That’s a question that needs to uncomfortably confront any of our commitments and loyalties. We don’t stand at the foot of Sinai in the shadow of the golden calf, but there’s plenty of calves erected in our society and hearts and many are willing to break loose before them — there are idols before whom we celebrate, laugh, and dance.

On top of Mount Sinai, Moses received a revelation of Jehovah. The one, true, and living God delivered to him two tablets of stone inscribed by the divine finger that summarized his moral will — epitomized in a love to God and a love to neighbor. But as Moses tarried on the mountaintop the people of Israel grew restless and fashioned for themselves a golden calf and celebrated, laughed, and danced. Moses’ anger burned hot and in a symbolic gesture he shattered the tablets of stone at the foot of the mountain – the covenant was broken. Then he challenged the people of Israel asking: “Who is on the Lord’s side” and only the sons of Levi crossed over, and that day three thousand men on the other side were killed at their hands.
Who is on the Lord’s side? That’s a question that needs to uncomfortably confront any of our commitments and loyalties. We don’t stand at the foot of Sinai in the shadow of the golden calf, but there’s plenty of calves erected in our society and hearts and many are willing to break loose before them — there are idols before whom we celebrate, laugh, and dance.
As summer fades and we slip into our fall routines there’s nothing that will dominate the first day of the week like professional football. Beginning with the NFL draft and marching toward “Superbowl Sunday,” there will be more than 100 million viewers of America’s most popular sport — with last year’s end of the season game drawing 115 million viewers. With religious excitement and commitment the masses will gather in stadiums or around screens to watch what the Wall Street Journal estimated to be a per-game average of eleven minutes of actual action. Those eleven minutes will determine how many Americans decide to spend their Sunday orienting hours around them.
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The Christian narrative starts with God, who is eternal, creating the universe. God creates people in his image, with particular purpose, moral codes, and values. Which accounts not only for our normal intuitions, but also explains other religions. Romans 1 says that God gave created things to humanity to be good gifts, and we turned them into gods.

“Actually, we believe that Christianity started at the creation of the world.”
I was going back and forth with one of my friends who was giving his account of why he didn’t believe in any religion. He spoke generally about the age of religions. About how Islam was predated by Christianity which was predated by Hinduism which was predated by various forms of paganism.
This is where I felt that I needed to interrupt him. India is a context where there are many coexisting religions. So there is power in a narrative that not only lays out your beliefs, but the reasons for the beliefs of those who don’t believe like you. And for that, you don’t just need moral systems, you need a cosmology.
Cosmology is just the story of how the world came to be. This matters because it frames all of our other discussions. And because culture is so pervasive, even in our own thoughts, we can assume the secular story without even realizing it. To say that Christianity begins in Genesis 1 is to derail the secular cosmology. It is to respectfully say, “you believe certain things about the nature of the universe that I do not believe, and both of us cannot be correct.”
The secular cosmological narrative goes something like this. There was the Big Bang, which started the universe. As the gas and pieces of rock cooled, they formed into galaxies, solar systems, and planets.
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There are few safe havens for thoughtful people in today’s world; few forums where curious folks and creative thinkers feel comfortable enough voicing certain questions or contrarian thoughts. Church, let’s seize this opportunity, inviting our secular neighbors into what once was, and can be again, the world’s most electrifying intellectual community.

Free thinking, fearlessly open dialogue, a willingness to voice unpopular ideas: these are increasingly endangered species in a society ever more surveilled by Orwellian thought police. A new, fundamentalistic secular religion has emerged, with tenets that demand total adherence. To question the logic of any aspect of this secular creed—for example, a statement like “transgender women are women”—is to be branded a hateful heretic. Books that logically challenge prevailing orthodoxies are being banned by Amazon. There are countless more examples.
You know it’s bad when atheist hero Richard Dawkins is disowned by an atheist organization (which explicitly defines its purpose as including advocacy for “freethinkers”) over a tweet where he (very cogently) questioned the new orthodoxy on transgenderism. Rather than engaging Dawkins’s entirely reasonable tweet on its own terms, the American Humanist Association saw it as grounds for retroactive cancellation. Nothing says “advocacy for freethinkers” like canceling someone for a thought that goes against the grain.
In a strange twist, Christianity—long accused of being narrow-minded, anti-intellectual, and afraid of difficult questions—has the potential to fill a growing void in Western culture. In a world where we increasingly walk on eggshells—unsure when, if, and how we’re allowed to speak publicly on contested issues—Christianity can become a grace-filled haven for curious questioners, doubting dissidents, and anyone seeking truth in a world where partisan narratives take precedence.
In short, Christianity has an opportunity to again become the most fertile intellectual ground—as it was for most of the last 2,000 years (until fairly recently). Why? Because a truly fruitful intellectual culture must be built on unshakeable, transcendent foundations—which Christianity has in God’s Word. Without this, all discourse about “truth” is arbitrary and devolves into power struggles. All claims become mere ammo for inflicting injury on one identity or another, rather than bricks for building in a shared intellectual project.
Scriptural Foundation Should Inspire Intellectual Curiosity
The secular approach to discourse results only in deconstruction—as we’re seeing. With no ability to gain consensus on truth, secularism can only cancel, condemn, ban, silence. It’s fundamentally destructive. But the Christian approach can be constructive because there’s a solid foundation on which to build. This is why, in my “Wisdom Pyramid” rubric, Scripture is the foundation. God’s infallible Word functions both as a horizontal, “solid ground” foundation and as vertical scaffolding, keeping the structures above it rightly ordered. We can build knowledge using all sorts of materials—books, the arts, nature/science, reason, community, lived experience—but none of it will be structurally sound, in the end, unless it is built on an unshakable foundation.
God’s objective, transcendent, true-for-everyone Truth is not a constricting, check-your-brain-at-the-door truth. It’s a liberating, world-expanding, galvanizing, purposeful truth that gives a common vocabulary and telos for intellectual pursuits. As Jesus says, it’s the truth that “will set you free” (John 8:32). This liberating truth is what inspired the founding and flourishing of Oxford, Harvard, and most of the great universities. It’s the truth that undergirded the world-changing discoveries and revolutionary ideas of Johannes Kepler, Nicholas Copernicus, Blaise Pascal, Isaac Newton, and many others. It’s the truth that, for countless artists, writers, and philosophers, provided life-giving illumination and impetus to explore.
As C. S. Lewis famously said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it, I see everything else.”
God’s Word is the settled truth that unsettles our intellectual complacency and compels us to plumb the world’s mysterious depths. It’s a framework through which we can read and study widely and know how to evaluate the relative merits of an idea. It gives us bearings to navigate a fallen world glutted with ideas—some true, some false—in a way that doesn’t turn into a nomadic, frustrating wander.
Challenges for the Church
In recent history, though, many Christians have failed to see Scripture as the catalyst it should be for profound intellectual energy and curiosity—and that’s a scandal.
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