“We live by what we believe, not by what we can see.” ~2 Corinthians 5:7 NCV. In Max Lucado‘s latest book, “Anxious for Nothing: Finding Calm in a Chaotic World” (2017), he makes the following statement regarding our belief system:
Your belief system is your answer to the fundamental questions about life: Is anyone in control of the universe? Does life have a purpose? Do I have value? Is this life all there is?
Your belief system has nothing to do with your skin color, appearance, talents, or age. Your belief system is not concerned with the exterior of the tent but the interior. It is the set of convictions–all of them unseen–upon which your faith depends. If your belief system is strong, you will stand. If it is weak, the storm will prevail.
Belief always precedes behavior. For this reason the apostle Paul in each of his epistles addressed convictions before he addressed actions. To change the way a person responds to life, change what a person believes about life. The most important thing about you is your belief system. (Quote source: “Anxious for Nothing,” page 22).
Our beliefs come from our worldview, so let’s define what is meant by “worldview.” The following is taken from an article titled “What’s Your View of the World?“ (Part 2) in a three-part series published in 2006 titled, “What’s a Christian Worldview?“ by Dr. Del Tackett, former president of the Focus on the Family Institute and a former Senior Vice President of Focus on the Family, creator of Focus on the Family’s The Truth Project, and professor:
What is a Worldview?
Charles Colson said a worldview is “the sum total of our beliefs about the world,”1 while James Sire says it is our “set of presuppositions . . . about the basic makeup of our world.”2Webster defines it as “a comprehensive conception or apprehension of the world.”3 A worldview is something much deeper than your personality or how you hold a golf club. It defines your beliefs about reality and your outlook on life.
In order to better understand the concept, it’s important to know that there are two different kinds—or two “levels”—of worldview. Allow me to explain.
Formal Worldviews
A formal worldview is a major system of ideas that orders human hearts and minds. To visualize this, picture a bookshelf with twenty or thirty books on it. Some are old, some are new. Some are thick, others thin. Each book has a title: Christianity, Islam, Marxism, Pagan Mysticism, etc.
If you were to study them, you would find that each builds a case that the things it claims are true (its “truth claims”) accurately reflect reality. Some are better defined than others, but each one asserts that it has discovered or crafted the real truth about everything important in life. Marxism, for example, basically claims that the secret of life lies in economics and, as a result, reality consists in the clash between those who control the means of production and those who don’t.
A formal worldview is usually comprehensive in scope, offering its proponents a lens they can look through to formulate universal beliefs about life, from philosophy to science, from anthropology to politics, from economics to social order.
Personal Worldviews
If we camp out on this definition, we might begin to think that our personal worldviews are in one-to-one relationship with the established formal worldviews. We would be wrong. There is a huge difference between a systematic set of truth claims and the complex, fragmented, and elusive beliefs of most human beings.
If someone claims to be a Marxist, what does that mean? Can we assume that his personal beliefs exactly match the Marxism book on the shelf? Or what if someone claims to be a witch? It’s hard to say what that means in terms of her assumptions about life. Likewise, when someone says, “I am a Christian; therefore, I have a Christian worldview,” it’s not necessarily true.
Late in 2003, pollster George Barna attempted to determine how many Americans held a “biblical worldview.” He asked people questions taken straight from Scripture, to find out if they really believe what is written there. The results were dismal: Only four percent do. When he looked at the born-again believers in America, the results inched up to an anemic nine percent. How can this be? Instead of adopting the formal framework of a biblical worldview, it seems that “Christians” have accepted a hodgepodge of individual truth claims that come from everywhere.
Life on a Smorgasbord
Look back at the bookshelf for a moment. On the end, you will find another, very large book titled “Miscellaneous.” In here we find all of the unconnected truth claims that simply float around our culture. They may be distant cousins or distortions of a formal worldview or unexamined claims that don’t at all reflect reality.
