August 4, 2022
Important questions about worldview answered in a straightforward way.
Why do you think what you think? And why do you do what you do?
“What is a worldview?”
WHY IS MY WORLDVIEW IMPORTANT?
What if your 11-year-old asked you that question? “Why is my worldview Important?” Do you have a ready answer that would make sense?
I don’t have an 11-year-old. But I do think we all should be able to answer the question on that level.
In business, we are coached to express our goals, our plans, and our directions in straightforward language. We are told to skip the extra adverbs and the details, and state a “repeatable” explanation that can be remembered and shared.
Good training, right? So IRL (in real life) how do you answer this question in a way that even an 11-year-old could understand?
That’s what we’ll do today — take our knowledge, our explanation, and our reasoning, and extract a compact repeatable statement that can be remembered and shared.
Don’t worry — you won’t get “clobbered” with a lot of lofty language that doesn’t make sense.
In fact, before you can say carrot patch, mountain hike, and elephant tusk, you’ll have what you need.
And let’s start with the obvious:
HOW DO I KNOW IF I EVEN HAVE A WORLDVIEW?
Don’t worry. You do.
It’s not something you have to acquire or “get.” It’s just a true statement about how you view the world.
If you’ve found yourself a little “outside the conversation” when people discuss worldview, today should give you the green light to participate.
Why am I telling you? Because I saw you get quiet when the topic came around. It sounded like “shop talk” right? And I know you’re not gonna ask.
Here the thing: It seems like every time you start sniffing around the Church to make a move, the same thing happens. People start showing you it’s “insiders only.” You realize you don’t know how to talk the talk.
Little by little, we’ll get some of this stuff covered. This shop talk or insider talk that seems to be discouraging.
And hey, if it’s not you that got quiet, please send this to the lady who did. Because you saw her, too.
So let’s get started — here’s how you tell your eleven-year-old. (Even the one you don’t have.)
“View” — Maybe this is the easy part…
At the most basic level, a view is simply how something looks. And that’s easy.
However, you may be comparing views with someone who isn’t where you are. Like this:
Two people view a farm in the open plains.
- One smells fresh earth, and can easily see leafy seedlings arranged in tidy rows, rising a few inches above the ground.
- The other sees a neat patchwork of squares, perfectly engineered over a large area.
Or…
Two people view a mountain.
- One sees an inclined forest, and the sky is visible between the branches.
- The other surveys a vista of other mountains covering many miles.
And one more (an old one):
A group of blind men heard that an animal had been brought to their town. Out of curiosity, they went to touch the animal, and determine its structure. So, they each placed their hands on it. The first person, whose hand landed on the trunk, said, “This animal is like a thick snake”. Another one who touched the animal’s ear described it as a kind of fan. The person whose hand was upon its leg said the animal was a pillar or a tree-trunk. The man who placed his hand on its side said “the animal is a wall”. The one who felt its tail described it as a rope. The last person felt its tusk, and determined the animal was hard, smooth, like a spear.
As we prepare our explanation of view, the easy first step is to be sure we consider two things: the details and the overall picture. Both are vital.
Here’s another way to say it:
Our view is dependent on our position — where we are. (On a farmhouse porch, in an airplane, beginning a hike, or sitting at the top of a mountain. Or very close to an elephant part.)
It’s dependent on our perception — sight, touch, smell (😖elephant), etc..
Still, there’s something else…
In addition to our perception and our position, there is Knowledge: what we read and what we are taught.
For instance:
Recognizing farmland from an airplane requires some knowledge, right? That sections of crops are planted adjacent to each other, that plants come from the ground, and that planes are high enough for passengers to see multiple crops.
Our education (both structured and spontaneous) is the preparation for life, our knowledge.
Interesting, isn’t it? How all that comes together to make sense of what comes before us?
In Beloved Aunt language, I said all that to say this:
Your view is the product of your preparation, your perception, and your position.
That’s what we know about “view” — and what we’ll try to remember.
