Believers need to restore biblical view to change hearts

I see Christians, including yourself, describe America's moral plight by referring to the shift in our "worldview."  Exactly what is meant by the word "worldview" and what must we do to change it?

I appreciate the question because many times the message that Christians are trying to communicate gets blurred because words like "worldview" may have vague meanings.

Dr. David Noebel 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." Each person makes basic assumptions about reality based on their view of the world.  The theological and philosophical assumptions one has colors his view of every aspect of the world he lives in.  There are essentially two worldviews--biblical and non-biblical.

In our nation the non-biblical worldview is presented vigorously and aggressively.  As Christians, we need to be equally as aggressive and (speaking about aggressive) consider the words of Theodore Roosevelt, "The world is at this moment passing through one of those moments of convulsion when the souls of men and of nations are tried as by fire.  Woe to the man or to the nation that at such a time stands as once Laodicea stood; … when they dared not come to the help of the Lord against the mighty.  In such a crisis the moral weakling is the enemy of the right, the enemy of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Thus, we must recognize that we are truly involved in a battle for worldviews but the battle is not against a physical enemy, "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places."(Ephesians 6:12) Equipped with the armor of God and the power of the Holy Spirit Christians have a decided advantage in this conflict.  Unfortunately, however, we are loosing ground in America today.  I believe this is so because Christians do not understand the times.  We need to be like the men of Issachar in 1Chronicles 12:32 who, because they understood the times, led the entire nation, even though they were small in number.  The issues, abortion, divorce, homosexuality, etc., are not the problem, they are only symptoms of the problem.  Christians don't seem to "understand the times" and spend a lot of time fighting these sins but do not realize that they are trying to impose their beliefs from the top down instead of building and defending their worldview from the foundation up.  The foundation of the non-biblical view of the world is that there is a natural cause to every effect but the Biblical Christian worldview is built on the foundation that all we see and experience is a result of a supernatural creation corrupted by man's sin.

Francis Schaffer said, "The basic problem of the Christians in the last eighty years or so, in regard to society and in regard to government, is that they have seen things in bits and pieces instead of totals.  [Christians have] become disturbed over permissiveness, pornography, the public schools, the breakdown of the family and finally abortion.  But they have not seen this as a totality--each being a part, a symptom of a much larger problem.  They have failed to see that all of this has come about by a shift in the world view--that is, through a fundamental change in the way people think and view the world and life as a whole."

Unfortunately in our culture we want a quick fix to the problem.  Perhaps, we reason, if we could only get the laws changed in regard to abortion things would turn around. As we approach the elections next Tuesday we must realize that if we get the laws about abortion changed that a new administration can just come in later and change them back.  The real battle is over the hearts of men; the political arena has no power to bring spiritual transformation.  This is not to say that we do not have a duty as well as a privilege as citizens of this nation to vote and fight against these problems.   However, like the men of Issachar, we must know where the enemy is attacking in order to be effective.  This attack in our time is obvious and overt and aimed directly at the foundation of Christianity--that God is creator and we are accountable to Him.

Only the biblical worldview provides a consistent explanation of the facts of reality and in order to restore the biblical worldview we must do what we can to reclaim, rebuild, repair and defend the foundation of Christianity that God is creator. 

11/4/00
Page 40

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©Tom Carpenter
Originally published in the Rockdale/Newton Citizen