Colson, How Now Shall We Live?

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Charles Colson, Nancy Pearsey, and Harold Fickett, How Now Shall We Live? Tyndale House, 2004.

Companion volume: Pearsey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity (Crossway, 2008).

Referenced in: Theological and Philosophical Foundations of Social Ministry

LifeandLeadership.com Summary

This highly acclaimed and voluminous work addresses the larger issues of communicating a Christian worldview and living a distinctively Christian lifestyle in the current cultural context. It offers a comprehensive theology on how Christians should conceive of their place in postmodern society and fulfill their divinely appointed mission. It shares this theological purpose with other volumes such as Ron Sider’s Good News and Good Works (see review), but unlike Sider, Colson and Pearcy’s theology is not written with a view toward ministries of evangelism and social justice per se, but with regard to how Christians should perceive themselves generally within the created order. This wider scope explains the length (650 pages). The co-author, Nancy Pearcey, has written another very definitive text on the Christian worldview that serves as an excellent companion, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity (Crossway, 2008).

The book is divided into five parts. Part One addresses the issue of worldviews, and why it matters for Christians to understand and live out the implications of the Christian worldview. The remaining chapters describe the Christian worldview in four parts:

Part Two, Creation: Where did we come from and who are we?
Part Three, The Fall: What has gone wrong with the world?
Part Four, Redemption: What can we do to fix it?
Part Five, Restoration: How now shall we live?

The section most applicable to the subject of social justice is Part Five on Restoration. It includes chapters such as “Saved to What,” which discusses the “Cultural Commission” of Christians to obey God’s command to “fill and subdue the earth” (Gen. 1:28). This involves exploring and developing the potentialities and powers of the “very good creation” by building a civilization. Colson and Pearcey argue that this cultural commission is inseparable from the great commission, that we are to redeem both souls and society. This reflects the larger theological-political school of dominionism, which carries the vision for Christians to increasingly permeate all structures of society until the return of Christ. Other chapters address issues such as being agents of God’s shalom in troubled neighborhoods, creating the good society by integrating social justice and private virtue, living out the sacredness of secular work, exemplifying good citizenry, serving as the conscience of the society to guard against governmental misuse of authority, and many other topics.

From the Publisher

Christianity is more than a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. It is also a worldview that answers life’s basic questions and shows us how we should live as a result of those answers. How Now Shall We Live? equips Christians to confront false worldviews and live redemptively in contemporary culture.

This important book explores a wide range of ethical and cultural issues. Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey show how the truth of Christianity can change the world. Internationally known author Charles Colson believes this to be the most significant book of his career. It carries a profound message needed by the church today and by individual Christians. The central theme is that faith in Jesus Christ is more than a private relationship with God; it’s a way of seeing, understanding, and changing the world. Christian faith brings with it basic ideas and beliefs that are the answers and counters to the world’s philosophies. Christians often feel a loss of confidence in the face of secular philosophy as expressed in the culture of our age. The claims of scientists, New Age beliefs, shifting morality and so on can confuse. The authors provide the tools to interpret and confront the false, bankrupt ideas of the world and to use the truth of Christianity to make a difference for good. They help their readers to evaluate their own lives and values. Colson and Pearcey offer the challenge — How Now Shall We Live? This is a message for the church in the new millennium. Change in the world and in culture will not be achieved chiefly through political or social means, but by individual Christians knowing their faith and daring to be agents of God’s grace.

About the Authors

The well-known story of Charles Colson’s formerly President Richard Nixon’s “hatchet man” to founder of the Prison Fellowship Ministries and internationally recognized Christian author and speaker. His 1973 conversion to Christianity was followed by a guilty plea to obstruction of justice and a seven-month prison sentence in 1974. He founded Prison Fellowship Ministries in 1976, fulfilling a promise made to fellow inmates that he would “never forget those behind bars.”

Nancy R. Pearcey has served as the policy director of the Wilberforce Forum, the executive editor of BreakPoint, and the managing editor of Origins and Designs. She is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and the Francis A. Schaeffer Scholar at the World Journalism Institute.

***For additional information on this resource, including reviews, click the bookstore links. Check the reference at page top or the links below for resource guides on related topics.***

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