One of those picture perfect moments came when my then six year old grandson got his first pair of glasses. We began wondering if his sight was poor when he started kindergarten. After an eye exam, the doctor prescribed glasses for shortsightedness. His face lit up when he put them on. His expression screamed, “Wow, there are things out there I never saw before.” He looked at the world from a whole new perspective. The lens through which we look determines what we see. As a hunter, late in the afternoon, I wear glasses that filter out certain colors allowing me to the spot game better in the fading light. Soldiers now can function effectively in the dark because of night vision glasses. I’ve seen toy glasses that distort the world into funny shapes and sizes. Our eyes remain the same, but the lenses cause us to see the world differently.
Whether people are aware of it, everyone views the world through intellectual lenses. These lenses serve as filters that determine how we comprehend reality. We call it worldview. Our worldview is a set of beliefs and assumptions with which we interpret and draw conclusions about the important issues of life—Who am I? How did I get here? Where do I go when I die? How do I determine truth, right, and wrong? What is the meaning of life?
No one is born with a worldview. Rather the culture around us molds and shapes our basic beliefs. Of course, some of these beliefs are untrue. When we receive Christ, our worldview begins changing. Paul says we are to be transformed by the renewing of your mind (Rom 12:2). This verse indicates more than accumulating new information in our brain. The way we view the basic issues of life changes to a Biblical worldview. This brings a new set of truths and values plus filters out incorrect beliefs.
Today the world offers a smorgasbord of worldviews with all of them claiming to be true. Although people adhere to various individual worldviews, one overarching perspective normally prevails in the world. History shows worldviews have evolved through the centuries. Prior to the mid-nineteenth century, the established perception of the universe centered on God. God revealed truth and it was absolute. People interpreted all of life through this belief. However, with the Enlightenment, emphasis shifted to scientific facts through reason and logic for finding truth. People developed a Modernist worldview and began scrutinizing all previously accepted truth and traditions. This pushed God into the background. Truth became relative based on scientific discoveries instead of God’s Word.
In the mid-twentieth century modernism evolved into post-modernism as people began losing hope for finding unchanging truth. With God pushed so far in the background and in many cases eliminated, instead of objective absolute truth from God or even relative truth from science, mankind believed he must create his own truth. Truth became subjective and relative according to what the individual wanted. The only absolute they believed was there are no absolutes—a contradiction in itself.
Christians are engaged in the greatest battle for the mind today since the first century. Now as in the first century, non-Christians see a Biblical worldview as a radical worldview, which many are determined to eradicate. Paul warned; See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ (Col. 2:8). The dominant worldview today has morphed into secular humanism. Public educational systems from grade school through college strive to reshape students so they filter the world through this perspective. In a nut shell, secular humanism states, “Man is the measure of all things.” It seeks to abolish any idea of God. This leaves man to determine his own truth, his own fate, and his own morals. The noted apologist Norman L. Geisler wrote, “Secular humanism presents one of the greatest threats to the survival of Christianity in the world today.”
Christians cannot take a neutral position and allow secular humanist to pressure us into compromised positions about the Bible. Jesus told us, You are the light of the world. . . Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven (Matt 5:14, 16). God gave us the tools to combat unrighteous men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness (Rom 1:18). We use our powerful God-tools for smashing warped philosophies, tearing down barriers erected against the truth of God, fitting every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ (2 Corin 10:5 MSG).
In the last eight years, I have never seen my grandson’s parents need to remind him to wear his glasses. We should never remove the lenses God provides for us through the Holy Spirit and the Bible. We must guard against the world molding us into its worldview that filters out and compromises His absolute truth.
Sustaining Word for the Week: A Biblical worldview simply sees the world as Jesus does. Through it, you see things you never knew were there.