For example, if you listen carefully to what people are saying and read between the lines, you will hear this belief: “I am stupid and worthless.” Where did that come from? I can think of several “formal” worldviews that give rise to this truth claim, but not directly. People in our culture are perhaps more influenced by these miscellaneous truth claims than by any formal worldview.
So what’s wrong with that? To begin with, living with a hodgepodge of unexamined beliefs makes our lives purposeless and fragmented. On top of that, when our beliefs don’t accurately represent reality, we end up acting in ways that hurt ourselves and our relationships.
I challenge you to examine your worldview. Do your personal beliefs really come from a biblical framework, or are they collected from various belief systems and your own (perhaps inaccurate) interpretation of reality? If we say that our God, in Jesus, is truth, we would do well to live lives that are based on the truth He has revealed to us in his Word. (Quote source here.)
The following is taken from Part 1 in the series titled, “What’s a Christian Worldview,” by Dr. Del Tackett:
What’s a biblical worldview?
A biblical worldview is based on the infallible Word of God. When you believe the Bible is entirely true, then you allow it to be the foundation of everything you say and do. That means, for instance, you take seriously the mandate in Romans 13 to honor the governing authorities by researching the candidates and issues, making voting a priority.
Do you have a biblical worldview? Answer the following questions, based on claims found in the Bible and which George Barna used in his survey:
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- Do absolute moral truths exist?
- Is absolute truth defined by the Bible?
- Did Jesus Christ live a sinless life?
- Is God the all-powerful and all-knowing Creator of the universe, and does He still rule it today?
- Is salvation a gift from God that cannot be earned?
- Is Satan real?
- Does a Christian have a responsibility to share his or her faith in Christ with other people?
- Is the Bible accurate in all of its teachings?
Did you answer yes to these? Only 9 percent of “born-again” believers did. But what’s more important than your yes to these questions is whether your life shows it. Granted, we are all sinners and fall short, but most of our gut reactions will reflect what we deep-down, honest-to-goodness believe to be real and true.
How does a biblical worldview get diluted?
Here is the big problem. Non-biblical worldview ideas don’t just sit in a book somewhere waiting for people to examine them. They bombard us constantly from television, film, music, newspapers, magazines, books and academia.
Because we live in a selfish, fallen world, these ideas seductively appeal to the desires of our flesh, and we often end up incorporating them into our personal worldview. Sadly, we often do this without even knowing it.
For example, most Christians would agree with 1 Thessalonians 4:3 and other Scriptures that command us to avoid sexual immorality, but how often do Christians fall into lust or premarital and extramarital sexual sin? Is it simply because they are weak when tempted, or did it begin much earlier, with the seductive lies from our sexualized society?
Why does a biblical worldview matter?
If we don’t really believe the truth of God and live it, then our witness will be confusing and misleading. Most of us go through life not recognizing that our personal worldviews have been deeply affected by the world. Through the media and other influences, the secularized American view of history, law, politics, science, God and man affects our thinking more than we realize. We then are taken “captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ” (Colossians 2:8).
However, by diligently learning, applying and trusting God’s truths in every area of our lives — whether it’s watching a movie, communicating with our spouses, raising our children or working at the office — we can begin to develop a deep comprehensive faith that will stand against the unrelenting tide of our culture’s non-biblical ideas. If we capture and embrace more of God’s worldview and trust it with unwavering faith, then we begin to make the right decisions and form the appropriate responses to questions on abortion, same- sex marriage, cloning, stem-cell research and even media choices. Because, in the end, it is our decisions and actions that reveal what we really believe.
“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2). (Quote source here.)
One last item regarding worldviews comes from an article titled “8 Questions Every Worldview Must Answer,” by James W. Sire, PhD, a Christian author, speaker, and former editor for InterVarsity Press:
If a worldview can be expressed in propositions, what might they be? Essentially, they are our basic, rock-bottom answers to the following questions:
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- What is prime reality—the really real? To this we might answer: God, or the gods, or the material cosmos. Our answer here is the most fundamental. It sets the boundaries for the answers that can consistently be given to the other six questions. This will become clear as we move from worldview to worldview in the chapters that follow [see “The Universe Next Door,” 5th Edition, by James Sire]
- What is the nature of external reality, that is, the world around us? Here our answers point to whether we see the world as created or autonomous, as chaotic or orderly, as matter or spirit; or whether we emphasize our subjective, personal relationship to the world or its objectivity apart from us.
