A Biblical Worldview is vital to living a sustainable Christian life. Here’s everything you need to know about Biblical worldview.
“Biblical worldview.” Those are 2 dense words, placed right next to each other. But what do they mean? Are they related? This phrase may seem complex at first, but it’s actually a very basic concept. One that I believe is vital to living a healthy, balanced, and sustainable Christian life. Here’s everything you need to know about Biblical worldview.
Picture yourself wearing a big pair of glasses. These glasses are chipped, scratched, dirty, maybe even cracked. And yet, no matter what, you aren’t able to take them off. You’re stuck with them, and you’re stuck viewing the world through those imperfect lenses.
Let me explain. These glasses represent the lenses you view the world through, aka your worldview. The cracks, smidges, and chips represent everything that makes you who you are. They are your context. This includes your gender, race, age, location, health, family history, birth order, your parents, culture of origin, religious experience, social experience, marital status, current philosophies, values of your society, social status, education level …anything and everything that is woven into the picture of your existence.
Though many of these factors are out of your control, they still have immense impact on the way you view the world around you, the way you interpret information, and the way you interact with concepts.
For example, if you were raised in a very culturally conservative context, you might be more likely to look down upon the idea of wearing sweatpants to the grocery store – even though that is a morally neutral thing to do in the grand scheme of things. The customs and values you were raised with have subconsciously pre-determined if something is acceptable or not. This is a simple example, but hopefully it helps you understand that our origins and lived experiences deeply affect the lenses we wear.
Our worldview tends to act as either a scale or a map.
As a scale, our worldview surveys our life history and experiences and decides what is and is not valuable. What is or is not “good”. What is or is not “right”. It acts as a scale to determine what and who we align ourselves with. It determines our goals. It determines our fears.
When acting as a map, our worldview guides us to or away from certain options, opportunities, or routes to best suit what we subconsciously prioritize.
Our worldview answers questions like:
As you can see, our worldview determines very important things! We may never have even had a coherent or conscious thought about the above questions, but subtly working beneath the surface, our worldview is calling the shots. It goes by undetected mainly because we are largely unaware of the glasses we are wearing. The glasses we wear have made us into the person we are today, but they might not always serve us in every situation.
The first step in being able to take off our glasses simply recognizes that we have them on.
A Biblical worldview is one that is attained after taking off the old glasses (not that this can ever be done totally, or perfectly). A Biblical worldview does not ask Christians to forget their past or reject their culture, but instead to hold it open-handed before God…to recognize that what feels true may not actually be the truth at all.
A christian is one who is invited to take off the cracked lenses of his lived experience and surrender to a set of principles and truths that are untouched by bias, pollution, and pain. Seeing the world through the lenses of Scripture allows us to view other people as Jesus does, view success as He does, hold morality the way He does, receive purpose and value from our Maker, and allow His spirit to direct our decisions.
It takes bravery, humility, and time…but a Biblical worldview offers life in abundance to those who choose to see life through the eyes of the Life Giver.
I was first introduced to worldview during my Discipleship Training School (DTS) in Youth With A Mission (YWAM). In a YWAM DTS, every week of the lecture phase is introducing new aspects of the Biblical worldview. Each student can wrestle with new concepts, ask questions, and take the time they need to reflect on the lenses they might be wearing. One of these weeks addresses worldview in particular. At YWAM Asheville, one whole week is spent in Bible Overview. During this lecture, worldview is expanded upon, and personal context is discussed. Students are given tools to not only uncover their own context but explore the context of each book of the Bible.
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