Worldview

He is a quiet young man, but not too serious to flash a smile at friendly banter. I met him on my recent trip to Haiti, and he reminded me of the significance of one’s worldview.

The morning we met him, he responded to a personal invitation to place his faith in Jesus. The faithful evangelist on our team led him in a prayer of surrender. The young man stayed around, so later in the day I chatted with him again. I asked him if he was still afraid of evil spirits. “Yes,” he said, as he dropped his head and averted his eyes.

Western culture would scoff at such a mystical view of reality, and even declare itself free of such nonsense. But everyone has a worldview whether you realize it or not. James Sire, in his book “Naming the Elephant,” defines worldview as “a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions which we hold about the basic constitution of reality, and that provides the foundation on which we live.” My young friend’s story is that evil prowls the earth and would devour anyone who defies it. Jesus counters that with, “Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul” (Mat. 10:28).

The secular, naturalist story is an uncaused big bang, the appearance of the cosmos, the random (statistically impossible) evolution of life, and the eventual demise of the universe as it runs down. Per Carl Sagan, “The cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be.” The faith that it takes to believe there is no transcendent being, no First Cause, itself rises to the level of a religious worldview.

The pluralist story is that despite their mutually exclusive claims, all religions lead to the same truth and all moral choices are relative. The popular religion story is that God’s bookkeeping requires life’s balance sheet to have more good than bad. Neither of these require a Savior.

The danger is if your worldview prevents your seeing the world and your place in it as they really are, and if you are unwilling to accept evidence to the contrary. My challenge to you is to consider your idea of the big story, and how you came to that orientation of the heart. Does it provide answers that are coherent and satisfying? The Christian worldview does.

William Henley declares in his poem “Invictus,” that “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.” That is quite a contrast with the ancient worldview, “My soul waits in silence for God only; from Him is my salvation. He is my rock and my salvation, my stronghold; I shall not be greatly shaken” (Psa. 62:1-2).