Why We Need a Biblical Worldview | Part 3

We’ve begun a short series on the importance of cultivating a Biblical worldview among our churches and why this is essential in making disciples. If you haven’t already, I will encourage you to go back and read parts one and two. Today, we want to look at some of the preeminent worldviews in our world and then consider how our worldview must be rooted and grounded in God’s Word.

Last time we defined worldview as a person’s view of the world, the lens that shapes how we live everyday life and helps us determine the story in which we live. Many scholars have identified seven basic worldviews prevalent in the world today:

James Sire has been a proponent of a Christian worldview for many years. In his book, The Universe Next Door, he identifies several worldviews competing for preeminence in our lives:

• Christian theism
• Deism:(which is what remains of theism when the concept of a personal God is abandoned)
• Naturalism (which abandons God completely but retains its trust in human autonomy)
• Nihilism (which is what results from naturalism once the trust in human reason is eroded)
• Existentialism (which tries to move beyond nihilism by affirming its trust in the power of the individual to will into existence its conception of the good, the true, and the beautiful)
• Eastern pantheistic monism (in which New Age thought is combined with the existentialist’s sense of the self)
• Postmodernism(which denies that we can know reality as it is but asserts that we can get along, primarily through our use of language)

Sire further goes on in another one of his books,Naming the Elephant, to describe a worldview:

“A worldview is a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true, or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic constitution of reality, and that provides the foundations on which we live and move and have our being.”

–James Sire, Naming the Elephant, p.22

I think Sire hits the nail on the head here with a few points. First, he describes a worldview as a commitment of a person’s heart which, at its core, is either oriented toward the true God or an idol or idols. Second, Sire recognizes that a worldview is often expressed as a grand story in which we live and understand the reality around us. Everyone has a worldview, and this is given in expression in their lives, but not everyone can articulate what their worldview is.

Although Sire’s list may not be exhaustive (and no doubt many people’s worldviews are syncretistic combinations of the above), the basic fact is that everyone is living in a grand story of one sort or another. God intended us to find meaning in our lives through being part of a larger story that gives purpose and direction to our lives and explains our world. Therefore, the person who rejects the Christian story will not simply live without a grand story but instead find an alternative grand story and live by it. Even the postmodern view, which says there is no grand story, is itself a grand story!

The grand stories are shared among us because we are communal people. Each one of us has been raised in the context of some grand story that has shaped our culture, even if we are unaware of this shaping. As Christians, we affirm that we are part of “one holy, catholic, and apostolic church,” part of the people of God down through the ages and on into the future. With all believers, we share the basic story of the Bible, and we live as part of a missional community committed to the truth of that story. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says:

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

God has put eternity—a sense of beginning and end and a sense of being part of a larger story—in our hearts, in the very core of our being, so that we require some larger story within which to live and to make sense of the smaller stories of our lives and cultures. God intended us to find meaning in our lives through being part of a larger story that gives purpose and direction to our lives and explains our world. That larger story is rooted and grounded in God’s Word, the Bible. The point of a Christian worldview is that the biblical story embodies and implies a framework of essential beliefs that equip Christians in their everyday lives.

Next time we’ll start by answering the question, “Where do we start in teaching a biblical worldview?” In the meantime, ask yourself these questions:

• Which worldview(s) listed above do I believe and live out?
• How much does Scripture shape my beliefs, thoughts, and actions?
• Where do I need to grow in my biblical worldview?

I’m joining you, FBC, on this discipleship journey! May God continue to shape us with His Word!

–Wade