In this first episode of a three-part series, pastors Derek and Cliff define the word “worldview” while also discussing why it is vital for Christians to think consistently within a biblical worldview.
Transcript
Derek: Welcome to the With All Wisdom Podcast, where we are applying biblical truth to everyday life. My name is Derek Brown and I’m here today with Cliff McManis. We are both pastors and elders at Creekside Bible Church in Cupertino, California, and professors of theology at the Cornerstone Bible College and Seminary in Vallejo, California. And today we want to ask these two questions—they’re related. What is a worldview and why does it matter? But before we get to our topic, I want to encourage each of you to check out withallwisdom.org where you’ll find a large and growing collection of resources that are all rooted in God’s word and aimed at helping you grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. So back to our topic. What is a worldview and why does it matter? We want to ask these questions because ever since we started this podcast over two years ago, basically every episode has been an exercise in applying a biblical worldview to various issues—retirement, economics, the government, Covid, climate change, psychology, the sanctity of life, and many more.
But we’ve never really explained our methodology, so to speak. In today’s and next week’s episode, we want to step back and explain how we go about thinking through these various issues by asking the twin questions, what is a worldview and why does it matter? Or why is it important? Our hope is that the principles we lay down here will help you develop a more mature and consistent Christian worldview as you engage with various issues in today’s culture. In other words, we want to help you more and more think God’s thoughts after him. So Cliff, why don’t you start us off today with some reasons why we need to talk about worldviews?
Cliff: Yeah, thanks, Derek. We need to do that because as you said, what are we on episode, I think, 52 or something like that of our podcast. It kind of just dawned on both of us that after doing dozens of podcasts, we routinely refer to the Christian worldview as though the listening audience all understands and knows what we’re talking about exactly. And then we thought, oh, we haven’t even explained definitively or formally ever in a detailed manner what we mean by worldview—Christian worldview. Some people call it a Christian world and life view, because that is our methodology of how we interpret and understand things. And people need to know that. And it does make a difference. What is the tool, order, or the mechanism by which you view things and analyze things and assess and come to conclusions? So we have a very specific procedure of doing that, and it’s called viewing pretty much everything through a Christian worldview.
And so the goal is to define that today and also in a follow up episode, maybe to illustrate how that actually works and how you can implement it if you’re a Christian. So I wanted to start off by first explaining the need for a Christian worldview, and I got a few points here, and then we’ll go into a formal definition. I think we need to explain what a Christian worldview is, because number one, not all Christians know what a worldview is. Not all Christians, but a lot of them. So it is not uncommon to ask your average Christian, somebody who know[s] the gospel, they believe in the Bible, they love Jesus, they say they love truth, and yet when you ask them about a worldview, they don’t know what you’re talking about. So reason number one, we need to explain what a worldview is.
Number two, a lot of Christians don’t realize that they actually have a worldview. I could broaden that and say that most people don’t realize that they have a worldview. They are operating by a worldview. Whatever that is, we need to explain it. So up to this date, if you had never considered that you have a worldview, surprise! Today, Derek and I are here to tell you, no, you have a worldview. So just a question of identifying what—it’s kind of like every Christian has a hermeneutic, and a lot of times they don’t realize it or know what it is.
Derek: Or every Christian’s a theologian. Everybody has thoughts about God.
Cliff: Absolutely.
Derek: Yeah, you’re right. Everybody’s operating from worldview. Everybody has a hermeneutic, everybody’s a theologian. So we have to not allow these things to go undiscussed, but actually help Christians realize that they are operating from a worldview that you’ll explain here in a minute.
Cliff: Yeah. So number one, Christians don’t know what a worldview is often. Number two, a lot of people don’t realize that they have a worldview. Number three, a lot of Christians don’t realize that they’re actually borrowing from a pagan worldview in their thinking.
Derek: Which is a real important reason why we need to talk about this topic.
