the task.... to define my personal worldview

(a paper I wrote on my personal worldview... I will be adding to the thoughts of this paper as the course moves along...)

Understanding what a worldview is, yet not knowing how to begin to describe my own, I went to the faithful Webster’s for help; the dictionary defines worldview as both “the overall perspective from which one sees and interprets the world” and “a collection of beliefs about life and the universe held by an individual or a group.” In pondering my own set of beliefs and perspective on the world, it seems to me only natural to return to the place of the initial shaping of my view on life… the home. One’s immediate family plays an important role in the shaping of a person’s worldview.

All of my life I have listened to my mother answer the phone with the phrase “Jesus is Lord!” At first I thought it was normal; when I learned it was not how every other mom answered the phone I was mortified and asked her to stop. Many people have called our home and, believing that they have dialed the wrong number, they hang up. This phrase is at the core of my mother’s worldview and, even on a very practical level, governs everything she does. Growing up in a home where Jesus as Lord was unabashedly proclaimed and the truth of the Bible was taught, my worldview was shaped through this set of beliefs.

I have many beliefs which influence the way in which I view the world. To break it down to the bare essentials, I believe that there exists a God. I believe that Jesus Christ, as the son of God and therefore deity, actually took on human flesh to die for the sins of the world. At the center of my beliefs about God is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The root of my beliefs is found in the Bible, which I believe to be the true will of God. The essential question of one’s worldview are two questions: “What do you view as truth?” and “How does one come to know the truth?”

Even further at the center of this worldview is the truth which exists concretely, stands alone, and governs the universe. In the closing paragraph of Lee University’s mission statement, there lays a statement loaded with implications; “truth is truth, wherever it is found.” While I am in agreement with this statement, I feel that further specification should be made in order to defend Truth. There are universal truths. For example, I may be able to glean wisdom from a Hindu’s practices and beliefs; but the ‘truth’ I find there is lacking unless it leads to the knowledge that, apart from Christ, a religion is leading to eternity without God. To further illustrate my point, I turn to C.S. Lewis. In his fictional work The Great Divorce, Lewis allows us to hear dialogue of two characters’ discussion on truth:

“For me there is no such thing as a final answer. The free wind of inquiry must always
continue to blow through the mind, must it not? ‘Prove all things’…to travel hopefully is
better than to arrive.” to which the other responds, “If that were true, and known to be
true, how could anyone travel hopefully? There would be nothing to hope for.”

A popular phrase in our present culture has become “I am comfortable with questions as answers.” While I would never deny that there are many questions with which we cannot form definite answers (‘now I know in part; then I shall know fully’, I Cor. 3:12), and to try to form answers to some questions would be overstepping our boundaries as finite beings, I do cling tightly to the truth I know to be revealed through the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit. Yet the truth is messy and not easily packaged into a nice little gift-wrapped box. To attempt to do so would deny that God seeks us out and reaches different people in different ways.

I believe in a God-centered theology as truth; that all men were created to glorify God forever. But the very real truth which is in Scripture is that men cannot come to know their Savior through nature; they must hear the truth of the gospel. At the very center of my worldview is that those who are apart from Christ are perishing, and therefore I will answer the call to make disciples. This is the main truth which governs the Christian worldview with which I live.