Worldly or Heavenly Worldview?

2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.”

“Worldviews are the most fundamental and encompassing views of reality shared by a people in a culture. The worldview incorporates assumptions about the nature of things—about the “givens” of reality.” – Dr. Paul Hiebert.

Your worldview has been tainted in many ways to date. Your parents, your sex (male or female), your country, schools, teachers, friends and experiences in life. As Christians, our task is to test our worldview in light of all these influences and make sure they line up with what God has told us our worldview should be. In one way we choose our worldview by the way we react to interactions within our culture or community, but on the other hand worldview also chooses us because we have been placed in a certain place and time by God for His purpose.

J. Mark Bertrand has come up with 4 principles that Christian thought should utilize to make sure we are within a worldview perspective. I like them and think they are worth considering, and as always we have to take these in comparison with what Scripture tells us about how we should perceive the world.

Mr. Bertrand says one of the first errors as believers we make is forgetting Genesis 1:1, in that we and everything around us has been created by God, and this creation screams at the top of its lungs to remind us. Romans 1:20-25, “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.” Our worldview must entail that we remember who we belong to, and it is not ourselves.

The second area that we must remember is that God is a God of order and that He directs the world around us according to His plan and to His will. Ephesians 1:11-12 says, “In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory.” G.C. Berkouwer puts it this way in his book Providence of God, “There is a danger. . . that men subjectively and arbitrarily interpret history in the light of the extraordinary, that they seek only the special intervention of the finger of God instead of living with confidence in the hand of God which governs all things.” While there are things that we cannot know there are many things we can and in them we continue to see that God is ordering the universe according to His plan, which includes our participation.

All religions believe in rationality, even if they say they don’t, because they argue in a rational manner to say they do not believe in rationality. To even challenge this third worldview thought process you will be contradicting yourself, because you will have to use a rationalization to prove it false. There is no escaping it. We must remember that our rational thought is Christ, as we no longer live, but Christ lives in us (Gal. 2:20). John 8:32, “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” There is truth and we can know it through rational thought.

The last one is one that many have neglected or ignored for a long time now and that is fear. Today this aspect is not talked about much, as the social gospel (a dominant force today) does not want a God we are afraid of, and if we are honest a lot of us at times have trouble with this concept. The priest, prophets and apostles all had a fear of God. This included a reverence that enhances this fear. The more you know about God, this should in some fashions cause you to be more fearful of whom He is in light of who you are.

Maybe one does not fear God because we do not see our sin and that we cannot believe we could be the object of God’s wrath. Guess what? You need to wake up, because we are all fallen sinners and should be fearful of when we sin against God. You may be saved from Hell, but it does not mean you are saved from discipline. We should think again, though we do have Christ it does not negate who we are. Remember the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. (Proverbs 1:7, 2:5, 9:10; 10:27, 14:26-27, 15:16, 33, 16:6, 19:23, 23:17, 22:4; 2 Chron. 19:7-9; Job 28:28; Psalm 19:9, 34:11, 111:10; Isaiah 11:2-3, 33:6; Acts 9:31; 2 Corinthians 5:11).

Take time to reflect on whether or not your worldview lines up with God’s, and if not; what needs to change.