What is a World View?
... the cherished premises or assumptions you hold about ultimate
reality, human beings, and the relationship between the two.
Everyone
has presuppositions, a general set of beliefs, a grid through which we perceive
everything that happens - a general belief about what is true, and they will
live more consistently on the basis of these presuppositions than even they
themselves may realize.
James Sire defines world view as
"a set of presuppositions or assumptions which we hold (consciously or unconsciously) about the basic make up of our world."
Our presuppositions form the basis for our values, and these values determine how we believe.
An individual is not just the product of the forces around him. He has a mind, an inner world. Then, having thought, a person can bring forth actions into the external world and thus influence it. People are apt to look at the outer theater of action, forgetting the actor who "lives in the mind" and who therefore is the true actor in the external world. The inner thought world determines the outward action.
"As a man thinketh, so is he."
Christians have very gradually become disturbed over
permissiveness, pornography, the public schools, the breakdown of the family,
and finally abortion. But they have not seen this as a totality - each thing
being a part, a symptom of a much larger problem. They have failed to see that
all of this has come about due to a shift in the world view - that is, through
a fundamental change in the overall way people think and view the world and
life as a whole. This shift has been away from a world view that was at least
vaguely Christian in people's memory (even if they were not individually
Christian) toward something completely different - toward a world view based
upon the idea that the final reality is impersonal matter or energy shaped into
its present form by impersonal chance.
[Francis A.
Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto, 1981]
As we consider a person's actions, it is helpful to have an understanding of their world view. The beliefs a person holds and the actions they take will make more sense when considered within the boundaries of their world view. Their beliefs and actions will generally be consisent with their world view.
The Major World Views
- Agnosticism
Holds that truth is "unknowable." - Rationalism
Sees all of nature as rational and the making of proper deductions is essential to achieving knowledge. - Pragmatism
Is more concerned with what 'works' than with what's true. - Monism
Everything is an undifferentiated oneness or unity. - Henotheism
One supreme god, not necessarily to the exclusion of other lesser gods. - Liberalism/Modernism
We must rethink and adapt our concept of God and truth to fit with modern culture and modes of thinking. - Pantheism/Naturalism
Everything is god. - Polytheism
There are many gods. - Atheism
There is no God. - Monotheism
There is only one God.
Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus
and said: “Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious.
For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I
even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you
worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you. - Acts 17:22-23
