How Now Shall We Live? [Hardcover]

Charles W. Colson (Author), Nancy Pearcey (Author), Harold Fickett (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1999

2000 Gold Medallion Award winner! Christianity is more than a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. It is also a worldview that not only answers life's basic questions--Where did we come from, and who are we? What has gone wrong with the world? What can we do to fix it?--but also shows us how we should live as a result of those answers. How Now Shall We Live? gives Christians the understanding, the confidence, and the tools to confront the world's bankrupt worldviews and to restore and redeem every aspect of contemporary culture: family, education, ethics, work, law, politics, science, art, music. This book will change every Christian who reads it. It will change the church in the new millennium.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

How Now Shall We Live was the heart cry of a people who lived during the Jewish exile from the Promised Land, yet it is no less the unspoken prayer of the faithful today. As author Chuck Colson puts it, "We live in a culture that is at best morally indifferent ... in which Judeo-Christian values are mocked ... in which violence, banality, meanness, and disintegrating personal behavior are destroying civility and endangering the very life of our communities." It is no small wonder that Colson--the founder of Prison Fellowship Ministries and author of several renowned Christian works--considers this book the most important work of his life.

America, Colson states, is now in a post-Judeo-Christian era. Technically, this is what "postmodernism" means. In a generation in which the most respected brands of thought about reality declare that "God is dead," it is clear that a faith-based worldview does not prevail. So how do we teach our children that belief in God is respectable and intelligent? How do we fulfill our mandate to make "disciples of all nations" when friends and coworkers find the Christian perspective foolhardy and--in terms of rational thought--almost insane? Most important, how do we renew our entire culture, especially as it infects the global community, with the "common grace" of reinstating a prevailing belief in God and in His moral order?

These questions' implications are far-reaching, and Colson's thorough inquiry is a ready match for the challenge. In effect, this book delivers a logical, more than just "because the Bible says so" framework for interpreting the Gospel to the postmodern world, while also illustrating the vision for a culture based entirely on Biblical principles--powerful tools, indeed.

Christians are taught to love God with all their hearts, all their strength, and all their minds. How Now Shall We Live emphasizes that not to use one's mind in this idea-saturated culture is to abandon dying neighbors to bleed by the side of the road while going about one's religious way. As Colson puts it, "turning our backs on the culture ... denies God's sovereignty over all of life." It's this compassionate severity and prodding intelligence that make this book not only a good read, but a life-changing one as well. --Courtenay Gebhardt

From Publishers Weekly

International prison ministry leader Colson, most famous for his role in the Watergate scandal and his subsequent conversion to Christianity, has co-written with Pearcey what he believes to be the most important book of his career. Picking up where the late American theologian Francis Schaeffer's book and film series How Then Shall We Live? left off, Colson attempts to explain why American culture has become "post-Christian" and what must be done to "rebuild it with a biblical worldview." He believes that Christian salvation is not just personal but "cosmological," redeeming all of creation. Colson's work is a mixed bag. When he outlines his theology, shares personal stories or explains the various Supreme Court cases that touch upon religion's role in American life, he is thoughtful and articulate, yet the work suffers from a narrow perspective and an overdependence on the opinions of a few others, especially Schaeffer. As the author of a book that ostensibly engages recent developments in science, art and philosophy from a Christian point of view, Colson too easily dismisses opposing views without expressing a full understanding of them (Stephen Hawking's time theories amount to "little more than fantasy," for example). Such an approach to humanist ideas makes this a sermon strictly for the evangelical choir, although Colson intends the book to inspire debate in the wider culture and Tyndale is launching a $250,000 marketing campaign to sell it. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 592 pages
• Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.; First Printing edition (September 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0842318089
• ISBN-13: 978-0842318082
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 1.6 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (115 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #60,843 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

155 of 161 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Colson's best yet! December 11, 1999

By Brent Hudson

Format:Hardcover

Typically if you like Chuck Colson's stuff, you like all of his stuff. This is no exception; however, if you have found Colson a bit dry and analytical in the past don't assume that is true for this book. Having Nancy Pearcy as a co-writer has improved the readability of this book markedly over previous volumes.

As far as content, this book is a winner. Colson looks at how Christians must relate Christ to a world that no longer shares a similar worldview. He structures this in a classic Reformed pattern of Creation, Fall, & Redemption.

Some of the material covered in this book is expanded from Colson's previous book *Kingdoms in Conflict* but this book is far more readable, passionate, and practical. This is one of the best books I have read in three years. A must read for every Christian wanting to intelligently deal with the issues of our day.

50 of 53 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential Reading on the New Christian Renaissance November 25, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

For over a century the secular world has stolen, distorted, and then discarded the culture that Christians spent 1500 years creating. Its time we return our lives to the Christian culture and turned our backs on the distorted worldview Satan has crafted in its place. For someone who grew up in a fundamentalist church this is a major, but welcome, break in my thinking. How shall we live? We shall live, in every aspect of life, in the way God has placed in nature. Families need to learn again how to function God's way, businesses need to learn again *truly* compassionate capitalism, medicine needs to learn again from God right and wrong instead of ethics and legalities, and the church needs to support more than the winning of souls but the reclaiming of Western culture as Christian intead of Western.

Colson starts with the ways our views of creation and fall shape us and builds to a crescendo showing us how those ideas should cause us to build a culture that can restore the world as God would have it.

Along with Richard Foster and Dallas Willard, Chuck Colson is one of the most important thinkers and writers in this newly emerging, but very necessary, Christian Renaissance

39 of 41 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Good Source for Christian Living March 5, 2001

By J. F Foster

Format:Hardcover

Colson does a good job of conducting a rather exhaustive examination of various worldviews that run contrary to Christianity that have gained acceptance through the media, schools, and assorted literature. He then describes ways that Christians can lovingly project the Christian worldview in society in an effort to regain some footing in the marketplace of ideas.

His major emphasis is on naturalism, which includes a significant portion of the book devoted to examining evolution. I felt that this examination of naturalism was very good and fairly exhaustive. Naturalism is a complex belief system with various facets emanating from a core belief that there is no God. Colson didn't intend for this book to be purely an academic study of naturalism, and that's not what the reader will find when reading the book. Colson's emphasis is on explaining this belief understandably in order to show how pervasive it has become in the everyday messages that are being sent by the culture in terms of how people should live and what their perspective should be. In this way, Colson does a very good job.

I didn't totally agree with everything written in the last section where he describes how we as Christians should counteract naturalism and set the record straight. But I did agree with much of what he said here, and even though I didn't agree with certain things, the whole section was nonetheless well written and well thought out. I respect what Colson had to say here, even though I didn't totally agree with everything he said.

I consider this to be a very good book and a "must have" for parents in particular who are concerned about the messages their children may be receiving in schools and on television and the internet. This book clearly demonstrates that the culture is not on the side of the Christian worldview at present, and that it is a mistake for Christians, especially Christian parents, to assume that the culture is merely neutral towards the Christian faith. In fact, much of the culture's "gospel" is actively hostile to Christian ideas and ideals and while regretable, we must be diligent to correct the undercutting of Christianity in our society and lovingly stand up to this particularly where our children are concerned. I think this book provides many solids tools and facts to give Christians a formidable strategy for combatting many of the ideas held sacred by many in the culture.