Cliff: Yes, a lot of Christians are actually borrowing from a pagan worldview in their thinking, and they don’t realize it. Here’s a recent example, just even before we even formally define what a worldview is. Worldview has to do with your thinking and how you think about things. And this is more common, unfortunately, than I would like, but I was talking to a fellow Christian and the topic of socialism came up, and Marxism. And they’re a believer. They love Jesus. They believe in the Bible. They were educated in the universities here in California—liberal, public universities. And I asked them, “So did you ever study Marx?” And they said, “Yeah, I studied him in college.” I said, “Well, then let me just ask you one question. Was Marx a good guy or a bad guy?” And they said, “Oh, he was a good guy.” I was like, “Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. He was a very bad guy.” And then we had a conversation after that because they weren’t sure why I was saying that, right? And I was explaining it in light of the Bible from a Christian worldview. They were taught about Karl Marx, not from a Christian worldview at their secular university. They were taught about Karl Marx, Marxism, and socialism from a secular atheistic worldview, whatever that worldview is. So that’s just a practical example of how important this is. You embrace ideas unwittingly thinking they might be good because you’re not running them through your Christian worldview. At some level you’ve embraced some other kind of presupposition or assumption about what is true. And so you embrace things unwittingly that aren’t good that case.
Almost done here, of why we need to explain what a Christian worldview is. Number four, a lot of Christians don’t realize that they are not thinking consistently as a Christian, and this crops up on various particular issues. They say they’re committed to the Bible, the truth of scripture, the authority of Jesus, and even his word, and they got the gospel or the deity of Christ or the truth about salvation. But then on other issues, they might have a worldly perspective. And it’s not even consistent with what their professed allegiance is. I believe in the Bible, yet the conviction they have or the belief that they hold is completely contrary to the Bible. And maybe they just don’t realize that. Another example of a friend of mine, a Christian. Became a believer, loved Jesus, loved the word, studied scripture. They know the gospel. They know their sins are forgiven. And yet, and I don’t know how we got onto this conversation, but they were pro-abortion. And I said, “Well, that’s contrary to the Bible.” And they were surprised for me to say that; they’d never heard that. And granted, they were a relatively new Christian, but they were an adult. Again, educated in secular universities here in California. But they believed in the Trinity and basic Christian doctrines. But when it came to another particular and very important subject, the sanctity of life, they hadn’t studied the Bible enough to realize that, wow, life comes from God. He’s the giver of life and the one who protects life. He hates murder. Children are precious; abortion is wrong. So I just opened the Bible and explained to them many scriptures of why life is sacred and how that applies to abortion. They literally changed their position in that conversation. They went from being pro-abortion to pro-life. And that as was a result of them thinking they were just inconsistent in applying their biblical thinking to every particular issue in life. That’s very common, actually, for Christians to be inconsistent in their thinking.
Derek: It wasn’t some sort of flagrant disobedience. It was just being inconsistent in their thinking.
Cliff: A lot of that was a result of ignorance. Ignorance of what a Christian worldview was, but also ignorance of the whole counsel of God and what the Bible taught on various issues. So a lot of Christians don’t realize that they are inconsistent in their thinking if they don’t have a Christian worldview. And then number five—why do we need to explain what a Christian worldview is? And this is related to the last two that a lot of Christians don’t realize. There is a biblical position on every issue. And that intersects with you. And I just keep hammering on the sufficiency of scripture, right? This idea, this theology that we think the Bible is sufficient for every area of life, every issue. But that is at the heart of what a Christian worldview is and what we believe it can afford the Christian—that there’s a biblical position on every single issue. So a Christian worldview that you and I apply is just applying the doctrine of biblical sufficiency to every area of life. So that’s kind of a definition of it.
Derek: And as you’ll get to talking about in a moment, really the reason why this is vital is because we’ve already mentioned it. The way you see things and interpret things, it’s all brought through your worldview and your assumptions about truth and reality. And whether you like it or not, the way you interpret what you see in your life and what you read through a particular view of reality is a worldview. So I’m glad you took us through these points, because when we’re unaware that we’re inconsistent with a Christian worldview, we need to be made aware of that. And so it’s helpful to talk about this. I just encourage our listeners to just start to reflect critically, openly, and honestly, even before the Lord and be willing to say, Hey, yes, I have in fact been thinking inconsistently about this topic. We’re going to talk about some topics later, but to just be open to some changing of your own thinking, kind of like that person you’re talking about. That’s a really encouraging story, actually, that they’re a Christian, and they’re sensitive to the word of God. Once you opened the word of God and showed them that there was inconsistency in how they understood this issue of the sanctity of life, their mind and their heart changed. And we want that to happen for us. We want that to happen for our listeners. And so that was a really encouraging story. I appreciate that.
