What is Your Worldview?
Here’s a quote to ponder, “People may not live what they profess, but they will always live what they believe.” The implication is that if you want to change the way a person lives, you must first change the way he/she believes. Worldview is like a filter, or set of filters, through which we see the world, and is made up of beliefs, faith, convictions, ideology, ideas, theories, doctrine, tenets, values, etc.
A worldview is a set of presuppositions or assumptions which we hold (consciously or subconsciously) about the basic makeup of our world. Worldview is what you really believe, as opposed to what you may profess to believe.
Worldview is essential for understanding any culture, because individual elements in the culture find their understanding and identity in the worldview of the entire group. Worldview examples include monism, pantheism, animism and western mindsets, to name a few.
As believers, we want to have a worldview that aligns with the worldview of Jesus – a Christian worldview. Then we will act on what we truly believe, not on what we profess to believe. Less than that could put us in the category of unbelief – when what Jesus told us is what we are to believe.
The Barna Group recently asserted that only 10% of people who profess to be born-again believers in the U.S. have a Biblical worldview. If you look at just the youth, the number falls to 1%! These are the basics that Barna measured – simple basic beliefs concerning the Bible and Jesus:
- Moral truth exists.
- The Bible is accurate in all the truth it teaches.
- Satan is a real being, not merely a symbol.
- A person can’t earn his way into heaven or get there by his good works.
- Jesus led a sinless life on earth.
- God is the all-knowing, all-powerful creator of the world who still rules today.
Let’s look at several other areas focusing on the life of Jesus and our worldview:
- He came to save, heal and deliver.
- He gave His followers amazing authority and told them they would do greater works than He.
- There is an angelic realm which is still operating today.
- There is a cosmic war going on now between the forces of good and evil.
- Jesus will return to this earth to rule and reign.
We’ll talk about Kingdom, healing, and authority elsewhere. Here, our task is to look at the typical western worldview regarding the natural and supernatural realms, as opposed to Jesus’ worldview.
Typical Western Worldview:
There are only two functional realms – the natural and the supernatural. The natural realm is “this world”, run by natural (scientific) laws and seldom affected by spirit beings. The supernatural realm is essentially “other-worldly” and contains all spirit beings – both good and evil. It is assumed that science and religion can be kept separate, as in public education. This view often becomes a belief that God made the world, established the laws by which it runs, but now sits on His throne in heaven and seldom intervenes in the events of the world except for occasional miracles. This view is based on key “enlightenment” ideas of rationalism, scientism, humanism and empiricism. God is taken out of the equation.
Jesus’ Worldview:
There are 3 realms, which co-exist:
- God’s realm – He is sovereign over His creation.
- Angelic realm – Fully functioning and populated. There are over 300 references to angels in the Bible. There are several types of angels, and they have different assignments.
- Earth realm – Where we live.
One of the highest ranking angels rebelled and led other angels to do the same. We know him as satan, lucifer, beelzebub – the slanderer/accuser of the brethren. He is real and he uses people created in God’s image to accomplish his purposes. He had plans to eliminate the generational line of Jesus. His aim is to deprive God of His rightful glory by stealing the identity of God’s people through deception, to keep as many as he can from being part of God’s family and living out their destiny. Satan’s destiny has already been established.
If any of this is outside of your realm/worldview, if it makes you uncomfortable, it’s time to look at Scripture and find out what Jesus said.
This 24-slide presentation, entitled “Our Authority is Great” discusses how Jesus knew His mandate, knew who His enemies were, and used His weapons to overthrow and defeat them. Then He gave us access to all of it so that we could do the same in our generations.
This 65-slide presentation calls us to examine the beliefs driving our behavior, to reject deception and to consciously “climb into the Tree of Life.” It encourages us to live from our true identity, authority and relationship with Jesus.