Clashing Worldviews Series

The way we view the world truly does matter. Our view of the world around us affects the way we react to the events happening around us, effects the way we view the news, the way we treat one another, the way we treat the disadvantaged (poor, handicap, disabled), and the way we view ourselves. It affect our morals and our convictions and the way we live out those morals and convictions. Our world view very much deals with our concept of who and what God is and how we relate to Him. Determining our worldview we answer some basic questions like I mentioned last week, questions like:

Where did we come from and why are we here?

What is Truth? Is it relative or is there absolute truth?

What happens when you die?

Who determines right from wrong?

And one important question: Who or what is God?

These question and more determine who we are and how we look at the world. It also determines how we view God. Looking at some different worldviews we see around us today we can see who and what God is to them. For example, consider the following worldviews:

Humanism: man = god

Marxism: government = god

Naturalism: the cosmos = god

Postmodernism/Nihilism: “whatever”=God; whatever you want God to be to you, anything or nothing at all.

New Age/Pantheism: Everything=God

For those with a true biblical worldview, who believe in a Creator God, to whom all are answerable, who sets the moral standards, and will judge the world., will find themselves in conflict with all other worldviews. Those with conflicting worldview do not want to hear the truth. Many are tolerant of many things except the Christian, those who hold to a true biblical worldview, those who profess there is absolute Truth in the universe and profess that His name is Jesus.

No wonder the world is in a such a mess. These other worldviews opposes the Truth, and they quite frankly, opposes Jesus. How does the Scripture portray these opposing worldviews is our subject today.

2 Timothy 3:1–5

The following are excerpts from Rod Parsley, Culturally Incorrect: How Clashing Worldviews Affect Your Future. [1]

On Tuesday morning, April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold strolled into their Colorado high school wearing trench coats and lugging duffel bags stuffed with sawed-off shotguns, rifles, semi-automatic pistols, and pipe bombs. What they did over the next fifty-five minutes is widely known.

What is less well known is that the first victim of that tragedy, Rachel Scott, was a genuine Christian who was neither ashamed nor afraid to affirm her faith. They walked right over there where Rachel was sitting … She was eating her lunch, talking with one of her friends. They walked up to her and they asked her, ‘Do you believe in God?’” With a slight grin, she responded, "Well, yes, why?” “And one of them pulled a Hi-Point 995 carbine from underneath his trench coat . . . and Rachel became their first victim.”

The tragedy at Columbine High School stands among the deadliest high school shooting spree in U.S. history at that time. (There have many other school shootings since then, include three schoot shooting that were that were worse.[2]) What is not as widely recognized is the specific bundle of ideas, beliefs, and assumptions that made such a murder spree thinkable—much less doable. That bundle could be called Harris and Klebold’s shared “worldview.” It was the distorted lens through which they viewed themselves, their world, and the other people in it.

Let’s consider the “beliefs about life and the universe” these two young men picked up during their brief lives. Put another way, let’s ask, “How do you construct the worldview of someone who could do such things?”

First, you must relentlessly teach him that everything in the physical universe (including himself) is the product of random chance. All order . . . all beauty . . . all life is purely accidental. There is no designer who can give his life meaning or who might hold him accountable for his actions. Make sure he understands that because all life, including human life, is accidental, there is no ultimate authority who sets standards of “right” and “wrong.”

In fact, consistently reinforce that there is no such thing as absolute right and wrong—that old, repressive concepts such as morality and sin are outdated and have been scientifically “proven” to be artificial creations designed to keep people in line. Therefore, you must keep him out of Bible-teaching churches at all costs.

Declare that “truth” is whatever is “true” for you. Another person’s truth might be different from your own.

Be sure to emphasize that humans are just another species of animal —uniquely evolved animals, to be sure—but animals just the same. Declare that human life is not intrinsically more precious than that of a tree frog in the Amazon. Frequently use the language of “rights” in regard to animals. Encourage deep concern for the way chickens are housed on egg farms, but condemn those who have qualms about partial birth abortions.Even better, frequently characterizing humans as a kind of viral blight on the planet—a scourge bringing nothing but environmental catastrophe and “habitat destruction” wherever they spread.