- What is a human being? To this we might answer: a highly complex machine, a sleeping god, a person made in the image of God, a naked ape.
- What happens to a person at death? Here we might reply: personal extinction, or transformation to a higher state, or reincarnation, or departure to a shadowy existence on “the other side.”
- Why is it possible to know anything at all? Sample answers include the idea that we are made in the image of an all-knowing God or that consciousness and rationality developed under the contingencies of survival in a long process of evolution.
- How do we know what is right and wrong? Again, perhaps we are made in the image of a God whose character is good, or right and wrong are determined by human choice alone or what feels good, or the notions simply developed under an impetus toward cultural or physical survival.
- What is the meaning of human history? To this we might answer: to realize the purposes of God or the gods, to make a paradise on earth, to prepare a people for a life in community with a loving and holy God, and so forth.
- What personal, life-orienting core commitments are consistent with this worldview?
Within any given worldview, core commitments may vary widely. For example, a Christian might say, to fulfill the will of God, or to seek first the kingdom of God, or to obey God and enjoy him forever, or to be devoted to knowing God or loving God. Each will lead to a somewhat different specific grasp of the Christian worldview.
A naturalist might say to realize their personal potential for experiencing life, or to do as much good as they can for others, or to live in a world of inner peace in a world of social diversity and conflict.
The question and its answers reveal the variety of ways the intellectual commitments are worked out in individual lives. They recognize the importance of seeing one’s own worldview not only within the context of vastly different worldviews but within the community of one’s own worldview. Each person, in other words, ends up having his or her own take on reality. And though it is extremely useful to identify the nature of a few (say, five to ten) generic worldviews, it is necessary in identifying and assessing one’s own worldview to pay attention to its unique features, the most important of which is one’s own answer to this eighth question.
Within various basic worldviews other issues often arise. For example: Who is in charge of this world—God or humans or no one at all? Are we as human beings determined or free? Are we alone the maker of values? Is God really good? Is God personal or impersonal? Or does he, she or it exist at all? When stated in such a sequence, these questions boggle the mind. Either the answers are obvious to us and we wonder why anyone would bother to ask such questions, or else we wonder how any of them can be answered with any certainty. If we feel the answers are too obvious to consider, then we have a worldview, but we have no idea that many others do not share it. We should realize that we live in a pluralistic world. What is obvious to us may be “a lie from hell” to our neighbor next door. If we do not recognize that, we are certainly naïve and provincial, and we have much to learn about living in today’s world. Alternatively, if we feel that none of the questions can be answered without cheating or committing intellectual suicide, we have already adopted a sort of worldview. The latter is a form of skepticism which in its extreme form leads to nihilism.
The fact is that we cannot avoid assuming some answers to such questions. We will adopt either one stance or another. Refusing to adopt an explicit worldview will turn out to be itself a worldview, or at least a philosophic position. In short, we are caught. So long as we live, we will live either the examined or the unexamined life. (Quote source here.)
A song sung by Michael Jackson (1958-2009) titled, “Man in the Mirror,” came to mind as I finished writing the above information on worldviews. His song, “Man in the Mirror,” peaked at #1 in the United States when released in January 1988 as the fourth single from Michael Jackson’s seventh solo album, Bad (1987) (source here). I’ll let the song and the words speak for themselves (YouTube video is below, and lyrics are available at this link). I’ll end this post with a few words from the song . . . .
If you want to make the world a better place . . .
Take a look at yourself . . .
And make a change . . . .
YouTube Video: “Man in the Mirror” by Michael Jackson:
Sara's Musings 
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