It was one of those awkward moments in a friendship – when you feel like you should speak up, but you’re not sure how your friend will react. I was a teenager – just finishing up high school, thinking about the future. My best friend and I were preparing for a day of teenage mischief, when his dad called him over to talk to him for a minute. I could tell that this was one of those conversations, so I stayed where I was waiting out of earshot, while my buddy went to see what his dad had gotten worked up over – well, at least I thought I was out of earshot.
Suddenly, things started to get a little loud and not just the dad. My bud was up in his dad’s face, yelling at him – arguing some fine point of responsibility. Nose to nose they argued back and forth for a few moments and then just as suddenly as it began, it was over. Both walked away. As my best friend approached I couldn’t help but say, “Man, you shouldn’t be yelling at your dad that way.”
The question for us to answer this morning is – was I wrong? Should I have said anything? At the time, it seemed like a no brainer, but as time has passed I have to admit I’m not so sure because, you see, my best friend and I grew up in two very different environments. As a result, we were taught too very different methods of addressing our parents. His dad was a lawyer who encouraged his children to speak up for themselves, to be passionate defenders of their own actions. My dad was a military man – though retired by this time, he still expected an unquestioning obedience. All conversation between a parent and child was to be done in a respectful manner and only the parent had the right to raise their voice. So what would have been unthinkable in my house was the expectation in his house. And the difference between the two was the product of…. You guessed it… a difference in worldview.
Last week we took a look at some startling statistics about what is happening in our country today and why the church seems to have a harder time than the church of yesteryear passing on the faith to the next generation. One of the things we discovered is that we are failing to impart a Christian or Biblical worldview to our kids. We also talked about some of the ramifications the church in North America is seeing as a result of this failure: moral and ethical ambiguity where once there was clarity; no clear sense of how our faith in Jesus Christ connects to the rest of our lives. In other words, our commitments and convictions concerning the Christian faith no longer form core of our being as a believer – they are a part of the amalgamation of convictions that we cram together in our head that forms what we called a worldview. We also talked briefly about where these other bits are coming from – we imbibe them from the surrounding culture; through our regular and social media, through our literature and music, through our ethnic and community influences.
This morning we’re going to focus in the beam a little bit and talk more specifically about what a worldview is, what makes up a worldview and then start talking about the foundational elements of worldview formation.
Now, I realize all that sounds like a bunch of philosophical, theological mumbo jumbo. I mean, we saw pretty clearly last week why it’s so important to talk about this, but you may be wondering why we just don’t right away start talking about how we go about it. Why do have to talk about all this other stuff first – defining a worldview and talking about what makes up a worldview? Well, let’s take a look at two passages real quick that help us understand why we should be familiar with definitions and the make-up of our worldview.
The first is found in Proverbs 4:23, “Above all else, guard your heart; for it is the wellspring of life.” This proverb comes in the midst of a father teaching his son about life and encouraging him to listen closely to the father’s instruction – “For they are life to those who find them [a]nd health to all their body.” But what does it mean to guard your heart – to eat less fried foods? Or maybe it’s a call to not get too emotionally attached?
In the Hebrew culture of that day “the heart” was considered the core of who you are – much like what we talk about when we say “soul.” It not only represented the emotional core, but very core of who we are – who we are at our deepest level. And the father warns the son to pay attention to his instruction because it will protect and defend who he is at his core.
And that’s really what all of this worldview stuff is about – who you are at the core. Not who you want to be, not who you want others to think you are; not even who you tell yourself you are, but who you are at the core and what shapes that person. Your worldview is made up of your underlying assumptions – in other words, the things you just assume are true for everyone – and often these assumptions are formed without thinking about them or examining them to see how they originated.
That’s what the father is warning his son about in the proverb – to be discerning; to keep this instruction close to his heart so that he will know which way to go, what to do, when to speak and what to say. Put another way, the father is telling the son to be careful about what shapes his core – to know where his assumptions came from and how they impact his thinking, feeling and acting.
This is really an issue in the church, because in the passage we read from Luke 6:43-45, Jesus tells us,
“No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thorn bushes, or grapes from briers. The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.”
What both the father and Jesus are saying is that we will live out our worldview – we will live out our under-lying assumptions. It is unavoidable – what we feel about something, how we react to it, what we think are not just random occurrences. They all have their genesis in our worldview – or put another way; you act on what you believe to be true.
Okay, we have used the term repeatedly over the past two Sundays and have hinted around what it is, so maybe it’s time we had a working definition for worldview. A worldview is a set of beliefs one holds to be true that s/he uses to put things into context and make sense of our world. It is how we define reality and ourselves in the context of reality. Ultimately, our identity is shaped and our lives defined by our worldview.
The importance of understanding this concept of worldview is to emphasize that behavior, choices, and actions will all come from our worldview – when you compare our Luke passage with its companion passage in Matthew 15:17-20, you begin to understand that this is what Jesus is teaching when he says “out of the overflow of the heart….”
“Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man ‘unclean.’ For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man ‘unclean’; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him ‘unclean.’”
So if we’re not sure what we believe to be true, we will have no way of knowing, for example, how we should feel or what we should do in the upcoming presidential election. We may be able to vote for a candidate based on what we feel or conviction over one or two issues, but what is guiding our choice? And is the choice we’re making consistent with our convictions from Scripture? This is just one example why knowing your worldview and understanding where it comes from is so important.
