This year has been quite a learning experience for me. I’ve learned much about World History and American Government because those are the two main subjects I teach, but I’ve also learned a lot about the why the church in America is so ineffective in our modern culture. I’ve gained this knowledge by watching my students. I teach in a Christian high school. I was warned ahead of time that kids will be kids whether they are Christians or not, but I wasn’t prepared for the low level of commitment to Christian living that my students display.
Here’s the seeming contradiction that I see time and again: kids who name the name of Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, but whose words and actions are anything but Christian. For example, there have been isolated cases of crime: one student expelled for drug possession and a handful arrested for shoplifting. I have one student who wrote eloquently about a mentoring relationship he has with a strong Christian man at his church and then in class he speaks with utter conviction about dropping nuclear warheads on Iraq and rounding up all Arabs in our country and shooting them. This kid attends a conservative Bible church and he was not kidding. Those students may be the exceptions but I see attitudes common to nearly all. Most are elitists, looking down on people with certain jobs or levels of income. In general the kids are apathetic about school in particular and life in general. They tend to scoff at calls to higher commitment to Christ. Rare are the students who will make a bold stand for the Lord. They prefer to blend in with the herd. What I’m seeing are kids who can profess the right beliefs, but are unwilling to live out a radical commitment to Christ. They attend church and a Christian school and their manners are better than they typical public school student, but that’s about as far as their faith seem to go.
At first I concluded that most of my students were not genuine Christians, but now I no longer think that’s the case. I think that most have truly given their hearts to the Lord, the problem is that their minds are being corrupted by the culture that they’re immersed in. I’ve learned that Jesus can have your heart, but if you don’t intentionally give Him your mind the world and the enemy will influence you to act against the very One who you claim to love.
In his book, Think Like Jesus, author George Barna makes this observation:
…most [Americans] are immersed in daily exercises of covert worldview training via the
mass media, public law, public school education, the Internet, and conversations with peers.
George Barna, Think Like Jesus (Nashville: Integrity Pub. 2003), 42.
In other words, from the time you wake up in the morning until you go to sleep at night, there are forces constantly coming at you, infiltrating your mind and shaping your worldview. What is a worldview? You worldview is made up of all the assumptions in your mind, whether conscious or subconscious, about how the world really works. Another definitions says “a worldview is, first of all, an explanation and interpretation of the world and second, an application of this view to life.” Worldview is what you believe about life and it determines how you behave in this life.
Here’s the scary part: Most of the influences that come at you lead to a worldview in opposition to God and a biblical worldview. You could be a sincere follower of Jesus Christ who truly loves the Lord and wants to serve Him, but because of your worldview you’re actually living contrary to God’s will. What I want to do this morning is make you aware of what’s influencing you and programming your mind. I also want to show you how to shut down influences that oppose God and intentionally begin developing a worldview that pleases the Lord.
There are signs you can look for to see if, in fact, your worldview has been influenced by ungodly forces.
WORLDVIEW WARNING SIGNS
The book of James provides us with some clues that our worldview is corrupted. This New Testament letter was penned by James, the brother of Jesus, who became the leader of the church at Jerusalem. At one point, persecution broke out against the Greek-speaking Jews who had converted to Christianity. They were not native born Jews. When they began coming to faith in Christ en masse, the religious establishment attempted to squash them. The result was that most of them fled Jerusalem and headed into the Gentile or non-Jewish world.
The book of James was written to them so they’d know how to conduct themselves as Christ- followers in a world that was set in opposition to the one true God. These people were a lot like us when we leave our home, church or fellowship groups. We find ourselves immersed in a culture that is anti-Christian to the core. How should we then live in such an environment? James warns us not to let our worldviews become corrupted because the results will be behaviors in opposition to the way of Christ. As I read these next few verses from chapter 4, keep in mind that these were written to genuine believers, not pagans. Also, be aware that some of what he says is hyperbole – exaggerated descriptions that point to a spiritual truth.
What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. James 4:1-3 (NIV)
There are some clear warning signs that something is wrong. One of the issues James points to is relational turmoil. Anger, bitterness, envy, quarreling, backbiting, gossiping, slander … these were all symptoms among Christians that something is wrong. The way that we treat one another is a huge spiritual indicator. Much of the problem can be traced to another warning sign: a “me-first” attitude. If you’re self-obsessed, the bell is ringing loudly that something is wrong. Getting your way above all, looking out for number one – how ever you want to color it – is a sure sign that something godless is up within you. We see also that some of these people were spiritually disconnected. The vital relationship that they once had with God had withered. Their prayers were no longer answered. Many of them had probably given up seeking the Lord. When your faith life loses it joy, when you go passive concerning the things of God, when an encounter with Jesus is a past event and not a daily reality it’s a warning sign.
You could sum it up this way. If your love for God and other people is growing, your worldview is probably just fine. If you find that you’re not loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and your neighbor as yourself, that’s a warning sign that your worldview has probably suffered corruption.
