In recent times, we have observed various monumental shifts in our societal fabric. Massive leaps in technological and medical development, a rise in the implicit adoption of post-modernism, and increased tensions between Eastern and Western countries combine to urge the world into a new era. At least for now, the world seems to be quickly sliding down the slopes of anarchy. The world as we knew it has drastically transformed, leaving us in an era of unprecedented uncertainty.

Amidst these changes, we have been blessed with the birth of our daughter. At her baptism, it was made clear to us that we as her parents are entrusted with a profound responsibility: to educate her thoroughly about God and the complexities of this world. Our goal is to nurture her into embracing the Christian worldview, to inspire her to carry her cross with resilience and to instil in her a steadfast trust and genuine faith in God. This we ought to do so that, at the end of her journey, she may stand before God's judgment throne with confidence and without fear. Carrying the responsibility of guiding our children in today's rapidly evolving world is a daunting task. The modern challenges that our children will face as they grow up have been a significant inspiration for writing this book. It's essential to realize that we cannot effectively lead our children in embracing and maturing within the Christian worldview unless we, ourselves, possess a deep and systematic understanding of Christian truths. Facing the philosophical and ethical challenges of the world is inevitable. We may not face them directly, but we will certainly face them through the experiences of our children and grandchildren. Now, more than ever, we must be well-prepared to articulate and defend the hope that resides within us. This book is a step towards equipping ourselves with the needed understanding to effectively vindicate the Christian worldview in the modern world.

The battle for our minds: Misinformation, social media & artificial intelligence

Among these aforementioned monumental shifts in our societal fabric, certain technological advancements have emerged as particularly transformative: The advent of a new generation of digital technologies, the growth of social media platforms like TikTok, and the advancements in AI-driven text and image generation are notable examples. These developments have ushered in challenges across different age groups, from the youth to the elderly, who find themselves increasingly immersed in the digital realm. The instantaneous sharing of information and ideas via social media marks a distinctive feature of modern society that previous generations did not experience. It has created a world where information is not only rapidly accessible but also constantly evolving, fundamentally reshaping how we interact with each other, educate our children, and understand our world. 

While the exchange of ideas and information is inherently valuable, it also comes with its caveats. The sheer volume and speed of this flow of information mean that individuals, particularly the younger generation, are exposed to a barrage of beliefs and ideas (which also contain mass volumes of misinformation and outright fabrications) at an unprecedented scale and intensity. Our children are encountering and grappling with challenges to their familial instilled beliefs much earlier and more intensely than previous generations. The implications of this for parenting, education, and our societal norms are profound and necessitate a thoughtful and informed approach to navigating these challenges. Children, in their crucial developmental stages, might struggle to discern fact from fiction, leading to a distorted understanding of reality. The ease with which false information and manipulated media can spread can not only misinform but also shape their beliefs and perceptions in ways that are detached from the worldview parents try to instil in them. 

The emergence of advanced deepfakes in video and audio formats, alongside generalized AI models, poses significant challenges as well. Control over these technologies equips entities with the power to shape public opinion by disseminating misinformation. Consider the use of language models in the case of ChatGPT, which is engineered to provide quick and convincing answers to just about any question you ask. A critical question arises: who governs the outputs of these models? If these outputs become a primary source of information in our society, or if children are given unrestricted access to these tools (bearing in mind that children often prefer ‘Googling their questions’ rather than asking their parents) then who or what is shaping our and our children’s worldviews? Consider posing the question about the number of genders to your preferred language model and then evaluate how its response aligns with what you would explain to your children. Moreover, the influence of deepfakes on global politics and public perception is profound. During conflicts like the Israel-Palestinian crisis, images and videos depicting the suffering of children were circulated, yet there were claims that some of these could have been fabricated as part of a disinformation campaign to influence public opinion. In this era, visual media can no longer be accepted at face value.

In light of these technological advancements, some feel the need to return to the “real world”, where face-to-face interactions and tangible experiences are preferred over virtual engagements. There is value in this approach. However, distancing ourselves from these technologies and developments isn’t feasible lest we go down the road of the Amish. Our modern reality is inherently intertwined with technology. Technological advancement is not inherently sinful. Rather, it aligns with the Biblical understanding of learning about, mastering, and stewarding God’s creation.

