A biblical worldview is an essential part of thinking properly about God and His creation. Thanks in part to the Enlightenment and its long-lasting effects of modern thinking, we often think like humanists rather than like faithful stewards of God’s truth. In order for Christians to be effective in the culture, they need to understand what it means to think God’s thoughts after Him. Or as Cornelius Van Til succinctly stated it: “God is the original while man is the derivative. Man’s thoughts must therefore be patterned after God’s thoughts.”
The Christian worldview should be working to displace non-Christian worldviews through reasoned arguments and reliance upon the Holy Spirit. A Christian is to destroy “speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God” (2 Cor. 10:5). In principle, there is never any room for compromise. (In practice, however, both a believer and an unbeliever can work together to stop abortion, help the poor, or build a hospital. Why? The unbeliever is working within the Christian’s worldview, presupposing that these efforts are worthy of attention even though in principle they contradict the basic assumptions of the unbeliever’s worldview.)
The Rosetta Stone is a good way to understand worldviews. The slab of black basalt stone was unearthed by one of Napoleon’s officers near the town of Rosetta in northern Egypt in 1799. With its discovery, many of the mysteries of Egyptian society and culture were solved. Carved in Egypt around 200 B.C., the hard marble-like stone includes “a message inscribed in hieroglyphic (at the top), demotic, another lost Egyptian script (in the middle), and Greek (at the bottom). With the aid of the familiar Greek the other two lost Egyptian modes of writing were deciphered.”
In a similar way, God has given us a revelatory Rosetta Stone—the Bible—to direct our understanding of Himself, ourselves, the world in which we live, and how we should live in the world He created for us. Without the Bible, we are left to speculate what we think is true and right. Such a reading of the world would be like trying to decipher hieroglyphics without a translator.
Thinking Straight in a Crooked World
The nursery rhyme ‘There Was a Crooked Man’ is an appropriate description of how sin affects us and our world. We live in a crooked world of ideas evaluated by crooked people. Left to our crooked nature, we can never fully understand what God has planned for us and His world. God has not left us without a corrective solution. He has given us a reliable reference point in the Bible so we can identify the crookedness and straighten it.
Buy NowOn today’s podcast, Gary answers a listener question about theological resources and courses to help a young pastor. Not everyone can attend or will benefit from seminary. Reading and teaching the Bible doesn’t require a seminary education, although it is certainly helpful. Many books and courses are available today to help all people get a better understanding and a more comprehensive knowledge of the entire message of Scripture.