Why Is My Worldview Important?
And now, we get to the heart of the matter: The view of the world.
Again, there is an easy basic way to consider this.
First, you could easily understand a drawing of your bedroom floor plan, right? The location of the furniture and objects, where the windows and doors are.
And from there a drawing of your entire house would still make sense, as would an image of your property on a map.
You could pick out your city or county or state or country on a larger map, and you know where our continent is on a globe.
You also know which planet is Earth and how it looks in space.
And you know our galaxy is one of many, that there is far more unexplored space in the world than what we know.
The world. It’s easy, right?
Not so fast.
The World
It isn’t just a physical place.
It’s the whole of life.
Sure, it’s the vast array of planets and stars.
But so much more…
It’s the ecosystem, gravity, ocean tides.
It’s storms, butterflies, and DNA.
It’s birth and death.
It’s development and knowledge and emotions and wonder.
It’s creation.
It’s all that.
You can’t just limit your view to your bedroom, or a picture from the space station.
The world is all that stuff, and your view is how you see it. The view that is shaped by your preparation, perception, and position.
And of those three, would you have guessed that your preparation could be the biggest predictor of your worldview?
Because it is.
Here. Look at a picture with me.
Preparation for Worldview
All of your knowledge contributes to your worldview. All of it.
If you’re a lifelong learner (of course you are!), your worldview is always evolving, always refining.
But it’s not moving away from your beliefs — It’s just finding more accurate ways to see things using your knowledge.
(Conversely, if you shy away from knowledge, or you don’t expend the energy to ask questions and discover deeper meaning, your worldview will be missing vital information.)
The Worldview Definition
The concise definition you were promised a few minutes ago:
A worldview is a philosophical view, the sum total of our beliefs about the world.
Although that is concise, repeatable, and correct, there is one more question we must address.
Why Is My Worldview Important?
There is one answer:
Because our worldview determines our decisions and our actions.
Could you say that to your 11-year-old?
Now that you know the importance of your worldview, you can do two things, using the position you are in and the things you have learned.
- You can work backward. You can analyze decisions you have made and how you have responded to things around you, and connect those events to your worldview.
- You can work forward: By using what you know about your worldview to plan your decisions and actions.
This is our landing pad, the destination for today: For us to be able to talk about worldview with understanding.
It’s important, it’s gonna come up, and you need to be ready.
Still, there is room for just a little more. We’ve landed and you can run off if you want to. But what if you hung around just a few minutes more, to get “the rest of the story.”
We’ll get to the real reason you need to understand this talk of worldview. (And of course there’s a story.)
That “hanging around another minute” is often a sign of the quest for knowledge that ensures personal growth. For you, there are two really good articles that are linked below. I’ll tell you what you’ll gain from those.
Because…
Although knowledge encompasses experiences, objects, and education, your decisions and actions come from your philosophy.
More Reading About Worldview:
1. Here’s what James Anderson said about worldview in Tabletalk, a publication of Ligonier Ministries:
“It’s not a physical view of the world, but rather a philosophical view, an all-encompassing perspective on everything that exists and matters to us.”
It’s a quick article, but packed full of really good info expanding greatly on worldview. (He even goes on to name 6 worldviews that are not Christian.)
Then another one:
2. Brandon Clay at Truth Story actually outlines 8 elements of a worldview. Things like theology, meaning, morality, destiny.
This is really helpful in analyzing our own worldview.
Once more, here are those links:
Worldview topic at TruthStory Brandon Clay, TruthStory.
Worldview topic at Ligonier James Anderson, Ligonier Ministries.
A Different Worldview…
With all this talk, you may remember a recent topic here at GFP about The Great Reset. If you’d like a further explanation, please read The Great Reset? Or The Great Return? From Calvary Chapel.
Worldview definitely comes into play in this situation.
Because…
With God, we know what world power is. (Hint: Not human.)
Without God, men have a certain view of world power. They want to command commerce, communication, and climate. Absurdly, they meet regularly to strategize.