Cliff: It was encouraging. It happened years ago, and the reason I remember it so graphically is because I think that’s the only time I’ve ever engaged in a conversation with somebody who was pro-abortion who, by the end of the conversation with them, actually changed their position.
Derek: Yeah. Yeah. That’s wonderful.
Cliff: I think every other conversation I have had with somebody who was pro-abortion, they just got angrier and angrier as we talked about it, and dug in their heels.
Derek: Oh yeah. Well, why don’t you take us through a definition. Now, we’ve mentioned the word “worldview” several times and we’ve kind of assumed it’s definition. Why don’t you take us through a definition, Cliff, or a few definitions to help us understand exactly what we’re talking about.
Cliff: Yeah, let’s do that. And it can be defined in a lot of different ways. I’m going to start off with formal definitions that others who are smarter than I have come up with as a baseline, and they’re helpful. And then maybe you and I can comment on those and bring some other practical examples and synonyms to help people out if they don’t really know what a worldview is or if it’s hard for them to grasp. Some people think it’s overly philosophical.
Derek: Right? That’s a good point. It’s not, by the way, it’s not. I mean, some people have made it highly philosophical and complex and hard to understand, but it’s not that at all.
Cliff: So here’s one formal definition of a worldview. A worldview is how one interprets reality. So a perspective; how one goes about interpreting all of reality. It is the paradigm or the grid by which you view God yourself, life, and the world. So those all go together, pretty much all of reality right there—God, yourself, all of life in the world. So it’s the grid by which you view and interpret those things. It’s how you think about all of life. And it entails our presuppositions. That’s the big philosophical word. It comes down to our presuppositions and assumptions that we have about reality as we think about everything. So here’s another definition, and it is an overarching philosophy of life in the world that flows from your basic, settled convictions, your assumptions, and your ultimate beliefs. One way I like to explain it in a practical way: the colored glasses that you wear as you view and interpret everything in the world. It’s like we all have a pair of glasses on. As we look at the world and interpret it, and try to make sense of it. And say, I have yellow lenses on as I view everything, because that’s my perspective based on my presuppositions, beliefs, biases, whatever. And so everything that I see is going to be yellow, but the guy with red glasses, because he has a different perspective than I do or a different starting point, maybe the Christian, and my lenses are yellow and yellow represents the Bible. So I’m going to view everything from a biblical point of view. So everything I see is yellow. Whereas the atheist guy over there—he doesn’t believe in God. And so his lenses and his glasses are red. So everything he looks at is tinted with red. So he’s interpreting everything differently than the way I would interpret. And that’s based on his ultimate priorities, the color of his lenses, his presuppositions, that feed his perspective. So the question is, what color lenses do you have? And ideally, you want lenses that are commensurate or consistent with the Bible as a Christian.
Derek: Because that’s the truth from God, the Creator, who’s telling you what reality truly is.
Cliff: Yes.
Derek: He’s telling you the truth about these, what did you say, underlying beliefs—or how did you put it? You put it in one word that was really helpful. Ultimate beliefs. He’s telling you the truth through his word about what is real in all of reality. He’s telling you what your reality is so that when you are viewing things through that lens, you are seeing things as they really are.
Cliff: Yes, you segued into a very important point. Right now, I’m just giving a definition of a worldview, which everybody has. And once we lay that out, then we want to talk about, well, what’s a Christian worldview? And you just mentioned that everybody has a worldview, but not everybody has a Christian or biblical worldview. A Christian worldview is just what you said, Derek, and that is viewing everything in life the way God would view it. So you know how some people pride themselves on, oh, I have an opinion, and they wax eloquent and say, well, that’s my opinion, and they’re kind of proud of their opinion? Well, as a Christian, you shouldn’t really be interested in your opinion. The only opinion we should consider important is God’s opinion. What does God think of this? That’s literally a Christian worldview—answering the question, what does God think about this issue?