What’s even more important is if we are fuzzy on our worldview – if we don’t know where we drawing it from – we will have no real basis for teaching behavior and choices to our children that reflect what we believe. It is much easier for us to fall in line with the perspective of the world when we have not defined our own beliefs.
You can see how knowing your own worldview is vitally important – it shapes and informs everything we do; every decision we make; every word we say. And, it also defines and shapes how we will raise our kids and order our homes.
So what should the foundation – the starting point of our worldview be? The Gospel, maybe? Well, that sounds good but I think there is a better place to begin because the Gospel presupposes something prior – the story of the Gospel rests within a larger story. In fact, the aim of the Gospel is to point us toward this larger story – to give us access to it; to spur us to love and desire to become part of this greater story. So what is this larger story?
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth….” The Gospel of Jesus Christ is meant to reconnect us to the source of all life and existence. All things seen and unseen have been made by God – every point of life and the cosmos are under his authority and formed by his hand. In other words, he is the source and foundation of what is real. Any worldview that does not begin with God and his creative activity cannot be true and leads to a warped sense of reality.
Now, how can I make such a sweeping statement? Because the first question every worldview has to answer is, “Where did we come from?” In other words, every worldview begins with some form of theology. Now, don’t let that word throw you off. In the Greek, the prefix theo- means God and logos (from which we draw the suffix “-ology”) means word. So theology is a word about God or the study of God. Every worldview begins with a word about God – whether it is to deny or affirm his existence. From the word about God, the rest of one’s worldview proceeds. Like a road trip that begins by making a wrong left turn, a worldview that starts out wrong cannot help but end up wrong.
So what are our choices – what are the categories we have to work with when talking about God? Well, the basic categories are either God exists or he doesn’t. A view of reality that believes God exists is known as “theism”; the view that says that God does not exist is known as atheism. A further distinction can be made within theism between Christian theism – which presumes that God has revealed himself to us through the Incarnation, through the Scriptures and through all that he has made – and theism which presumes there is a god, but he is so transcendent he cannot be known directly, such as in Islam.
Now, why is this important – isn’t it enough to say we believe that there is a God out there? Well, no because the way we think about God – the way we think about where we came from – will determine the way we think about man, which leads us to the second question a worldview must answer; “Why are we here?”
Who knows the story of My Fair Lady, also known as Pygmalion? In the story Professor Henry Higgins bets a friend that he can transform a rough speaking street girl into a well-bred socialite by teaching her proper speech and manners. The story then tracks the girl’s progress and eventual success at rising above her circumstances. What kind of view of man do you think is presented in My Fair Lady? Well, let’s think about it a little.
The idea behind My Fair Lady is that a person is the product of their environment – all we need to improve ourselves is a little education. This view of man is that he wasn’t created at all, but is the product of random organization among proteins that then mutate to meet with environmental factors that threaten the existence of the new multi-cell organism formed. This view is called naturalism or the naturalist view – this is the worldview behind evolution and is the predominant worldview in public education. Such a view implies that life has no intrinsic meaning and need not be defended. The only meaning life has in an evolutionary, naturalistic framework is what we bring to it. There is no answer to the question “Why are we here” except for our own survival.
Since this view cannot produce intrinsic meaning for life it must be manufactured. Therefore, a life is deemed more valuable than another on the basis intellectual, economic or physical attributes. The way to improve one’s status is to get smarter, richer or more beautiful.
In this view, man is born a blank slate – we are morally neutral – and are taught to be either good or evil. Man only does wrong because he either doesn’t know any better or is chemically predisposed toward harmful behaviors. Progress is a matter of education – of right teaching and training. This is the Utopian view that we can evolve to become more noble, more intelligent simply through education. We can evolve beyond our bestial instincts and behavior through learning. A perfect example of this philosophy is the show Star Trek, which often shows the characters enjoying the pleasures of classical music, literary classics, extraordinary multi-disciplinary intelligence and exceptional morality based on the common good. The assumption is if we know what the good is, we will choose it – that by nature we are morally good. And this despite daily evidence to the contrary.
The view espoused by Scripture, however, is that man is a created being – made in the image of God. That he is intrinsically valuable and has dignity because he is made in the image of his Creator. We were made for a purpose – to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Man was made initially good but fell into sin. Sin remains a pervasive influence in his life, twisting his desires and thoughts to pursue that which in the immediate seems for his good, but ultimately is destructive. Through the Fall man comes to regard the Creator as his enemy, is self-centered and a slave to sinful desires, so he takes actions which temporarily satisfy desire but often hurt others along the way. The pathway to being restored to our purpose is not simply education. Though this may serve as an aid, the only way for real improvement is through faith in Jesus Christ and repentance of our sin – without faith, it is impossible to please God. In Christ we are given the Holy Spirit which helps us to resist sin and to do the works that God prepared for us.
Can you see how drastically different the conclusions are, depending on what forms the foundation of your worldview? The question is which view corresponds more accurately to reality – to what we experience and see in everyday life? What you believe about God will determine what you believe about man. Worldview and how it is exhibited in what we think, what we feel and how we behave is really nothing more than our personal theology manifested.
Look the truth of the matter is that although we may ascribe to one particular view, most of us have cherry-picked our way through life, embracing those values that feel right to us, borrowing bits and pieces from other worldviews that actually conflict with what we what we say we believe. This is why it is so important that we “guard our heart” – why we need to be aware and intentional about what forms our worldview. Because it will shape what we do, how we feel, and how we think – and whether we intend it or not, we pass on our worldview to our children.
So what are you passing on?
