Reality has a way of injuring people who don't take it seriously. If you don't believe in gravity, for example, and then step off a tall building, you won't just float away.

Worldviews have four elements that help us understand how a person's story fits together: creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. "Creation" tells us how things began, where everything came from (including us), the reason for our origins, and what ultimate reality is like. "Fall" describes the problem (since we all know something has gone wrong with the world). "Redemption" gives us the solution, the way to fix what went wrong. "Restoration" describes what the world would look like once the repair begins to take place.

If the Christian doesn't get reality right, he loses effectiveness in this life. If the non-Christian doesn't get reality right, he loses much in this life, and everything and the next one. As Jesus put it, "What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?"

Two things have been bothering me for a long time. The first is the tendency of people in general - and that includes Christians - to "relativize" religion. Any religious belief is only "true for," so to speak - true for you or true for me or true for those people on the other side of the world. Second, I've been bothered by how poorly believers understand their own Story. They have bits and pieces, of course, but they're missing enough that they can easily become prey to ideas that sound spiritual, but end up being foolishness in the end.

A worldview is simply someone's relatively organized understanding of what the world is actually like.

So let's set the record straight. Faith is not the opposite of reason. The opposite of faith is unbelief. And reason is not the opposite of faith. The opposite of reason is irrationality. Do some Christians have irrational faith? Sure. Do some skeptics have unreasonable unbelief? You bet. It works both ways.

Most Christians who've been around for a while have their Story in bits and pieces, but have never seen how powerful it really is when assembled as a whole. I want them to see how well it fits together and how it offers tremendous explanatory power regarding the world as we actually find it. I want them to see how it resolves the problem of evil, and why God's solution - the God/man Jesus - is the only solution.