Worldviews & Apologetics Series: Part 2
In the first part of this series, we laid out the idea that everyone has a worldview. A worldview is your comprehensive perspective on everything in the world, founded on the answer to five basic questions concerning God, Man, Truth, Problem, and Solution. It’s not just Christians who have answers to these questions. Whether people are aware or not, everyone has a perspective on these crucial issues.
In the attached chart, you can see five major non-Christian worldviews and how they view these five foundational categories. Take Pantheism as an example. Pantheism is the view that there is a divine spiritual component to all of life. This is their view of God. Historically, this view was present in Hinduism and Buddhism, but it has become popularized in the West through the New Age Movement. Not everyone who holds to this worldview verbally or overtly claims to be a Pantheist, but it comes out in their view of Man. A person with this worldview will emphasize the spiritual nature of humanity. They may say they are “spiritual but not religious.” They may talk about the need for people to “look inside themselves.” From a pantheistic perspective, Truth lies within. People should get connected with their “divine self” to find their own truth and guiding principle. For the Pantheist, the Problem with the world is our lack of inward reflection and connection to the “god-like nature” inside of us. Therefore, the Solution to the world around us is not organized religion or reason, it is the need to “commune with your own divine essence.”
Of course, this brief (and admittedly superficial) overview can’t do justice to all the dozens of streams and nuances of this worldview. But you get the idea. Every worldview can be analyzed according to the five basic categories of God, Man, Truth, Problem, Solution. It is important to keep in mind that although the attached chart outlines only five major non-Christian worldviews, there are many more. In fact, because each person has their own nuanced convictions and distinct emphasis, you could say that there are as many different worldviews as there are people in the world!
But what is important to understand next is that convictions in these five areas are only the foundation – the building blocks – to a person’s entire Worldview Pyramid. In other words, a person’s presuppositions about God, Man, Trust, Problem, Solution form the foundation upon which your views on everything else are constructed. A person’s Worldview Pyramid looks like this:
This pyramid means that if you are consistent in your worldview (though in reality nobody is fully consistent!), then your beliefs about everything in life follow from the foundation. In the diagram, you see ten topics constructed from the five boxes at the bottom. The order of these other categories is not necessarily fixed (and other categories could be added), but the pyramid is meant to show how a person’s core beliefs at the foundation directly impact the practical beliefs of everyday life. Consider each of these following areas:
- Ethics – Is there a universal moral code? How do you determine right and wrong?
- Family – What is the family unit? What is the purpose of marriage? How should parents raise their children?
- Society – What role do work and career play for individuals and the community? How are relationships formed and valued in a community?
- Government – Who defines the rights and authority in a society? How are government officials set into power and what is their function?
- Law – How is justice defined and upheld? How are consequences and punishments distributed when the law is broken?
- Science – What value and role does science have? How important are technological advancements?
- Economics – How should income, wealth, and private property be dispersed? How is business encouraged or regulated?
- Education – Who is responsible for education in society? What is the process and expectations for learning?
- Health – How do the mind and the body interact? How can physical and mental health be obtained?
- Art – What is the role of art, entertainment, and media? Are there standards of beauty and morality in art?
As we understand how worldviews are constructed, this will help us live more consistently within our own biblical worldview. For instance, are your views of government and politics formed by the culture around you or biblical convictions on the five foundations of your worldview?
But beyond better understanding our own lives and convictions, grasping this Worldview Pyramid will help us to better understand and engage the non-Christians around us. For instance, let’s say you and a family member disagree on how to handle issues of mental health. He can’t understand why people make such a big deal out of anxiety and depression. He just thinks people should get good sleep, exercise, and get on with life! In extreme cases, he says that people with a chemical imbalance may need medical intervention, most people just need more focus and determination in life. Now, you and he could spend all day arguing about mental health, but really the disagreement is happening on a much deeper level. Your views on the very nature of humanity are fundamentally different. As a Christian, you believe that humans are both a physical body and a spiritual soul. He sees people only as a collection of chemicals and cells in a physical body (a typical atheist/materialist view). You believe that mental health is impacted by physical health as well as past experiences, relational hurt, guilt from sin, spiritual health, and supernatural causes. You disagree about issues of mental health treatment (a top of the pyramid issue) because you have radically different views on the very nature of humanity (a bottom of the pyramid issue)!
The reality is that most disagreements about Society, Government, Law, etc. are actually rooted in deeper disagreements on foundational issues. That doesn’t mean we don’t discuss or defend our worldview on these other issues, but it means that we do so with a more insightful perspective. Our goal is not primarily to convince people about our view on an upper-tier issue, like Marriage & Family, without also addressing the heart of the matter. Our view of Marriage & Family is grounded in our larger Christian worldview and our deeper convictions about God, Man, Truth, Problem, Solution.
We only see the truth of the Christian worldview because God lifted the veil of our hearts and revealed himself. Sadly, “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor. 4:4). And so, we must engage people with grace and compassion. We must disagree with gentleness and respect. We must be led by the Spirit, looking for opportunities to address deeper heart issues and declare the truth. And we must pray that their hearts are softened and their eyes are opened.
In Part 3, we’ll look at more at how we engage with an unbelieving world through the disciplines of Evangelism and Apologetics.
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