WORLDVIEW EVANGELISM: THE SEVEN ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS OF LIFE Dr. David G. Cashin 1 Table of Contents: Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Pages 3-4 Chapter 1: Worldview Evangelism………………………………………………………………………………. Pages 5-8 Chapter 2: Myths of Origin, Power and Destiny………………………………………………………….. Pages 9-13 Chapter 3: How do I Know What is True?....................................................................... Pages 14-17 Chapter 4: How do I Know Right from Wrong?.............................................................. Pages 18-20 Chapter 5: What Is the Nature of Humankind’s Problem?............................................. Pages 21-22 Chapter 6: What is the Solution to Humankind’s Problem?........................................... Pages 23-24 Chapter 7: How do Different Worldviews answer the questions of origin, power and destiny?............................................................................................ Pages 25-35 Chapter 8: Worldviews and Truth……………………………………………………………………………... Pages 36-41 Chapter 9: Worldviews and Ethics………………………………………………………………………………. Pages 42-45 Chapter 10: Worldviews and the Nature of Humankind’s Problem…………………………….. Pages 46-48 Chapter 11: The Solution to Humankind’s Problem………………………………………………….. Pages 49-52 2 INTRODUCTION: MY STORY In March of 1971 I prayed to receive Christ as my Savior and Lord at a Campus Crusade for Christ conference in New Hampshire. I was 16 years old and a mess. I had spent most of the previous 3 years using drugs every chance I could get. Partly as a result I was failing at just about everything, school, sports, social life. I had been a convinced atheist from about age 12. I was picked on continually due to my scrawny stature and awkward manners and, to tell the truth, a good bit of it I deserved. There were times I picked on others when I got the chance. I stole, I lied, I cheated. I was not the sort of friend you would want to have. After my parents caught me with drugs again in the Fall of 1970, they made me go with my sister to Campus Crusade for Christ meetings at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. I remember being trained to share the evangelistic tool, The Four Spiritual Laws, with other believing students for practice. Being an atheist it was a source of some considerable humor to me. I came home stoned from school one day in March, 1971, and my sister managed to convince me to go with her to a Crusade conference in New Hampshire. It was the last thing on earth I wanted to do but being stoned it was hard to say no effectively and I ended up in a car with my sister, the leader of Campus Crusade at UMass and his wife. I brought my hash pipe for some fun. They prayed before starting the car and I distinctly remember putting in at the end of their prayer a very sarcastic, “Yes God and make David a Christian!” Nasty kid, I wonder now at their patience. That night I roomed with a slender red-haired Crusade neophyte named Rich and I lit into him. He did not get much sleep that night. I told him all the reasons why I thought Christians were idiots and why God does not exist, and how only losers who need crutches follow God and all the other usual secularist fanfare. To my great surprise Rich did not respond defensively. In fact, he seemed to listen intently to everything I said. He didn’t seem to care about winning an argument with me. He was astonishingly non-judgmental of my views. Not that he was a pushover but when we finally fell asleep about 3 in the morning something heavy had been lifted off my back. Someone had really listened to me and had something to say in return that was clearly motivated by love. 3 The next morning I awoke with the strangest desire to become a Christian. I went down to the lake and threw the hash pipe and contents in. Then I went running around the conference center to look for Rich. I found another Crusade leader who was astonished to be confronted by someone eagerly desiring to pray to receive Christ. It was perhaps the happiest day of my life to that point. I wish I could say it was all peaches and cream from that point on, but it wasn’t. In many ways I was still a pretty nasty kid and my struggle with drugs was not over yet. It was more than a year until I made a final definitive break with that past, with some pretty humiliating defeats in between. But I have always credited Rich with starting me down this new and wonderful pathway. Ten years lat