Questions You Need Answers To – Part 1
Presenter: Rev. James Destine | Series: Questions You Need Answers To | When I survey the current cultural landscape of the United States, there is a clear sense that things are headed in a destructive direction.
While the symptoms of decline can be easily identified by most, few are competent to diagnose and address the root causes.
I believe the church is best situated to bring a remedy to this problem.
However, the church is taking reactive measures instead of preventive measures.
The only way the church of God can engage and help this culture make a successful U-turn from its destructive direction we need this one invaluable tool – a firm concept of a worldview.
A worldview is like a cerebellum: the part of the brain at the back of the skull in vertebrates.
Its function is to coordinate and regulate muscular activity.
Everyone has one; no one can live without one, but not everyone knows that they have one.
Like a cerebellum everyone has a worldview, no one can live without a worldview, but not everyone knows they have a worldview.
What is so important about a worldview?
Our worldview plays a central and defining role in our lives:
It is as indispensable for decision making as air is for breathing.
Just as you can’t breathe without air, you can’t live without a worldview.
Everyone has a worldview whether:
Educated or uneducated
Liberal or conservative
Rich or poor
Believer or Non-believer
Whomever you may be, you act and live in certain ways because you are guided by a particular worldview.
So the question is not do you have a worldview, but rather what is your worldview?
What exactly is a worldview?
A worldview is your outlook or perception of the world and how it should work.
It is a comprehensive framework of ideas & attitudes about everything that exists and matters to us in this world.
Worldviews also largely determine people’s opinions on matters of ethics and politics.
What you think about abortion, euthanasia, same-sex relationships, public education, economic policy, foreign aid, the use of military force, environmentalism, animal rights, genetic enhancement, and almost any other major issue of the day depends on your underlying worldview more than anything else.
As you can see, your worldview plays a central and defining role in your life.
To put it simply, a worldview is the total of your beliefs about the world:
the big picture that directs your daily decisions and activities.
A set of assumptions that you have made through which you look at every choice and every decision that ultimately shape your value and spiritual comment in your day to day living.
Our worldview shapes:
What we believe or are willing to believe
How we interpret our experiences and how we behave in response to those experiences
Why is it important for Christians, in this current culture, to be fully aware of our worldview?
The Importance of Worldview-Awareness
A person’s worldview is the foundation and framework of his or her thoughts and actions.
In order words, what a person chooses to think or do is foundational to their worldview.
When a house is being built the two most essential components are:
its foundation
its frame.
It is these two components that give the house its stability, shape and structure.
A similar principle applies to a human being:
a human needs both foundational assumptions and a framework of guiding principles to provide stability, shape and structure for his or her decisions and actions in life.
For example: if you are a theist or an atheist
What is your foundational assumption: There is a God or God does not exist.
The bible becomes your framework,or natural science becomes your framework.
For example, you cannot reason intelligibly about your experiences without some basic presuppositions about what your experiences are, where they come from, and what principles of reason you can apply to them, even if you take those presuppositions for granted and don’t consciously reflect upon them.
Our worldview is the single greatest influence on the way we interpret our experiences and respond to those experiences.
How is it that two people who live in the same neighborhood, with very similar experiences, can come to such radically different conclusions about the world and how we should live in it?
The primary reason is that those people have different worldviews.