Beginnings of a Worldview – Foundations of a Worldview

Beginnings of a Worldview
Foundations of a Worldview

Psalm 119:89-91
Forever, O LORD,
Your word is settled in heaven.
Your faithfulness endures to all generations;
You established the earth, and it abides.
They continue this day according to Your ordinances,
For all are Your servants.

In this series we are going to put down a footprint for a Biblical worldview. A worldview is just what it sounds like, a way of looking at or thinking about the world, together with the hopes and aspirations we cherish, and projects we undertake in that world, for sake of what we understand to be the “good life.”

“Worldview” is not an academic term; this is not a topic reserved for intellectuals or those who have too much time on their hands. Everyone has a worldview. No one goes through life without thinking about the world and everything in it, trying to make sense of it and to discover his way around in it, with a minimum of pain and hubbub and a maximum of enjoyment and fulfillment. All this is worldview thinking.

Worldview thinking begins at a very early age. Children get in mind an idea about what’s “good” for them—what they want out of their daily experience, what will give them enjoyment—and then they begin to interact with their environment in order to achieve their goal.

Now this isn’t happening consciously, at least, not fully so. But kids know what they want. They clap hands and smile when they get it, and they whine or fuss or cry when they don’t. They maneuver around the playroom, learn the skills of eating, make the best of bath time, and grudgingly go off to bed when led to do so. They learn, if only implicitly, that life is not all play or eating. There are times for resting, times for sitting still, and the necessity of learning to accept parental authority and to get along with other children. Keeping their own greatest desires at all times in mind, or, at least, very near to the surface of their thinking, children acquire disciplines, submit to protocols, and settle into ways of getting along that enable them to get what they want much of the time, and to put up with what they have to the rest of it.

Along the way they are reinforced in their choices and behaviors by loving parents, who condone and applaud certain ways of being-in-the-world and discourage and perhaps punish those which are not in line with the larger worldview within which the child is trying to carve out his own.

As long as he is a child certain things will be expected of him which, the older he gets, will no longer be necessary. The child will learn principles—such as eating well and getting along with others—that may take certain forms while he’s crawling around the playroom, but which will be differently adapted as he goes off to school or gets a job or begins a family of his own.

But the basics of worldview thinking and living are set down from the earliest years. Everything we learn and do in life simply builds on the outlook and skills we began to acquire as children.

The same is true with the worldview presented in the Bible. It begins in the infancy of God’s people, in rules and promises and protocols given through Moses. These can sometimes seem harsh, but they encode truths and principles that do not change, even though they must be adapted as the children of God mature into the Body of Christ.

But before we get too deep into the subject of worldview, let’s take a look at the dimensions of a worldview, so we can set down that footprint we’ll begin to fill out as we go along.

Act: How do the people you know define “the good life”? Talk with a few of them—some Christians and some non-believers. How do their views of the good life compare with your own?

Jesus came proclaiming the Kingdom of God—another primary theme of Scripture. Order a copy of The Gospel of the Kingdom from our online store, and learn how you can become more effective at proclaiming this wonderful Good News.
Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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In the Gates is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T. M. Moore, editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).