Freedom Within Form
We should not allow ourselves to hurry past this point, because it is of tremendous importance in relation to the problems we outlined in the first three chapters of this book. Knowing what is right and wrong, we have a way to have order and freedom simultaneously. It is relatively easy to attain order in society and not have any freedom. There are plenty of examples of that today. Likewise, it is easy to practice freedom without any order. There are examples of that, too, in the Western societies most of us live in. But how do we get both together? That is the problem.
The Bible gives a world-view that provides order and yet at the same time freedom. God's rules are like a perimeter fence. We must stay within that fence if we are to avoid getting messed up. But inside the fence we have an almost endless variety of possibilities for freedom. These touch every area of human life.
A good example is the pursuit of science. The Christian world-view gives us a base for science, yet (since we are made in the image of God) a freedom to pursue science. The birth of modern science is generally conceded to be heavily indebted to the Christian world-view. The Bible tells us that the universe is ordered, because God made it to cohere in all sorts of amazing ways. At the same time it tells us that we are persons. We are able to know what is around us; the subject can know the object.
It may seem rather obvious to say we can know what is around us, for everyone lives like this, day in and day out. We drive the car, use the stove, and so forth. Even though we cannot completely know any single detail of what is around us, we can still have accurate knowledge. This is what makes science possible, too. But, for the materialistic philosophers, this is still a problem.
Why is it that the noises we make from our mouths, for example, "cat," "dog," "glass," "hand," have a correspondence with objects in the outside world? That is the problem with which modern philosophers are still struggling. But within the Christian view the answer is simple and obvious: the world was made that way in the first place. Without the Bible's answer of a personal God who had made the universe - and at the same time persons within it to have relationship with what has been made - people can still know the objects, but they do not know why they can know them.