The doctrine of creation, which we will explore in greater depth later in this book, posits that every fact in existence derives its essence and meaning from God's design. As the Creator, God's Word serves as a crucial and supernatural means of communication, offering us foundational insights into the nature of our world and guiding us on how to navigate it. In an age saturated with misinformation, ignoring these foundational insights makes us vulnerable. This vulnerability is intensified by our inherent sinful nature, which, without the transforming work of the Spirit, tends to lean towards falsehood over truth. Information that validates virtually any sinful thoughts or desires conceivable by the human heart can be readily found. In the absence of these fundamental truths, there is a significant risk of falling into perpetual deception (sometimes even willing deception) and losing ourselves in a sea of misinformation and subjective interpretations that characterize our modern era. Apart from God’s Word, we risk becoming enslaved to the perspectives and ideologies of the world. The deepening divide in U.S. politics, notably pronounced since the 2016 election, is a significant example. This division is exacerbated by the endorsement of misinformation and falsehoods, spanning across the political landscape. The era of bipartisan agreement on crucial governance issues appears to be in the past. For many, political affiliation has taken on a near-religious fervour, with individuals more likely to align with their party's narratives influenced by pre-existing biases leading to them seeking any information (regardless of authenticity) to substantuate the narrative.

Reorienting towards Christ and His teachings is essential for both our spiritual health and the well-being of our society.

This alignment with God's Word is crucial for challenging our sinful biases and understanding the fundamental truths about ourselves and the environment we engage with. While we cannot withdraw from the contemporary exchange of ideas, we can prepare ourselves and our children to navigate it with wisdom and discernment, to serve as a guiding light in a world overshadowed by uncertainty.

Overwhelmed by misinformation, guiding our children and instilling in them the fear of the Lord requires unwavering determination and active involvement. Our current society, at least at the time of writing, has largely turned away from Christ in pursuit of other ideologies. We are thus faced with a crucial decision: to either deepen our understanding of God and conscientiously bring up our children within the Christian worldview, or to be carried along by worldly influences and powers, risking final destruction alongside all that opposes the knowledge of God. The lines in this battle for our and our children's minds are drawn.

The battle for our hearts: Post-modernism and a culture of death

Another monumental shift was brought about by modern and postmodern philosophy. This shift begins with Immanuel Kant's “Copernican revolution”: Kant posited that we cannot know things in themselves (e.g., we cannot know an “apple” as it is in itself) and that objects of knowledge must conform to our faculties of representation (we can only know an “apple” as we perceive it to be). This suggests a leaning towards subjective interpretations over objective truth.

Jean-François Lyotard, in defining philosophical postmodernism in “The Postmodern Condition”, describes it as incredulity towards meta-narratives, which he interprets as any unified, complete, universal, and certain story about everything that exists. If there is no “complete and certain story” (i.e., no Creator, as presupposed by Jean-Paul Sartre, a significant figure in modern and postmodern philosophy) it implies that all worldviews with a postmodernist influence confess that Chance (with a capital C) reigns supreme. In such a view, no facts are intentional: all are brute facts. For example: There is no authorial or created intention behind the concept and role of a “woman” that transcends the experiences of individuals. A “woman” is whatever anyone experiences it to be - do you feel like a woman (whatever you subjectively think a woman is)? Then you are one. The logical consequence of this is a situation where “... everyone [does] what [is] right in his own eyes.” Without an authorial intention behind nature (i.e., a Creator) we cannot be considered “creatures” in the sense that we were created with a divine purpose in mind.

