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? Are binary gender distinctions a religio-social construct? Or any number of questions that come up in everyday life….
Why is our worldview important? Our worldview will determine the trajectory for our lives. How we think about God, how we think about ourselves, and others, and how we think about the universe around us is critically important for how we live our lives in the world. Just look around and you’ll see the maelstrom of colliding worldviews.
Where do we get our worldview? I want 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 a ‘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 are nothing more than connecting synapse to synapse in everyday experience and translating it into a coping mechanism for dealing with the verities of 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 you, and how you understand the world and your place in it? You have a worldview, you have an interpretive grid for understanding life, but where did it come from? And, I would dare say that your interpretive grid is different than most anyone else’s. Perhaps you are entirely secular in your worldview. In other words, you let culture, friends, social media, or whatever else serve as the interpretive grid for how you think about things. Or 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. You know, whatever floats your boat. Perhaps you’re a pragmatist. You’re going to do whatever it takes to get by.
Here’s the question…regardless of your worldview…where did it come from? And the second part of the question is this…who’s to say your worldview is the best and most helpful interpretive grid?
Are there assurances in life? Is there a worldview that helps me interpret the world that I live in? Are there any real answers? In a world that has seemingly gone mad, worldview matters. It matters for you, and for me, and it matters for this crazy world that we live in.
If you’re interested in talking about worldview, specifically how the Christian worldview interprets at the world around us, I’d love to connect.
- DJM
11/2025