It reminds me of something.
Was it Davey Crocket who said, “Be sure you’re right, then go ahead”?
Incorrect View (👉🏻When You Don’t Realize You Are Wrong, And You Go Ahead)
Years ago, a teen boy told me of his adventures as a preschooler at a home day care center. He and a friend used the wooden blocks to bang really hard on the floor. For a long time. They did this every day.
The secret reason? They were going to break out of day care. That’s right, they would tunnel through the floor and run away.
He laughed as he remembered, saying, “I guess it would have been too easy to just walk over to the door and leave.”
And what is the reason for the connection here today?
It’s about futility.
That’s right. Those little boys made a lot of noise, wasted a lot of effort, annoyed everyone else, and probably did some damage. And they never broke out of day care.
They had a plan that was inadequate to achieve the goal. What they wanted was not really possible.
Their efforts were futile, and they didn’t understand that they weren’t in charge. (But they worked really hard toward their incorrect goal.)
Looking back, 10-15 years later, he could see the flaws in his childish thinking. What’s different now? His perception, his position, and his preparation.
The correct worldview is not complex.
It’s straightforward and accessible. It consists of
- knowing who you’re subject to,
- knowing what is true, and
- knowing what to do.
One book will give you all three.
If you devote yourself to being a student of the Bible, you will know who is in charge. You will be reading what is true. And you will have the instructions on what to do.
And in addition to those three, you will know what was done for you: The Rescue.
Little by little, the important building blocks of your worldview will form a foundation for every thought, every word, and every action.
If you avoid studying the Bible, you might end up as one of those scrambling to hoard all the riches of the world to redistribute to your favorite people. Or you might think you can change the seasons by insisting your neighbors drive Power Wheels while you travel in a 747.
You might be banging blocks on the floor.
“In The Beginning, God Created…”
If you believe those words, then life means something more in your worldview than those who consider life just a weird accidental by-product of planets banging around in space.
If you believe those words, then you are able to see the order and arrangement of the world we live in.
If you believe those words, then the concept of purpose is very clear in your worldview.
If you believe those words, then you recognize the authority and unlimited power of our God.
Your Worldview Is Important Because You Act On It
What are all the important questions in life about?
They are about life, and order, and purpose, and power.
If we get the answers to those important questions wrong, our direction will be incorrect, our actions will be misguided, and our results will be way off.
Philippians 2:13 says this:
For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
The mighty and invisible God knows every moment, every particle, every idea of everything in our lives.
Early on today you were assured you don’t have to go out and get a worldview; you already have one.
How do you think about life, and order, and purpose and power?
A worldview is a philosophical view, the sum total of our beliefs about the world, that determines our decisions and our actions.
Enjoy working backward and forward. And have a conversation with someone about this soon!
If you haven’t had enough, stick around for the bonus round below.
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Bonus Round
Every industry has shop talk. Even the Church has it.
Look, I like it (I actually LOVE it) when someone talks a little shop talk.
Stuff like this:
- My dentist explained that I have a dental pellicle. Who knew?
- When my hairdresser spoke about the weight line in a haircut, my heart beat a little faster.
- A doctor explained what our mesentery was, and I had to know more right away.
I’m serious when I say that shop talk and new information can be exciting to me.
That thing (whatever it is) gets mentioned, and suddenly I’m like a hunter with a target.
I’m very still, with a fixed gaze, saying “Go on…”
Shop talk. Church talk. It’s a language. And you like it when they’re trying to include you.
But NOT when people are trying to exclude you. It feels different, and you don’t want to hang out any more.
All those things I mentioned just now (pellicle, weight line, and mesentery) — I already had them. I just didn’t know.
People explained, taught, and included.
Why in the world would we do otherwise?
Tomorrow when you’re sitting down with your coffee, here’s what’s true: your pellicle, mesentery, weight line, and your worldview are all right there with you.
Shop talk that includes.
… Go on…
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