Understanding Christianity as a total life system is absolutely essential, for two reasons. First, it enables us to make sense of the world we live in and thus order our lives more rationally. Second, it enables us to understand forces hostile to our faith, equipping us to evangelize and to defend Christian truth as God’s instruments for transforming culture. Because the world was created by an intelligent being rather than by chance, it has an intelligible order. As Abraham Kuyper wrote, “All created