James addresses the actions and attitudes of his people, but he quickly moves to the underlying reasons for their behavior. Here’s …
THE HEART OF THE MATTER
You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” James 4:4-6 (NIV)
This is strong language. How would you feel if I stood up here, looked you in the eye, and called you adulterers? The problem, as James saw it, was that these Christians had let their guard down. They were allowing godless influences to creep into their minds and distort their worldview. These people were truly the saints of God. They’d been redeemed by the Lord because of His grace by their faith in Jesus Christ. They had good hearts, but their minds had been corrupted and their actions followed. They may not even have been aware that they’d made friends with the world and become enemies of God.
That’s the challenge for us too. The agents that are most effective at corrupting a godly worldview are subtle and unnoticed. Most of us are wise enough to avoid AC/DC screeching at us to join them on the “Highway to Hell.” But what do we do with Jewel when she sweetly affirms that “we’re all okay” and that “in the end only kindness matters”? Christian parents will sometimes get all worked up when they find their kids possessing trading cards that are occultic in nature. But they often miss the fact that card collecting promotes a worldview of materialism. The hidden message is that it’s more blessed to receive than to give. Sometimes we’ll hear a collective Christian protest about decadence on TV or the violence and sexuality of video games, but hardly anyone catches the worldview behind massive amounts of TV watching and game playing that says it’s okay to waste our lives in front a flashing, purposeless box. Whatever happened to, “Redeem the time because the days are evil”?
What are the competing worldviews that threaten to infiltrate our minds, covertly affecting our beliefs and actions? Let’s talk about just a few.
In our culture, the single most pervasive worldview is naturalism. It has nothing to do with taking all your clothes off and going for a walk in the woods. Naturalism is the view that the physical or natural world is all there is. It the belief that natural causes can explain everything that exists. It all came into existence through explainable physical processes. God is not needed in the explanation. The idea of evolution arises from naturalism. The theory goes that all living creatures arose from simpler life forms into the diversity and complexity we see today. Humanity is not the unique creation of a loving and holy God, but the product of blind chance. Our origin resulted from physical processes upon an unthinking, warm, primordial ooze and not the purposeful craftsmanship of an infinite Creator.
Here’s the funny thing: if I surveyed this audience, I bet the majority of you would reject naturalism. Most of you would scoff at the very idea of evolution. Naturalism is too “in your face.” But I bet the majority of us accept some of the more subtle worldviews that spring from naturalism.
Have you ever heard of moral relativism? Some people call it postmodernism. It is the absolute belief that there is no absolute truth. All religions are the same. All paths lead to the same God. Your truth may be truth for you, but it’s not truth from me and that’s okay. Let’s hold hands and have a Coke. If there are no absolutes of right and wrong for you, if the Qu’ran is just as valid as the Bible, if Jesus is just one of many ways to heaven, you’re worldview has been corrupted.
Another insidious worldview is pragmatism. The pragmatist says, “Whatever works.” This one is not new. Back in the Renaissance a guy named Machiavelli wrote a book called The Prince. His main idea was that the ends justify the means. As long as the end result is good, it doesn’t matter how ruthless or immoral you have to be to get there. Pragmatism will permit you to lie, cheat, and steal to achieve a positive result in your life. Try not to get caught. Adherence to pragmatism supports a woman’s decision to abort her baby if it’s going to be an inconvenience in her life. Pragmatically, it makes sense to euthanize the mentally handicapped, the aged, the terminally ill, and the physically disabled. After all, they cost more than they contribute. A pragmatist says it’s okay to cheat on your taxes as long as you don’t get caught. A pragmatist has no problem with committing fraud against an insurance company concluding that that company has plenty of money. As long as I don’t get caught, they won’t miss it.
The sneaky little sister of naturalism is materialism. It’s the idea that the only thing there is is “this world only.” The one who dies with the most toys wins. The world is my oyster. The materialist finds happiness in money and the things it can buy. If your decisions in life are based primarily on how to maximize your money the worldview of materialism has slipped into your mind. If you spend time fantasizing about winning the lottery or some kind of sweepstakes it’s a sure sign of materialism. You’ve come to believe that more money is the answer to your problems, not God.
An alien worldview can slip into your mind and skew your actions away from the kind of life God wants you to live. When we allow the other worldviews to influence us, James calls it friendship with the world. Friendship with the world makes us enemies toward God, not in our hearts, but in our actions. We become spiritual adulterers attempting to maintain our allegiance to our heavenly Father while setting up altars to false gods in our lives.
The bad news is that we cannot avoid the influence of the world. The good news is that we fight and overcome false worldviews.
HOW TO GET YOUR MIND RIGHT WITH GOD
Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. James 4:7-10 (NIV)
The place to begin is with the Lord. Submit means to bring yourself voluntarily under His direction. Therefore our first step must be to …
1. Invite God’s inspection.
This could be the toughest step for most of us. Ask God to show you what parts of your life are displeasing to Him and where the influence is coming from. When He reveals it, don’t spend time beating yourself up or feeling guilty. Don’t label yourself, call yourself names or give up. Your heart is good. As a follower of Jesus Christ, you have new life and a new heart. Your inclination really is to obey God and live in a righteous manner. You just got some deprogramming to do. There’s a virus in the hard drive of your mind that must be rooted out.
