our culture if they do not learn to manage their appetites. This cannot be done with the mind or the heart, but with the “chest,” with trained emotions.
In one captivating, emblematic scene in War and Peace, Tolstoy embodies every ideal to which Well Read Christian aspires. Two childhood friends are reunited after several years to discover they have grown into very different people, with very different views of life. Andrei is skeptical and cynical, rejecting belief in God, objective meaning to the universe or objective morality. Pierre is idealistic, religious, perhaps naive, but filled with purpose and a reason to live honorably. The conversation that ensues is exactly the kind we hope to encourage and facilitate in our podcast and blog. From the porch to the river, under a sunset and then the night sky, these two characters engage in a respectful, passionate and intellectual conversation, with mutual respect, admiration and love. This is the goal of Well Read Christian, captured in beautiful and iconic prose.
With so many religions in the world and secular scientism dominating the academy, it seems to many people that a serious belief in a single (especially religious) worldview is naive, narrow minded, and obviously preposterous. So the question stands, is Christianity a reasonable worldview for the 21st century?
A person who does not examine their beliefs is like a fish who does not know it is wet. Consequently, they will share the same outlook towards life as a fish. Fumbling around, trying not to get caught in a net or eaten by a shark, and ultimately aimless in a never ending quest for food and temperate waters. If you want to have more depth, you need to think about what you believe and why you believe it.