Journal: Eikon
Volume: EIKON 04:2 (Fall 2022)
Article: The Lies We Are Told, The Truth We Must Hold: Worldviews And Their Consequences
Author: Michael Carlino

Eikon 4.2 (Fall 2022) p. 135

The Lies We Are Told, The Truth We Must Hold: Worldviews And Their Consequences

REVIEWED BY

Michael Carlino

Michael Carlino is Operations Director for CBMW.

James, Sharon. The Lies We are Told, the Truth We Must Hold: Worldviews and Their Consequences. Fearn, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2022.

Mature Christians are developed through a steady diet of the meaty truths of Scripture, and it is these who have their sensibilities calibrated to function in accord with God’s revelation (Heb. 5:14). Sharon James is such a Christian. She is well-equipped for engaging the material and ideologies she addresses in The Lies We are Told, the Truth We Must Hold, as she has a longstanding track record of addressing complicated cultural debates in a way that is both biblical and comprehensible to the average Christian.

Summary

James is clear about her intentions: “This book is intended as a simple primer, a ‘road map’ of some of the complex worldview issues that challenge Bible-believing Christians today” (10). Her thesis is that the options of “silence, acquiescence, and/or celebration buys into lies and ignores the truth…The only solid basis for defending human dignity

Eikon 4.2 (Fall 2022) p. 136

and achieving justice is a biblical worldview” (22–23). To defend her thesis James divides the book into two parts. In part one (chapters 1–6), she takes on the godless ideologies plaguing society under the heading the lies we are told. In part two (chapters 7–10), she lays a biblical worldview under the banner of the truth we must hold in place of the lies she seeks to expose in part one.

Critical Evaluation

While this book is short in length, it punches above its weight as James wastes no time in part one of this book nuancing the sinful ideologies of Darwinism (chapter 1), Marxism (chapter 2), Feminism/Fatherlessness (chapter 3), Relativism (chapter 4), Critical Theory (chapter 5), or Theological Liberalism (chapter 6), and more. She goes right to the rotten core of “the lies we are told,” exposing the delusional autonomy that rejects God at the root, and then gives example after example of the horrifying ways in which the bitter fruit of these ideas has and still does wreak havoc on humanity. It was moving and revolting to read again of the history of how Marxism has been applied in Russia, China, and Cambodia, and to be reminded that this ideology opposes the dignified and fruitful multiplicity for which God has created humanity. Humanism opposed to God as Creator views hu...