If we aren’t created, we have no moral obligation to live for anything or anyone other than ourselves. Reality becomes subject to individual interpretation and experience. These ideas have also infiltrated Christian theology in the form of liberal theology. Christian orthodoxy (as found in the works of John Calvin and Cornelius Van Til) places the knowledge of God as the foundation upon which our self-consciousness is built (i.e., we found our identity fundamentally in God’s plan for us). In contrast, when delving into the works of liberal theologians, we encounter a different approach: They suggest that our understanding of God is reliant on a more intrinsic awareness of ourselves (i.e., God becomes a projection of our ideas). This viewpoint essentially reverses the orthodox order, making the consciousness of God secondary to and dependent upon our self-consciousness. Our existence then focuses inward on our wants and desires, rather than on seeking God’s will for our lives, which undoubtedly is a driving force in creating what we can term the “culture of death and self-indulgence” that reigns today. The culture of death and self-indulgence, a consequence of postmodern philosophy, signifies significant shifts in the cultural values of Western, historically Christian, societies. These societies have transitioned from a focus on family and church-community (which are God-given institutions to govern society) to an extreme form of individualism. This shift is evident when viewing key statistics about our modern Western society: 

Firstly, more than half of first marriages end in divorce (that is of those who still choose to get married in the first place). Marriage, as a Christian institution designed to reflect the relationship of Christ and his church, requires continual self-sacrifice and work, something which our self-indulgent societies are unwilling to do. Thus, failed marriages are more common than successful ones and younger generations are now questioning the “relevance of marriage”, viewing it as an outdated tradition that unnecessarily imposes on their self-comfort and personal freedoms.

Secondly, declining birth rates are also a matter of concern. Even secular experts warn of incoming “population collapse” in the Western world. Throughout history, the human population has always been on a steady (and in the last century, exponential) increase. Our global economy and models all function on the underlying assumption of population growth. The Western world has entered a situation where the “boomer” generation (particularly those born during the 60s and 70s) outnumber the subsequent generations, and they are about to retire leaving a massive gap in the labour force and putting a strain on the demand for goods in our economies. As the world grapples with this crisis many youths are adopting a lifestyle termed “DINKS” (dual income, no kids), where they prioritize material luxuries like cars, fancy homes and holidays over raising a family. Ironically, this selfish mindset is the very driving force that will destroy the Western economies which made material luxuries possible in the first place. Children are, therefore, no longer perceived as a blessing and joy, but as a pure liability. As with failed marriages, the self-sacrificial love that a parent requires to raise a child is simply absent from the modern mindset and sometimes even publicly despised. It’s worthwhile to note that as historical Christian regions are increasingly moving away from rearing children in the fear of the Lord and veering towards secularism and self-centeredness, the Islamic world is witnessing a significant population increase. 

Third, sex, historically regarded as sacred within the bounds of marriage, is increasingly perceived as a tool for personal gratification, with little consideration for its deeper relational or moral implications. The reverence once associated with marriage has diminished significantly. A glaring illustration of this cultural transformation is the prevalence of abortion. The World Health Organisation reports that approximately 73 million abortions are performed annually, a figure exceeding the entire population of South Africa, my homeland. Disturbingly, not only has the termination of pregnancies become normalized, but in certain circles, it is even celebrated as a positive right. In 2019, One World Trade Center was lit pink in celebration of a New York abortion law that allowed abortions to be performed through the third trimester of a pregnancy. This celebration of abortion is closely linked to the "free sex" movement. If sex is treated primarily as a means for personal enjoyment outside the sanctity of marriage, then abortion becomes a necessary tool to eliminate any unwanted outcomes. To rationalize abortion, the unborn are often dehumanized, labelled as mere "parasites" or "clumps of cells" rather than acknowledged as babies. This dehumanization serves to ease the conscience of those who commit the heinous act of abortion. Consequently, modern feminist movements vigorously advocate for abortion rights, reframing them as an aspect of “healthcare”.

