Worldviews

1
Worldviews

• Berea PCA Church
• Fall 2007

2
Fall Sunday School Outline

• How Should We Then Live? (10 videos)
• Francis Schaeffer shows influence of worldview
  on progression of Western Civilization.
• Presentation of alternative worldviews
• Keith Worley 15 minute skeleton outlines
• Church and culture
• Mark Doherty How the church has interacted with
  culture at different points in time

3
What is worldview?

• Take my heart, form it (Heart/faith)
• Take my mind, transform it (Intellect)
• Take my will, conform it (Behavior)

4
What is worldview?

• A worldview is a commitment, a fundamental
  orientation of the heart, that can be expressed
  in a story or as a set of presuppositions
  (starting assumptions) which we hold about the
  basic constitution of reality, and that provides
  the foundation on which we live and move and have
  our being.

• James Sire, The Universe Next Door

5
What is worldview?
Theology
Law
Philosophy
Ethics
Economics

• A worldview is the way we view our world and our
  place in it.
• Answers fundamental questions.
• Any set of ideas, beliefs, convictions or values
  that provides a framework to help you understand
  God and the world.

Politics
History
Sociology
Psychology
Biology
- David Noebel, Understanding the Times
6
Only 12 of evangelicals know what worldview is,
and only 4 said they needed to know anything
about it.
Remember!!
7
Diagnostic Questions

• What is really real? (God, gods, Cosmos)
• What is the nature of the world around us?
  (Orderly, Chaotic, Closed, Open)
• What is a human being?
• What happens at death?
• Why is it possible to know anything?
• How do we know right from wrong?
• What is the meaning of history?

Remember!!
8
Who has a worldview?

• Everyone
• Few people have anything approaching an
  articulate philosophy. Even fewer, have a
  carefully constructed theology. But everyone has
  a worldview.
• Do you know what your worldview is?
• Society or culture as a whole
• E.g. historic battle between Christianity and
  Secular Humanism in the West
• How do worldviews take hold???

9
Popular Culture
Professionals
Artists
Thinkers
10
Why does it matter?

• Good Defense--You are being influenced by ideas
  and beliefs in culture!
• TV, Education Secular Humanism
• Movies, Entertainers New Age
• Science Naturalism
• Ethics Moral Relativism
• Good Offense--We cant communicate the gospel
  without pre-evangelism.
• Cant assume people operate from Christian
  worldview. Cant necessarily argue from the
  Bible.

Take every thought captive - 2 Cor 105
Demolish false arguments - 2 Cor 104
11
What will you gain?

• Growing confidence in your Christian faith
• Other worldviews have serious flaws
• All worldviews require faith
• Christianity is a rational way of life
• Awareness of other worldviews
• Learn to use the 7 questions to assess your TV,
  radio, books, conversations See to it that no
  one takes us captive through philosophy empty
  deception. (Col 28)
• How am I allowing popular culture to
  unconsciously shape my beliefs?
• Growing confidence to engage people of other
  worldviews
• Compassion for the lost confused

12
The Roman Age

• Christians rejected syncretism (combination of
  different belief systems) all other gods were
  judged FALSE.
• God had spoken, so Christians had knowledge of
  themselves, mankind, absolute values. People had
  basic dignity as made in image of God.
• Roman culture though turned from this revealed
  Christian base culture became satiated with
  violence, sex, bombastic music, poor art, and
  abandoned intellectual life.
• Rome was pressured from the outside (Barbarians),
  but fell because of internal rottenness resulting
  from their weak basetheir collective worldview.