There are are more religious views out there than you can shake a stick at. There are over six-thousand of them. It is impossible for any normal person to learn them all in a life time.
Like the skunk said to the wise old fox: “I tried to view the world in black and white and it still stinks.”
A Worldview refers to an understanding of the world from a specific standpoint
A Christian Worldview is an understanding of the world from a Christian standpoint.
Your Individual’s Worldview is your big picture, your understanding of reality
Your individual worldview is the basis for making daily decisions and is therefore extremely important.
An apple sitting on a table is seen by several people. A botanist looking at the apple classifies it. An artist sees a still-life and draws it. A grocer sees an asset and inventories it. A child sees lunch and eats it. How we look at any situation is influenced by our Worldview. Every Christian and non-Christian has one whether they realize it or not.
In spite of the multitude of religions and philosophies swirling around you, you do not have to feel as confused as someone wearing someone else’s glasses. All philosophies and religions can be broken down into Four Worldviews.
1. Naturalism: The material universe is all that exists. Everything can be explained on the basis of natural law. Atheists, Agnostics and Existentialists fall into this camp.
2. Pantheism: Only the spiritual dimension exists. All else is illusion, everything is a part of God. Hindus, Buddhists and New Age fall into this camp.
3. Theism: An infinite, personal God exists. Reality is both material and spiritual. The universe as we know it had a beginning and will have an ending. Christianity, Islam & Judaism fall into this camp.
4. Postmodernism: Truth is relative to one’s culture. The idea that people are autonomous and free is a myth. Socialists and communists fall into this camp.
Before I ever read a book or watch a movie or read a newspaper article or read a blog, or listen to a proifessor, the first question I ask myself is; which one of these five camps does this person fall into. Like a pair of prescription glasses this alone will define more clearly everything they are about to say. Like the sun tints the sky and colors the flowers so their worldview will tint and color everything they say. As senseless as it may seem to you it will make sense to them
So therefore watch whom you chose as an Expert to follow.
It’s not ” just the facts mam” that count; it’s how you interpret the facts. You see everything through your Worldview, your ultimate belief system.
As Christians we look at everything through the prism of God, the Bible & Jesus Christ. If it jives with these it jives with everything else in our life. If it does not, reject it like you would last week’s garbage. All four world views can’t be right because they are all totally different. Somebody’s dead wrong! Somebody wins the super bowl and somebody loses it. Everybody isn’t right. As Christians we are always facing ideological battles as well as physical (persecution) battles.
Deception Is the Soul of Football and War
Most of us have heard of the Fall of Troy. It tells the story of the military deception that was used by the Greeks to destroy the Trojans (at least according to Virgil’s legendary epic). The Greeks had besieged Troy for years but victory seemed out of sight. So they plotted a new strategy, one of deceit. The Greek army secretly constructed a colossal wooden statute shaped as a horse. Inside of it was a hollow space, inside the hollow space were Greek soldiers with a totally different point of view than the Trojans. Like a general feinting retreat the Greek army sailed out of sight. But it was all deception, poison in a golden cup.
A deceiver, a Greek soldier named Sinon was left behind to persuade the Trojans that the statute was a offering to the Trojan goddess Athena and if the Trojans burned it they would incur her wrath and be destroyed. They bought the lie and wheeled the huge statute of victory through their impregnable city gates. The deception was an accident waiting to happen.
Late at night the hidden soldiers emerged from the belly of the beast; signaled to the army hiding on the distant horizon, they opened the impenetrable gates to them from the inside; and soon all was lost. Like ducks seeing decoys in the water the Trojans quickly learned the lesson that perception is not reality. All was lost due to listening to a so-called flattering, lying, deceiving, Expert.
As a virus secretly invades your computer, corrupting and deleting your files and life’s work, so can a person with the wrong worldview destroy everything sacred thing you believe and live for, Watch your authors of books and newspapers, and magazines and movies and talk-radio and cable tv and blogs and professors. Check out their Worldview and proceed with utmost caution. The devil’s in the details.
Why Do We Ask Why?
Our capacity to ask “Why” is one thing that makes us distinct as human beings. Even as children, as we became more and more aware of our own existence, we became preoccupied with the questions of Who and Why? Who am I? Why am I Here? Where am I going? What is death? Who governs our society and why?
As Christians we believe the answer to these questions determines our eternal destiny. Therefore listening to the wrong expert the wrong voice as Eve did in the Garden of Eden can be as destructive as the Sirens who lured sailors to their death with their bewitching songs. You can’t go through life tied to a last or with wax in your ears; you have to learn to listen to the right people and you do that by finding out their worldview. That does not mean, never to read them and become aware of their primary beliefs but be aware of them as you would the unlocked door of a caged lion.
The problem is that too many people, especially young people are unaware of their basic beliefs. That is why progressive teachers and professors with their non-Christian and too often anti-Christian beliefs are so dangerous. They take advantage of their mushy brains and force feed their world view into them. All views are accepted by the open-minded tolerant professors except those which are intolerable to him such as the Christian Worldview.
Think Like A Christian!
Consider the advice of the Apostle Paul in Colossians 2:8
“See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.”
For most people, world views are formed subtly, over time, and often without much conscious reflection. They tend to uncritically absorb the zeitgeist of their culture. Painful disappointments such as divorce and death and desertions, and sickness and old age force them to formulate their ultimate beliefs. We should pray for such hurting people that they will turn to Christ and cast their every care upon Him. The Bible warns that “there is a way that seems right unto a man but it is the way of death.”
As Christians we are warned not to buy into the spirit of the age. Fortunately, many Liberal-Progressive media outlets are losing listeners by the thousands while more and more people are listening to conservative experts ( myself included;) but be careful that while you remain informed you do not develop a paranoid, pessimistic, hysteria of what’s happening around you. Many well-intended conservative talk shows can do that. Remember, there will always be things that we have no control over, that you cannot change; and while we do not want to have a ostrich mentality, we must always rest in the fact that God is ultimately in control and that through Him the ‘best is yet to be.”
Know the ‘signs of the time’ in which you live; but learn to interpret them through the prism of the Scriptures.
Look again at what Paul said in Colossians
“So if you’re serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don’t shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that’s where the action is. See things from his perspective” (Colossians 3: 1-3 – The Message Bible).
God is Only a Prayer Away:
Have a Blessed Day:
Pastor Bob