How Christians Christianized the Idea of Worldview
Christians did not invent the idea of worldview. The modern concept emerged from European philosophy. Though some critics of Christian worldview thinking point this out as a problem, Christians have long taken ideas from the surrounding culture, corrected them in light of Scripture and put them into the service of truth. St. Augustine described this as “plundering the Egyptians,” borrowing from the account in Exodus in which Israel departed Egypt carrying off its silver and gold.
Likewise, with worldview, Christians took a useful concept and made corrections. In fact, two especially significant corrections have been made to Christianize the term.
The first is recognizing that our worldview goes beyond the ideas we consciously think about. We all hold beliefs about countless things, but beneath those beliefs are more basic assumptions about the world we think we’re living in.
Consider the Resurrection. Beneath the many disagreements between a Christian and a materialist about whether Jesus rose bodily from the dead is a more fundamental disagreement: Could anyone rise from the dead? That depends greatly on whether there is a God more powerful than the natural forces in the universe. Were humans created or are they, as Thomas Hobbes first suggested, merely matter in motion?
To anyone who assumes that nothing supernatural exists, the Resurrection is ruled out before the evidence is considered. These deeper assumptions are our pre-theoretical beliefs. Before we think about the world, we think with certain assumptions about what it is like.
Scripture demonstrates this from its opening words. When God gave the Law to Moses to give to Israel, they were emerging from centuries in Egypt, a civilization filled with many gods. And before God gave His people instructions about how He expected them to live, He first gave them a radically different understanding of the world in which they lived: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
In fact, God gave Israel a new theology, cosmology and anthropology. Creation is not the product of conflict among competing deities. There is one God, who ordered creation and, with purpose, declared it good. And then God said, “Let us make man in our image.” Imagine the significance of those words to a people whose identity had been shaped by generations in slavery. They weren’t merely Pharaoh’s property. Human beings bear the image of God and are given responsibility within His creation. That gave Israel a new understanding of the human person.
An understanding of God . . . An understanding of the world . . . An understanding of people. . .. That’s a worldview. And it’s there in the very first chapter of the Bible.
Christians eventually brought another important biblical correction to the modern idea of worldview. Human beings aren’t merely thinking creatures. We don’t see the world according to only what we think. We also see the world according to what we love.
Romans 1 tells us that God’s reality is evident in what He has made, but also that, as fallen human beings, we “suppress the truth.” It is not that we lack sufficient information. Sin has affected our ability and willingness to see reality as it is.
St. Augustine understood that human flourishing requires rightly ordered loves, beginning with the love of God. What we love, desire, worship, fear and trust affects how we understand everything else. Someone may possess impeccable doctrine while loving money, status, autonomy, political power or personal comfort more than God. Eventually, those loves will exert pressure upon what that person is willing to believe and how those beliefs are lived.
Christian worldview formation is not limited to correcting ideas. God intends to redeem the whole person. Thus, Jesus described the greatest commandment as loving God “with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,” and the second as loving one's neighbor.
Humans are not detached reasoning machines. What the heart desires, the heart chooses and the mind is remarkably capable of justifying. Our loves and allegiances matter profoundly to our worldview. Our habits, imaginations, relationships and culture are constantly forming our loves, often without our recognizing it.
Worldview isn’t philosophy diagrammed on a whiteboard. It is the deeper framework from which humans encounter reality, and that involves the whole person. Sin disorders not only our minds, but also our actions and our loves, which distorts how we see.
That’s why Christian worldview formation is the formation of the Christian. It is about pursuing correct ideas, renewed minds, reordered loves and rightly placed allegiances. It is about seeing His world truthfully, loving what He loves and living faithfully within the reality He has made.
Photo Credit: ©GettyImages/Grace Cary
John Stonestreet is President of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, and radio host of BreakPoint, a daily national radio program providing thought-provoking commentaries on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN), and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview.
The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.
BreakPoint is a program of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. BreakPoint commentaries offer incisive content people can't find anywhere else; content that cuts through the fog of relativism and the news cycle with truth and compassion. Founded by Chuck Colson (1931 – 2012) in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today's news and trends. Today, you can get it in written and a variety of audio formats: on the web, the radio, or your favorite podcast app on the go.
