Ask the Pastor 75

What does it mean to have a world view?

An excellent book on this subject is “Understanding the Times” by David A. Noebel where he defines the term worldview as “any ideology philosophy, theology, movement, or religion that provides an overarching approach to understanding God, the world, and man’s relations to God and the world.” In his book Noebel, expounds upon ten disciplines where are affected by one’s worldview. For our purposes, we will think in terms of the five key institutions in any society. These institutions are the family, religion, government, economics, and education. Our worldview will dictate how we construct each one of these institutions. A world view is like looking at the world through glasses or a lens which will dictate for us how we see things. For example, if a person does not believe that there is a God (atheist) then their view of each of these institutions will be constructed around the view that matter or the physical is all there is and there is no meta-physical or spiritual. This view will include evolution in both biology and sociology. It is also a view that contains no absolutes, because all things are constantly in flux and changing so there are no absolute definitions to anything. Others may believe that there is a god but they do not believe in the God of the Bible and these will have a combination of theories of absolutes etc., that many times are based upon nothing more than myths and traditions passed down from one generation to another. Then there is the Christian worldview that is based upon the teaching (doctrine) of the Bible which is declared to be the divinely inspired Word of God. In our next article, Lord willing, we will explore the value of the Christian world view. As is always the case with the Bible, before one can understand the book, they have to know the author.

Have questions about the Bible? Send them to Dr. Greg Koehn at gak4850@gmail.com and read the answer here in this article.