You shouldn’t feel guilty or condemned but you should …
2. Feel weight of your treachery.
Although you were set up, so to speak, by a false worldview, you are still responsible for your actions. You can’t plead that the devil or the world made you do it. Your behaviors are your choice. Feel the weight of it. Call a spade a spade. If you’re not broken up over your unfaithfulness to God you’re not really repentant. You won’t do what’s necessary to make a change unless there is some remorse involved.
James uses strong language with his people because he wants them to feel the truth. Know the truth logically is good, but adding the emotions to it brings genuine change. He called them adulterers and idolaters so that they’d feel it and be motivated to combat the godless worldview influencing their behavior. You will only purify your heart and wash your hands and go on to complete commitment to Christ when you’ve felt the weight of your treachery against God.
This repentance should lead us naturally to step three:
3. Halt the flow of godless propaganda.
Do a little self-evaluation. What sorts of things do you set before your eyes on a regular basis? What do you typically read and meditate upon? What do you listen to? What kinds of conversations do you have? Who do you respect as authoritative in your life? In other words, assess all of your influencers and halt the flow of their propaganda if you can.
I’m positive that it will mean giving up some things that you really cherish and enjoy. I think this is what James was getting at when he said: “Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up”. He didn’t mean that we should adopt a perpetually sour expression or that life as a Christian is supposed to be misery. He’s pointing to sacrifice for the Lord’s sake. The things that made us laugh or kept us entertained that injected a false worldview we are to give up, to treat as a thing of that brings gloom and sorrow. He will replace whatever we give up with something far better. The joy of knowing that we’re doing His will. The joy of His presence and pleasure.
4. Actively pursue a Christ-centered worldview.
Remember that quote from George Barna earlier. Let me read it in a fuller context:
…most [Americans] are immersed in daily exercises of covert worldview training via the
mass media, public law, public school education, the Internet, and conversations with peers.
Only an intentional process designed to develop, integrate, and apply a biblical life lens can
protect us from the savage mental and spiritual assault that occurs every day.
George Barna, Think Like Jesus (Nashville: Integrity Pub. 2003), 42.
You can’t be passive. You can’t simply stay in defense. You’ve got to get active and aggressive. You must participate in the formation of your own worldview. You’ve got to program your own onboard computer.
I think it goes without saying that you must know the Bible like the back of your hand. You will only have a Christian worldview by consistently reading, studying, meditating on, and, when possible, memorizing the scriptures. You cannot develop a godly worldview without knowing the Bible. You cannot do God’s will without knowing His inspired, written word. Get in it daily. Make getting a handle on the word of God one of your top priorities. Paul called the word of God the sword of the Spirit. It is your weapon of defense and attack.
You must also begin filling your mind with godly images. If all you do is halt the flow of godless propaganda you will create a vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum, so fill it with good stuff. I don’t know what this will mean for you, so I’m going to keep it vague. I am thinking primarily of arts and entertainment. Find the good stuff and fill your mind with it.
… whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. Philippians 4:8
It also imperative that you seek out community with other Christians who sincerely desire to walk with God. You do need to counteract the influence of godlessness in this world with the opposing views of followers of Christ. Find two or three Christians who can talk about more than sports and the weather. Get in a group of fellow believers who you can receive wisdom from and who you can bounce your ideas off of. The Proverbs tell us that whoever walks with the wise becomes wise.
Some people find it helpful to study the lives of men and women from the past who walked with God. Study how they lived and not just what they accomplished. Pattern your life and way of thinking after some of theirs.
Let me encourage you to go see the movie, Amazing Grace. It’s about an outstanding Christian named William Wilberforce. In the 1700’s he stood up against slavery and the slave trade in England. Almost no one else was speaking out about this issue because most Englishmen, including the Christians were captive to worldview that said treating another human being like a beast is just fine … if you can make some money in the process. Wilberforce had Christ in his heart and in his mind and he stood up. He faced opposition, scorn, persecution, and even death threats, but nothing could shut him up or make him back down. Shortly before his death, as a direct result of his efforts, England banned both the slave trade and slavery itself.
Wilberforce wrote the following: "If the affections of the soul are not supremely fixed on God, and if our dominant desire and primary goal is not to possess God’s favor and to promote His glory, then we are traitors in revolt against our lawful Sovereign. . . .Whether we are the slaves of [greed], sensuality, amusement, sloth, or the devotees of ambition, taste, or fashion, we alike estrange ourselves from the dominion of our rightful Sovereign." [Jesus Christ]
Chuck Colsen, Break Point Commentary: “A Tale of Two Servants Amazing Grace and Breach,” March 2, 2007
William Wilberforce changed the world because Jesus had his heart and his mind. His actions followed. Our world is in desperate need of men and women like William Wilberforce, who will stand up and stand out for Christ rather than following the herd. If you will let Christ change your mind, through you He will change the world. You must be intentional about developing your worldview. Remember, that everything has a shaping effect on you spiritually. Be discern about what you allow through the gate of your mind. If you will let Christ change your mind, through you He will change the world. Jesus needs more than just your heart to make a difference. He needs your hands and your voice. To get those, He must have your mind. If you will let Christ change your mind, through you He will change the world.