Derek: That’s convicting because sometimes I feel like I’m proud of my opinion. So that’s convicting. I appreciate that.
Cliff: So, because we believe in the sufficiency of scripture, you can pretty much take any issue in life, any headline in the news, and when we read the headline of the news, we shouldn’t be asking, what do I think of that? Or, what’s my opinion? I wonder what God thinks of that? So that would be a good challenge for our listeners. When you read those news headlines that either encourage you to make you really mad or sad, your first question as a Christian should be, I wonder what God thinks of that? I wonder what Jesus thinks of that? The beauty is, well, we can find out, because he’s revealed what he thinks in the Bible. So just going back to a couple other points on the definition of a worldview. It’s big picture thinking. Big picture thinking. Not just item by item in isolation, out of context. Kind of like panoramic thinking. How in your iPhone you’ve got the panorama dial. I don’t really know how to use it, but it’s pretty cool.
Derek: I know, I have it. Yeah, I’ve tried it. I can’t make it happen.
Cliff: Switch over to Panorama and then you move the phone and you can take a picture. You can do a 360, allegedly, with your phone. I’ve done it. It’s pretty cool. I’ve perfected it. So that panoramic view is where you get the big picture—a broad perspective. You get context of some of the smaller things. That’s kind of Christian worldview—understanding, versus the opposite would be looking through things in a bud with binoculars. When you’re at maybe a sporting event at the NBA game and you’re sitting up in the nosebleed section, you got your binoculars and you’re looking down at the front row and there’s some person sitting there and all it does is it just focuses on them, but you don’t see who’s to their left or to their right. You’re missing context, and you could come to a wrong conclusion based on a lack of context. So that’s the beauty of a worldview—that broad perspective thinking that puts a lot of things in perspective from that point of view. It’s kind of like worldview thinking is, it’s broad and wide, but it also goes deep—what’s under the surface, as opposed to shallow, superficial thinking.
That’s why we we’re talking about presuppositions and assumptions. That’s getting under the surface, driving your thinking. So it pertains to your presuppositions or ultimate axioms. If there’s any math people out there, especially geometry people, axiom means something. That’s actually a technical term, the ultimate starting point. You can’t prove an axiom. And that’s your starting point. Well, that’s what the presupposition is in our thinking. It’s the ultimate foundation. So that’s key to a worldview. A worldview pertains to your presuppositions or your ultimate axioms in your thinking and asks, why do you believe that? And the very important one is, how do you know? Those are really the ingredients of a Christian worldview. You and I had the same professor in college, but that’s what he would say. When you’re talking about a worldview, you’re going to be talking about those two questions. How do you know what reality is? Or why do you believe that? And how do you know? And that comes down to your metaphysics and epistemology. We can talk more about that. But really it’s just asking, what is your ultimate authority or source of truth? And that’s that deep level we’re talking about.
Derek: I think it’s important to talk about worldview in this way because what I’ve noticed, especially recently, and we’ll actually talk about psychology in a later episode as it pertains to a Christian worldview, but as I’ve been teaching on this topic of biblical counseling and psychology with the young professionals, it’s just become clear to me that you can have someone like a biblical counselor, a Christian, who’s committed to Christ and the word of God, and a secular counselor who does none of those commitments and who may not even believe in God or a higher power or any of that. And we could look at somebody who’s got some problematic behavior in their life and agree on the behavior and agree that it’s a problem. But the moment we start interpreting that behavior and explaining why it’s happening, we’ve gone from observation to interpretation, and interpretation always utilizes your worldview. You’re bringing those observations into your worldview judging those observation based on your presuppositions and ultimate beliefs. And then bringing about an interpretation and saying, this is why this person is having these behaviors and this is how to fix it. We might agree on the observations, we might agree on what we see, but the moment you start interpreting it, now you’re judging things from a worldview, which is why it’s important for Christians to know this. Because you’re going to get two very different interpretations from these two people, because they have two very different worldviews. And Christians just need to be aware of that and not be naive to that reality.
