The Tale of Two Worldviews

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” begins Charles Dickens’ 1859 novel, A Tale of Two Cities. It is a tale of rebellion, sacrifice, and redemption. The story is mostly set in France during the French Revolution, which began in 1789 and was fundamentally a battle of worldviews. On the one hand were the revolutionaries who were part of the “Cult of Reason,” which was focused on “Reason, Liberty, and” of course, a bloody “Revolution” to overthrow the old order.

They were working to replace Christianity, with God as its source, from Whom we derive morality, ethics, and the value of man created in the image of God. To the leadership of the Eighteenth Century “Cult of Reason” (really a cult of death and destruction), God and the Roman Catholic Church in France were synonymous, and the goal of the revolutionaries was truly to replace a biblical worldview with a new state-sponsored atheistic worldview, an extremely bloody “No Kings Movement,” one with godless man at the center as the final arbiter of truth:

To understand the Cult of Reason, it’s crucial to grasp the prevailing intellectual climate of the 18th century – the Enlightenment. Enlightenment thinkers championed reason, logic, and empirical observation as the primary sources of knowledge and authority. They advocated for individual liberty, secularism, and a rejection of superstition and religious dogma. Key figures like Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot profoundly influenced revolutionary thinkers in France.¹Cult of Reason: Exploring Revolutionary Secularism and Atheism; 2025 October 31

Famously, King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette and other members of the celebrity upper class were publicly executed by guillotine during the “Reign of Terror,” though the vast majority of the 15 – 17,000 people who met this end were just common everyday folk whose presence was reminder of all that was being rejected:

As historian Donald Greer wrote:

[…] more carters than princes were executed, more day labourers than dukes and marquises, three or four times as many servants than parliamentarians. The Terror swept French society from base to comb; its victims form a complete cross section of the social order of the Ancien régime.²“The French Revolution executed royals and nobles, yes – but most people killed were commoners,” The Conversation, Published: July 12, 2023 4:04pm EDT

The members of the French “Cult of Reason” didn’t limit themselves to this cruel public method of carrying out their intended transformation of a new state-sponsored atheistic worldview. They had other tools at their disposal:

Historians estimate around 20,000 men and women were summarily killed – either shot, stabbed or drowned – during the Terror across France.

They also estimate that in just under five days, 1,500 people died at the hands of Parisian mobs during the 1792 September massacres.³“The French Revolution executed royals and nobles, yes – but most people killed were commoners,” The Conversation, Published: July 12, 2023 4:04 pm EDT

This is certainly not the first time those created in the image of God have taken steps to replace Him with something that would reflect themselves and their own desires. The first human rebel was Eve, who was tempted by the subtle offer, “you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5), as Adam stood by and then took a bite of that apple himself. There are other examples in history, such as the Tower of Babel. People didn’t like the idea of God being in control and built a Temple of Man to displace Him:

Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth. (Genesis 11:4)

Western culture, including the United States, seems to find itself on that dangerous precipice again. One faction is working to replace Judeo-Christian morality and ethics that have guided Western culture for over seventeen centuries with something more to their liking. Speaking at a women’s conference in 2015, Hillary Clinton asserted that “…deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs, and structural biases have to be changed…”

None of the rebellion we are witnessing today is really about “politics;” it is a raging battle over who controls Western Culture’s moral compass. Tragically, even much of what makes up “the church” today is involved in setting aside “the Christianity and its morals of old” to bring the church up to date, making it “socially acceptable.”

None of this should really be a surprise. In the First Century, the Apostle Paul penned an interesting prediction that sounds remarkably like what we are seeing in our time:

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty.  For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith. But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men. (2 Timothy 3:1-9)

There is an important bright spot in this passage – “they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all.” God is not and never has been at the mercy of humans or any of His creation. Sometimes, as He did with the Tower of Babel, He let them implement their plan, and just as they felt like they were on the verge of success, He stepped in:

And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. (Genesis 11:5)

Their plan to displace God was indeed shown to be folly to all:

Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. (Genesis 11:7-8)

It was a rather unique repudiation of their folly. Our day has been on track to replicate the folly of the French Revolution. Our prayer is for a dynamic Christian revival. Is God currently making a move in His church? We don’t know, but we are currently seeing some positive signs in the growing number and frequency of Gen Z young people attending church. The question is, will churches see this as a great opportunity to disciple them into the faith of our fathers? We hope and pray they will.Ω

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