Worldview

I saw a word recently that caused me to stop and think. Not an easy thing at my age…thinking I mean. The word is “worldview.” It usually comes attached to a question, as in, “what’s your worldview?” I never really thought about it. My view is I’m here and so are a lot of other people. And we all have something in common. We were created by a loving God and we all need a Savior.

But I think the “world viewers” expect more from me than that. Have you thought about your worldview? I had to look it up to get a working definition. In a nutshell, it’s about beliefs and attitudes and what we think about life. It’s our framework for making sense of what we believe and why. Do we believe in God? Why are we here? What’s our purpose? Where did we come from? What happens when we die?

Just before Christmas, a friend of mine went with a group from our church to a maximum security prison. After the visit he told us the question he heard most often was, “what’s next for me?” They weren’t asking what happens tomorrow or when they get out of prison. Many are there for their natural life. They were asking, “what happens to me when I die?” They live in their own personal hell now and wanted to know if there was any chance they might go to Heaven when they die. Can a man serving a life sentence for murder get to heaven?

I have a worldview most won’t agree with. I think people are bad. I think they are wicked, depraved, evil and lost. They are capable of doing an occasional “good thing” but not much more. My worldview is framed around my belief in God. The God who created me. The God of the Bible. The one who tells us, “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?” Jeremiah 17:9

George Barna, a researcher who studies the religious beliefs in America, asked these questions.

• Do absolute moral truths exist?
• Is absolute truth defined by the Bible?
• Did Jesus live a sinless life?
• Is God the all-powerful and all-knowing creator of the universe and does he still rule today?
• Is salvation (eternal life in Heaven) a gift from God that cannot be earned?
• Is Satan real?
• Does a Christian have a responsibility to share his or her faith in Christ with other people?
• Is the Bible accurate in all of its teachings?

I answered “Yes” to each question. According to Barna, only 9 percent of people claiming to be “born-again” did. Why? Our “Christian” worldview gets corrupted, diluted. Forces around us act on what we believe and cause us to move away from what we know is right. Television, movies, music, schools, secular humanism, universalism, all mess things up. And we are surrounded by this stuff continually. People believe in a god they created. Not the true, living God.

Back to the prison question. God sent his Son to die for us, each of us, no matter our worldview. Trust Him and eternal life is yours. Even the guy condemned to die in prison can have it. What’s your “worldview?”