Lastly, the LGBTQ movement is another outflow of the postmodernist influence on our society. LGBTQ stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (or sometimes questioning), and others. Sometimes a “plus” is added to represent other sexual identities. The postmodernist commitment to subjectivism and personal experience and rejection of categories independent of an individual's own experience is what ultimately gave rise to the transgender (or gender identity) revolution. If you believe yourself to be a woman, that makes you a woman. If you are attracted to the same sex, power to you. Couple this with modern medical science and you get doctors who offer transition services and hormone therapy who help these people make their bodies conform to their perception. Similarly, the controversy surrounding pronouns can also be analysed along postmodernist lines. If it is ultimately the individual's subjective experience that makes them who and what they are, it makes sense that we ought to be able to choose how we'd like others to refer to us (either he/him, she/her, they/their, or any combination of pronouns you like). In addressing the pervasive postmodernism of our times, particularly when engaging with individuals deeply invested and emotionally connected to their postmodern beliefs and personal interests, Christians face a complex challenge. Our children will encounter diverse perspectives, including peers identifying as transgender, widespread exposure to pornography in educational settings, and the allure of material wealth. Guiding them through this intricate maze also requires wisdom and discernment. The lines in the battle for our and our children’s hearts are drawn as well, and we should ensure our weapons are tuned by entrenching ourselves in the depths of the Christian worldview.

The battle for our future: The death of democracy and geopolitical shifts

In recent years, we have seen unelected bodies such as the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO) rise to prominence, organizations that wield considerable power over nations. With the arrival of COVID-19 in late 2019, the political influence of these organisations has increased substantially. Now, this is not to side with conspiracy theorists who like to irrationally demonise these organisations, but it should at least lead us to reflect on how this centralisation of power is far less than ideal given the pervasive corruption seen across the political spectrum, especially among Western leaders. Think about it. Who can truly say that elections in recent years were “free and fair”? It seems like those in power are reluctant to relinquish their control and will do whatever is necessary to remain in control. This widespread corruption, coupled with the deplored things we witness in our Western culture, lends credence to John Calvin's sad reflection: “When God wants to judge a nation, He gives them wicked rulers.”

Furthermore, since the abandonment of the gold standard in the 70s and the ensuing shift to fiat currencies (currencies not backed by anything tangible, like gold), the global economic landscape has undergone substantial changes. This transition to fiat currencies has significant implications, especially in terms of state governance and monetary policy. Fiat currencies, inherently, give governments the power to debase their currency through methods like printing additional money. This ability can inadvertently foster corrupt practices by enabling states to finance various operations - such as wars, oppressive regimes, or misinformation campaigns - without the immediate need to levy taxes for funding. Reliance on fiat currency creates conditions favourable to the growth of corruption and tyranny, as it reduces the direct financial accountability of governments to their citizens. The recent increase in global unrest and conflict is not a mere coincidence given the rise of fiat currencies. In this environment, individuals who are selfish, corrupt, and highly competent have found fertile ground to advance their goals. Their actions and decisions contribute to the gradual erosion of the foundations and principles that once underpinned the Western world's prosperity and stability. 

We are likely to witness rapid and extreme changes in the global landscape in the years ahead. Things that might seem rock solid and certain now, might no longer be so. The unprecedented period of peace and stability that the world has experienced since the end of the Second World War might be coming to an end. For the Christian, this unpredictable and turbulent environment underscores the necessity of being deeply rooted in our Christian worldview. As James White aptly observed, ‘The world, and the U.S. in particular, will be more changed and altered by this day on [the 1st of January 2025] than in any period in the past.’ The continuous acts of what he terms “purposeful treason” by world leaders are not sustainable.

The current state of our world can be attributed to a fundamental shift in our cultural values and beliefs. Historically, societies honoured God as the creator, openly acknowledging their reliance on His guidance and provision. However, over time, there has been a marked transition away from this reverence. Instead of worshipping the creator, people have increasingly started to idolize the creation itself. At its core, this transition to worshipping the creature rather than the creator encapsulates the very nature of sin, as it signifies a departure from the divine principles found in the Bible and a move towards self-centeredness, subjectivism, materialism and death at the political level.

To stand firm amid a world in constant flux, Christians must be deeply rooted in their faith. Without a strong foundation in the Christian worldview, we risk being swayed by every news headline and overwhelmed by uncertainties about the future. In this era of change and uncertainty, true contentment is attainable only for believers who diligently work to free themselves from worldly attachments. The steadfastness of faith in the Christian God and His promises for the future not only serves as a personal anchor but also acts as a bulwark for our children as they grow up in the modern world.