What's Your Worldview?

We've established that worldview is a person's beliefs and assumptions about reality. Your worldview affects your values, which affect your behavior, which affects your culture.

Have you thought about your worldview? Do you think you make assumptions or do you think that you consciously choose to believe in what you do? Do you even know what your worldview is? Here are some questions to help you think about that:

-Who, or what, is God?

-What is a human being?

-What is "nature"?

-Where did life come from?

-How do we know what is really true?

-What is morality, and how is it determined?

-What determines the value of children?

-What role do parents play in raising children?

-What is religion? How does it fit into everyday life and business?

-What is sacred, and what is secular?

-What is the purpose of man? Why does he exist?

Your answers to these questions will reflect your worldview, whether or not you're aware of what it is.

Greek Philosophy and Hebrew Theology

Are you a Greek or a Hebrew?

“What kind of question is that?” you may ask. Maybe you’re looking at the title of this post and thinking, “I’m neither a philosopher nor a theologian. Is this post for me?” Yes, it is.

I’m talking about worldview.

The Greeks worshiped a pantheon of gods, but these gods were too human. Instead of awe-inspiring deities, it was more like soap opera characters with superpowers. So the Greeks started to reject the idea that a higher power existed. Instead, impersonal Nature was the driving force in the universe.

Because of this, the Greeks had no cause to believe that divine revelation existed. Instead, they tried to determine absolute truth based solely on human reason. The problem was (and still is) is that in such a situation, truth becomes muddled. Black and white merge into grey, and virtues are subjective. The Greeks pursued philosophy because they had no answer to the question, “What is truth?”

On the other hand, no one remembers the Hebrews for their philosophers, because they didn’t have any. They had no use for them. See, the Hebrews did not believe the power of human reason was sufficient to find truth; it’s too subjective. In order to find truth, divine revelation is necessary, as it came from God our Creator, definer of the universe, and is therefore objective.

Such a society produces theologians, people who study God, and all their philosophy (that is, way of thinking) is concerned more with the practical application of the truth revealed to them. The Halakha (part of the Talmud) is full of various rabbis’ teachings on how to apply principles found in the Torah to everyday life (“halakha” literally means “the way of walking”). The Hebrew question wasn’t, “What is truth?” but rather, “How do we live the truth?”

Thousands of years later, western civilization still reflects the Greek view. Even those who are Christians still subscribe to Greek ways of thinking, and quite often teaching in contemporary churches does not reflect the view that all Scripture is God-breathed. Living the truth has been traded for feel-good, self-improvement type of teachings, which leave many of us grappling with the idea of ‘dying to self,’ among other Biblical concepts.

So: do you use your reason to find the truth, or do you use it to figure out how to live the truth?

Are you a Greek, or are you a Hebrew?

Worldview: Why is it Important?

Worldview: a person’s beliefs and assumptions about reality. It’s the lens through which they look at everyday life. It informs their daily choices – perhaps not what cereal they choose to eat in the mornings (though it’s possible, since paleo relies on an evolutionary worldview), but rather things like voting on social matters, what they choose to volunteer for, what they spend money on, or what hobbies they pursue.

The foundations of worldview are found in these questions:

-What is God?

-What is man?

-What is reality?

A society’s worldview affects personal values, which affect behavior, which affect culture.

Supposing a society’s worldview included a belief that demon’s whispered evil things into the left ear. That society might believe that the left ear heard only evil things, so they might cut it off, and you get a society of people with only their right ear intact. Or, instead they might only take advice if the person giving it to them was standing on their right. Or they might walk around with a cork in their left ear. An insult aimed at a person who made poor choices might go something like, “You must have been listening through your left ear!”

Laugh at my superstitious example if you want. Such a result is fairly inconsequential – though if demons really did do such a thing, it would be an entirely different matter. Let’s compare something more relevant: man being made in the image of God vs. man being an accident of nature.

If mankind is made in the image of God, as the book of Genesis informs us, then what does that say about the value of a human being?

No other creature in heaven or on earth is made in the likeness of God, and no other beings are loved so much by their Creator. Did you realize that not even the angels are as special? There’s no plan of salvation for them. In speaking of the prophets and of the gospel, Peter mentions that “even angels long to look into these things” (1 Peter 1:12). God didn’t die to save the fallen angels; he came to save us. He took the punishment that his justice required so that we wouldn’t have to. Being made in the likeness of God has a number of implications beyond this.

If mankind is not created, but randomly appeared through natural processes, then what does that say about the value of a human being?

In such an instance, a person’s value would be determined, perhaps, by their contribution to the gene pool, or by their contribution to whatever is valuable to their society. Maybe it’s strength, as in ancient Sparta, or maybe it’s art and philosophy, as it was in ancient Athens. Whatever it is, we eventually realize that if there’s no higher authority than ourselves, we can do whatever we want to other people. Or maybe we end our existence prematurely, falsely believing that life has no meaning or purpose.

These two basic worldviews are reflective of the mindsets of the Hebrews and the Greeks. In my next post, we’ll explore the mindset of those two civilizations and how they still affect us today.