Dempsey and Makepeace

Dempsey: "Life is hard and then you die."

The Problem

• The number one problem of man at the close of the twentieth century is that he leads an unexamined life.
• We rush from task to task, but we don't call enough time-outs to reflect on life's larger issues.

Two Life Views

There are two predominant life views in America today:

• The secular humanist believes that man is intrinsically good, he masters his own fate, self-determines the boundaries of his achievements and knowledge, and no moral standards constrain him apart from those he chooses at his own discretion.
• The Christian believes an all-powerful God created the heavens and the earth. This living, omniscient God possesses all knowledge, and He established absolute moral standards by which man is expected to abide. He is holy, loving and personal.

We have moved away from Judeo-Christian values toward a life view that lets us self-select values based on whether they serve our self- interests.

The choice between a Christian life view and a secular life view is a choice between God's race and the rat race.

Christians in Captivity

Allan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind states that our society's openness is not one that pursues the truth with a dogged determination, but an openness which presses to be "open to all kinds of men, all kinds of lifestyles, all ideologies."

The Two Yous

• The visible you is the you that is known by others.
• The real you is the you that is known by God. We are who we are in our minds first, before we speak or act.

The main reason we lead unexamined lives is that we do not take time to look at our real selves, carefully looking for more and more.