What is a Worldview?

What is a Worldview?
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October 29, 2020
in Missionaries, News
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The word worldview is a handy word if you understand what it means. If you lack that understanding, a quick look in a dictionary isn’t much help.

To add to the confusion, “worldview” has also become a buzzword–a word often lacking in clarity and meaning, a word that obscures rather than brings clarity. So we want to offer some odds and ends of thoughts to bring some understanding and to perhaps strengthen your approach to reaching those of differing worldviews.

First, the word worldview summarizes a person’s answers to the big questions in life: Where did we come from? Where did the whole universe come from? Now that we are here, how should we live? What is the right way to live? And the wrong way? What is our source of information for determining right and wrong? Is there purpose in life? If so, how do we find that purpose? What happens to us when we die? Is there a life after death, and if so, what is that life like? You don’t need an advanced education to see that a Bible believer will answer those questions quite different than someone sold on Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species. The one will have a biblical worldview, while the other holds a Darwinian worldview. All the word worldview does is encompass a list of significant questions, which are answered in very different ways depending upon one’s worldview.

Second, a worldview affects all parts of life; it is the grid through which we view the world.

What you believe to be true about those big questions has been compared to wearing eyeglasses. Having spent all day outside with my sunglasses on, sometimes I then walk into my house with them still on, forgetting that it’s their dark lenses making everything so dark. It’s only when I remove them that I understand how my glasses impacted the view around me in the first place. What you believe very much impacts the way you live and what you hold dear.

Lastly, unlike a pair of sunglasses, a worldview is not easy to remove or change.

A worldview is a mix of the cultural, family, religious and ethnic backgrounds we spring from, the experiences we have lived through and the voices to which we lend our ears. Many people give little thought to their worldviews and yet, no one is an empty vessel waiting to be filled.

Everyone holds to some sort of worldview, even those who say, “There’s no God,” or “I only believe in science not religion.” But such people are simply setting up science or another ideology as the belief system that informs them on those big questions of life.

Once again, no one is devoid of a worldview.

Often, in sharing the gospel, believers are satisfied with simply seeing someone tack the gospel onto their current worldview. Unfortunately, this may result in a confused faith, rather than a confident faith.

In contrast, our goal should be to help a person replace their former worldview with an entirely different one–a biblical worldview—with solid answers to those big questions in life. With a solid foundation in place, great things can happen.

Ultimately as believers, absorbing the biblical worldview is a lifetime pursuit. Our approach to sharing the gospel should lay the foundations for our unbelieving friends to join us in trusting God’s Word with the answers, and then together we can be “conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29).
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