What does everyone need, though everyone has, and yet each of us would likely have a difficult time articulating it, or describing it?
We all have one, I guarantee it, and whether we want to admit it or not. We all have one, though we may not know where it came from, and, quite frankly, some of us may even be a bit embarrassed by it. What am I talking about? I’m talking about worldview.
What I mean by worldview is that internal thought process, aided by external influences, pressures, and evidences, whereby we make sense out of the world in which we live. There’s a three-dollar philosophical word used to describe this genre of philosophical understanding. That three-dollar philosophical word is the word ‘cosmology.’ Worldview and cosmology describe how we understand the created dimensions around us. What is the nature of the material universe? Where did it come from? Is it material alone? Is there a spiritual aspect to it? Is the material universe self-creating, self-existing, and entirely explainable by the scientific or empirical method? Or, in or more rudimentary terms…worldview and cosmology ask and attempt to answer questions such as who am I? Why am I here? Where did all of this come from? Is there any purpose to life? Are humans only material beings? Is the created world only an illusion? Is there life after death? Or any number of questions that come up in everyday life.
So, here’s the question, and one for all of us to ask…what is my worldview? What is the interpretive grid that I use to answer foundational philosophical questions about life? Am I able to explain my worldview? Does my worldview make sense, at least from some reasonable perspective? Does it satisfy intellectual inquiry? Maybe for you, you just shrug your shoulders in resignation saying, ‘I just don’t know.’ or maybe your response is, ‘This is what I grew up believing, and so, this is what I believe.’ Have you ever thought about these things? I’ll bet you have. There is an example from the Bible that shows why worldview is important. There are more, but I thought this one particularly poignant. This example is taken from the Book of Proverbs chapter 23, and the first part of verse 7. Here it reads:
For as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. (Proverbs 23:7a)
It makes sense, right? If our minds are set in a certain direction, we’ll head in that direction. Have you ever heard of the term target fixation? In driver’s education one of the things they tell you to never do is to look intently at things on the side of the road because you’ll get fixated upon them. Next thing you know, you run over a mailbox! When we spend time fixating upon something it determines our behavior. This passage is making the point that the heart is the determining factor for our conduct. In other words, what you think, will set the trajectory for your life. To put this another way, our worldview, or how we think about God, how we think about ourselves, and how we think about the universe around us, will set us on a path. It’s inevitable. This is no ‘power of positive thinking’ mumbo jumbo. In fact, the Apostle Paul makes the point that part of God’s redeeming work in the life of the Christian is the assurance, and inevitability, of a redeemed mind, one that is able to think God’s thoughts after Him. Listen to Paul’s language in Romans 12, verse 2,
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (vs. 2)
For the Apostle Paul, in the new life that is imparted to every Christian, there is an exchange of worldview. What once looked like conformity to the fallen world, now becomes a transforming mind-renewal that sees the world from a completely new God-ward orientation. It is so significant that Paul uses the words ‘transformation’ and ‘renewal.’ Christian author and counselor David Powlison says it like this,
“To think Christianly is to ‘think God’s thoughts after Him.’ …God sees all things in bright, clear light – and this God is the straightener of crooked thoughts. He makes madmen sane.” (Powlison, David, Seeing with New Eyes, p. 10)
This change is so significant that the Christian mind has an entirely new orientation. Christ makes madmen (of which I include myself in that category) sane.
My goal in all of this is to get you to think about how you think. Maybe you’ve never done this before, but you hold certain things…certain ideas, about most everything. Where did those ideas come from? Was the philosopher Aristotle correct in that the mind is but an ‘unscribed tablet’? Or how about the 17th century French philosopher, Rene Descartes, who said all humans are a ‘tabula rasa’ or a blank slate. Are we simply an open receptacle for ideas about life and how we interpret them is nothing more than connecting synapse to synapse in everyday experience and translating it into a coping mechanism for dealing with life? Or, perhaps Freud was correct and we are nothing more than familial impressions and sexual urges formed into a mishmash of behavioral compunctions? Where did you get your ideas about how you understand the world and your place in it? Perhaps your worldview is syncretistic. In other words, your worldview is a little bit religious, a little bit secular, and a little bit of a crap-shoot. The question is, why do you think you think what you think? You may not know, but the Christian faith offers you a new worldview, a new way of thinking and a new trajectory for life.
If you’d like to talk more, send me a note.
- DJM
(photo of Dayville Community Church, Dayville, OR)
