How a Lack of Presuppositional Thinking Handicaps the Church

We were talking this morning about how a friend's views had changed since going to college. She was raised in a Christian family, mostly homeschooled, but now she said that at college, her professors had shown her “the real facts” in her philosophy classes. When someone else tried to show her that those “real facts” were biased and based off God-hating presuppositions, she defended them as neutral. 

This example illustrates how easily Christians can be led astray when they believe that “neutral ground” exists. They accept various teachings because they believe them to be neutral, when in reality, the teachings are based on God-hating presuppositions. It is impossible to reason from these teachings to the truth, because they start with untrue presuppositions. There is no neutrality. Anything that does not acknowledge God is anti-God.

There is no neutral ground. Every thought is either pro-God or anti-God. Every thought can be traced back to presuppositions that either acknowledge or deny God. As my former pastor once said, “At bottom, every thought can be traced back to an acceptance or denial of Genesis 1:1 – either ‘in the beginning God’ or ‘in the beginning not God.’” Whenever anyone tries to tell you that they are communicating the “neutral facts,” don’t believe them. Trace these “facts” back down to their presuppositions and judge them by those.

Just as in logic, when the premises are false (assuming the logic is correct), the conclusion must necessarily be false. Likewise, it is impossible to have true thoughts about the world and about ourselves that are based on faulty presuppositions (i.e. not God).

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