Cliff: Yeah, that’s a great point. And you could say that worldview comes down to interpretation of reality. It’s like being in a court of law. There’s the evidence. We all have the same evidence, but we come up with two different interpretations. I’ll never forget this article that was in the LA Times. I think it was in the seventies, actually. They discovered an artifact, a bone, and I think it was an animal bone. And the LA Times literally said, specialists or experts have determined it’s either 250 years old or 250,000 years old.
Derek: Oh, that’s a gap.
Cliff: So how is that even possible? Well, that comes down to your worldview.
Derek: Yeah, that’s right. They’re both looking at the same bone.
Cliff: Exactly. Same evidence. Yeah, the observation they can agree on. Interpretation—that’s a clash of worldviews.
Derek: It is. And it’s so vital for Christians to realize that, or they’ll be naively swept away by the so-called interpretations of, in that case, evolutionary science or whatever it might be.
Cliff: Yeah. Another thing, Derek, just at the heart that would kind of buttress our definition of worldview perspective or what a worldview is—it’s also a matter of how you think.
Derek: Yeah.
Cliff: This is the discipline of the mind. And so with that, if you’ve got a scripture or two, one of your favorites—we do believe, you and I, as pastors, elders, Bible teachers—that there is a biblical mandate for every Christian to have a worldview, to have it fully informed in keeping with the full counsel of God and to employ their worldview as they live their life for God’s glory. And all this has to do with how we think. God made us thinking beings in his image, with the gift of the mind. It is a gift from God. It’s a stewardship responsibility. We’re accountable to him for it. We need to exercise it to his glory. He’s given us his word, the Bible, and the Holy Spirit to help us to the end. So here’s some of my favorite verses that play into this biblical mandate to think biblically and holistically by employing a Christian worldview. One is Philippians 4:8-9, where Paul commands Christians and he says the verb there—”think on these things.” It’s an imperative. It’s an ongoing, continual practice that the Christian is obligated to do. And it’s with respect to how you use your mind. He says, literally, to ruminate, think upon, meditate continually on the following things.
What things? Well, he lists like eight or nine virtues. I think the second one is true. As a Christian, you are obligated before God to continually meditate and think upon things that are true. In other words, don’t be meditating on and don’t be giving your time to things that are not true. Think on things that are true. This is the discipline of the mind. Another one. Jesus said in Matthew 22:37, that one of the great commands is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. So God expects us to love him with our mind. So the discipline of the mind.
Derek: I was going to say in Philippians 4:8-9, the fruit of thinking on what is true, and then he goes on and mentions some other things that are worthy of praise and excellent and so on. The fruit of that is that he says right after that, practice these things and the God of peace will be with you. And the flip side of that is if you’re not thinking on—if you have falsehood in your world and you have underlying beliefs that are false—then you’re going to be lacking peace. And how many people are today racked with anxiety and a lack of peace because they have a worldview that is contrary to scripture? That could be the non-Christian or even some Christians, who are racked with anxiety and a lack of peace because they’re not thinking consistently within a biblical worldview. They’re confronted with a headline or confronted with an event. They’re just thrown at all kinds of confusion and anxiety, precisely because they’re not doing this very thing: thinking on what is true.
Cliff: Yeah, that’s a good point. Because those promises that God gives—if you’re thinking biblically, thinking on truth—you’re right. The God of peace will be with you. And then he also says that the peace of God will be with you, guarding your heart and your mind, which like you said, gives you this supernatural tranquility that only a Christian can have when they’re being obedient with their thinking and their actions. As you’re saying that, I was thinking about when I was in elementary school, and I didn’t grow up with a Christian worldview. So I was vulnerable and subject to all kinds of godless untruths that were being proffered out there in the world. And, actually, one that was raging during the seventies when I was growing up and I was in elementary school and junior high was the notion that the world was going to end imminently in a nuclear holocaust. I heard it all the time. And I believed it. It was terrifying. I was scared to death for a good 5, 6, 7, 8 years as a child. I was a vulnerable, ignorant child who didn’t have a worldview. My family didn’t have a worldview. My parents didn’t have a worldview. The school I went to didn’t have a biblical worldview to protect me from that thing. So I was a vulnerable subject. And I lived in terror, literally, for years in light of this impending nuclear holocaust that was going to happen. And that’s how the world was going to end. In my lifetime, had I had a biblical worldview, I could go to the scriptures and see what God thinks. He knows how the world’s going to end. It’s not going to be a nuclear holocaust because of the Russians, which is what I was being told. It’s the glorious return of the Lord Jesus Christ, who comes to reign in glory with his people. How comforting is that?
