So what is a worldview? Essentially this: 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) that we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic constitution of reality, and that provides the foundation on which we live and move and have our being. | James W. Sire, The Universe Next Door
Last week, I had the privilege of teaching high-schoolers about the concept of worldview in relation to the question: why is faith/religion important in a Scientific, Materialistic Age? My point was that facts alone don’t have the ability to navigate this world; they cannot give reason to life or help us to deal with issues like love, grief, or beauty. Our facts need a structure to fit into (I used the image above with the dots as facts and the lines as the faith we need to connect them). All of us, whether we recognize it or not, have constructed a way to make sense of the world, and all of us do this through unprovable presuppositions. Even the starkest evidentialists has faith. You should have seen the looks on the student’ digital faces; either their minds were blown or they just wanted the Zoom meeting to be over.
I am not writing this to convince you that all people have presuppositions, but to think a bit through how our worldview affects the way that we understand information that we interact with. Our worldview must be rigid enough to defer what is false, but pliable enough to accept truth. Otherwise, we will end up standing against truth simply because it doesn’t fit the system that we have already constructed. In other words, what we already know to be true may prevent us from accepting other true things. I saw a great visual presentation about this that helped to show how this works (its called the backfire effect and it the opposite of how you believe your brain works!). It is essential for us to not only think about our presuppositions, but also about how we hold them. It is not enough to have true beliefs; these beliefs also have to be balanced with other truths.
I was reading an article today about the metaphors we use and how they shape our larger perspective. This article was on using the metaphor of war to describe the pandemic, but it got me thinking about all of the metaphors the Bible uses to help shape our understanding of the world we live. There are people who lean on these war metaphors, and they tend to see everything in this world as a battle. There are those who see the healing metaphors and view of the Christian life about reconciliation. Some focus on obedience. Or liberation. Or unity. Or purity. Or responsibility. You can begin to see that the Bible uses a lot of metaphors and ways to describe God’s plan and our purpose in the world. It is a complex and complete description because it covers ALL people in All times. Every person is going to be drawn to one over the other, but this doesn’t make it more important, or more true. Often times, the arguments we see in the church are people wanting their Biblical truth to take precedence over another.
I am not saying that there aren’t metaphors that are more important than others, or that God has set up His self-revelation to be somewhat subjective. I am just suggesting that we need to be humble in how we interact with what we do not agree with. We are not infallible thinkers that have our worldviews balanced right. As the definition at the top of the page states about presuppositions: assumptions which may be true, partially true or entirely false, and every person has some of each. This reality should temper our response, helping us to seek truth with others, not speaking down to them from on high.
This post could go a lot of different directions, but let me just give 3 thoughts for helping us to shape our worldview toward God’s truth (which if you are a Christian is the definition of truth):
1. Let the Bible have ultimate authority. The first step toward being transformed by the renewal of your mind (Romans 12.2) is to read the Bible as our access to absolute truth. As we read it, we should not be weighing it equally with other sources of information, but as a lens with which to make sense of all other claims. The Bible is our means of building a worldview, not something that we filter through our already established views. Even when we do this, as I have said, we will do it in a biased way. Which is where the second help comes in:
2. Press into the more difficult metaphors and concepts. The Bible gives us a complex description for a reason. When we try to simplify it, or ignore verses to defend our position, we not only do disservice to truth, but we miss out on the shaping benefit of God’s Word. God works through poetry, metaphor and story to develop a deep worldview. If He simply wanted us to condense down and master it, He would have given it to us that way. Instead, to use a Biblical metaphor, He is like a potter working the clay, shaping us bit by bit. The Bible helps to mediate the extremes by continuing to surprise us and push us back when we think we have it figured out. God has given us help with this, which is out third step:
3. Spend time with people, not just ideas. When ideas are divorced from relationship, they are easy to dismiss, and vice versa. When people, who we love and care for and know to be thoughtful people, disagree with us, it forces us to consider their views. Not so with some idea that we engage with in a disembodied way. Other people can create an echo chamber, but more often, people are the means by which we are challenged by ways of seeing the world we would have never considered on our own.
One of the dangerous things about this time of isolation is that all of our interactions, even with people we know, become disembodied. Arguments on social media don’t have the same level of decorum as those in person. There is less hesitance and less consideration of the opposing position. Our worldviews are the same, but our application of them gets more rigid. This is a time for humility and grace, not grandstanding and truth-bombing. While that may always be true, when we don’t have the personal interactions to counteract it, it is that much more important.