What is your worldview? A worldview is simply the way you look at the world. It acts like “a mental map that tells us how to navigate the world effectively,” according to Nancy Pearcey in Total Truth (a book I would recommend all Christian young people and their parents read).
David Wells puts it this way: “A world view is a framework for understanding the world. It is the perspective through which we see what is ultimate, what is real, what our experience means, and what our place is in the cosmos.” (Above All Earthly Powers).
Wells continues, “Everyone, however, has a world view, even if it is one which posits no meaning and even if it is one which is entirely private and true only for the person who holds it.”
The sad reality is that many (maybe even the vast majority) of Christians have adopted a secular worldview today and that, among other things, has lead to a very weak church and a huge lack of discernment among believers. Some surveys indicate that nearly 90% of all teens who attend church and consider themselves to be “born again” have a Christian worldview. That explains why nearly 70-80% of young people who attend church regularly with their parents drop out of church when they reach adulthood. They have learned the lingo of the church and they can parrot the truth and conform to the church culture, but when they are on their own, they flee. Why? Because they have never learned to think Christianly–by which I mean “thinking by Christians about anything and everything in a consistent Christian way,” as Os Guinness puts it.
Much of the blame can be cast at the feet of Christian parents who are just happy if their children go to church and aren’t doing any drugs, drinking alcohol, or engaged in premarital sex. Christian parents who have this as their criteria for their children’s spirituality are misinformed. Certainly we want our children to put off such things but there is much more to life than that. Behavior bereft of an understanding of, love for, and hearty application of biblical truth and the gospel is moralistic at best.
Also the current evangelical church mindset that is embracing postmodern worldviews is contributing to this crisis. David Wells correctly states that this tactic is so wrongheaded:
We must go further, however. It is not just any world view that we encounter in the postmodern world, but one that increasingly resembles the old paganisms. It is one that is antithetical to that which biblical faith requires. It is this transformation of our world, this emerging world view, which has passed largely unnoticed. That, at least, is the most charitable conclusion that one can draw. For while the evangelical Church is aware of such things as the fight for gay and lesbian rights, hears about the eco-feminist, knows about pornography, has a sense that moral absolutes are evaporating like morning mist, knows that truth of an ultimate kind has been dislodged from life, it apparently does not perceive that in these and many other ways a new world view is becoming ensconced in the culture. If it did, it surely would not be embracing with enthusiasm as many aspects of this postmodern mindset as it is or be so willing to make concessions to postmodern habits of mind.
This causal embrace of what is postmodern has increasingly led to an embrace of its spiritual yearning without noticing that this embrace carries within it the seeds of destruction for evangelical faith. The contrast between biblical faith and this contemporary spirituality is that between two entirely different ways of looking at life and at God. pp. 157-158.
Your worldview is important. How you view truth is critica! And how you communicate this to the next generation is crucial!