Derek: That is comforting. He comes to rescue his people.
Cliff: So I probably lost about seven years of life because of being overwhelmed with anxiety. But that is so vivid. It was so real, so traumatic that it’s like it was yesterday, and here it was 50 years ago. That’s an example for me of this peace you can have by knowing the truth of God. Well, one more verse on Christian worldview is Romans 12:2. To have a Christian worldview and to implement it takes hard work, doesn’t it, Derek?
Derek: It does take hard work.
Cliff: It takes research, it takes counsel, and takes ongoing perseverance. And God knew that. Paul knew that. And that’s why he gave us Romans 12:2. He says, honor God with your life everywhere you go, like a living sacrifice. And the key to doing that in this evil, wicked, fallen world is, regarding your thinking, control your thinking. And he says, do not be conformed to this world. Literally do not be squeezed into the mold of the evil world and the way that it thinks. Right? Don’t buy into its false ideologies that ultimately come from Satan, but rather be transformed. “Metamorphosis” is the word. Be transformed. How? By the renewing of your mind (present tense). The ongoing renewal of the way you think by taking in data and information from God’s word, which is the truth. And that by testing everything that comes your way in life, you may be discerning because you’re being led by God’s truth. What is God’s will? Well, the things that are good and acceptable and perfect. So that’s a command. We need to be transformed by the renewing—in an ongoing way—of our mind.
Derek: That’s right. God wants us to be so transformed that we’re able to look at the world, interpret it, and able to discern what is good, what is acceptable, what is perfect, and then reject what isn’t. And in fact, in some cases actually call out what isn’t. And so that’s a vital verse. I love that verse. I think that is kind of the worldview verse for me. One of my favorite verses in this regard is Proverbs 1:7—the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. That’s the starting point. You can’t have true knowledge about the world. You can’t really know what’s going on in reality without the fear of the Lord. And that’s a beautiful verse. It’s very simple. It doesn’t depend on your intellect or where you went to school. It depends on the fear of the Lord, first and foremost.
Cliff: The fear of Lord, meaning what?
Derek: That’s kind of a euphemism for yielding your mind and your heart to God and his word—being submissive to his word, revering God and his truth. And it’s at the beginning of the book of Proverbs. And in Proverbs you see two kinds of people. You see the wise person who is yielded to God in his word and is now able to navigate life in a way that is fruitful, productive, good for him, good for others—just a wise life. He’s called the wise man. And then the other person who rejects God in his word, he’s the fool. And his life is hard. It’s a disaster. He has problems all over the place and he ends up in destruction. And so you start off that book of Proverbs saying, the fear of the Lord is what leads you into that knowledge and wisdom.
Cliff: I love that. That’s a good summary. I think that’s true. You could take the whole 31 chapters of the book of Proverbs and say, there’s two main characters other than God. And that’s the fool and the wise man. And the fool refuses to employ a biblical worldview. He wants to think in his own way and in the way of the world. And the wise man is always hearing God’s truth and applying it to his thinking.
Derek: That’s right. So he knows what’s really going on out there. Well, this has been an excellent introduction, Cliff. Thank you for all that you took us through in today’s episode. We are going to come back again in part two, and we’re going to talk about some of our favorite worldview thinkers, and then we’re going to talk specifically about how to apply worldview thinking to some issues. And so we’d encourage you to come back and be with us soon. Until next time, check out withallwisdom.org. We’ll have plenty of resources there that you can check out. And then until next time, keep seeking the Lord in his word.
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