In the broadest terms, holding a biblical worldview simply means that your understanding of who you are, how you are to live and how you determine good from bad come from the teachings of the Bible. While I think believers and unbelievers alike understand this basic definition, the end results go much deeper than many realize.
Philosophers have long stated that a worldview needs to address, at least, the following items:
-Why is there something instead of nothing and do we know its origin?
-What, if anything, is the purpose for what exists, including man?
-What is man’s nature?
-How do we know right from wrong?
-How do we determine truth from error and accumulate new knowledge?
We are all making use of some type of worldview. For example, if you were asked your opinion on a political matter, a relationship issue, the best way to solve a certain problem or how to best raise children, your answer would be based on the assumptions you make about human nature, what you think is right from wrong, etc.
At the risk of being too general in nature, below I provide 5 high-level points that help define a biblical worldview. I will write blog posts providing greater detail for each of the points in the near future.
1. The Bible claims to be from a higher power, one with the scope and knowledge to provide us with a perfect and completely accurate worldview. But does the Bible provide a way for us to validate that it is what it claims to be? It does! The validation is based on the falsification principle (the same principal at the foundation of the scientific method and all of modern science and technology) [Deuteronomy 18: 21 – 22 & Matthew 7: 15 – 20].
2. The Bible teaches that God created all things and all things were created for His glory [Genesis 1: 1 & Colossians 1: 16 – 17]. Humans are the crown of creation, being made in God’s image and given dominion over the rest of creation [Genesis 1: 26 – 28]. Humans also, though, are created for God’s glory [Isaiah 43: 6 – 7]. Our lives are not about us but about Him.
3. Our morals are to come from God through the Bible. Humans tend to vary our moral norms based on society and culture. The human heart – though capable of many good things – is not completely pure as is God’s heart [Jeremiah 17: 9] and, therefore, we are not equipped to determine or design an ideal moral code [Proverbs 14: 12 & 16: 25]. The Bible’s moral code is summarized by the Ten Commandments [Exodus 20: 1 – 17], the Greatest Commandments [Matthew 22: 36 – 40] and the Golden Rule [Matthew 7: 12]. Because we cannot achieve the perfect morals of God, we must rely on Him and His righteousness rather than our own, in order to be in fellowship with Him [Romans 10: 1 – 4 & Ephesians 2: 1 – 10]
4. The main point we need to understand about human nature is that our faults and the evil we choose to do comes from within us and we cannot / should not blame them on outside forces [Mark 7: 20 – 23 & James 1: 14 – 15]. If this portion of a biblical worldview had been understood throughout human history, repeated disastrous attempts at building utopian societies could have been avoided. A second fault is that humans will naturally divide rather than unite, seeking a common enemy as a rallying cry.
5. Humans are to use the same falsification-based principal to determine truth from error and accumulate knowledge in our secular endeavors that we use in determining the truth about religious texts [Deuteronomy 18: 21 – 22, Matthew 7: 15 – 20, I Thessalonians 5: 20 – 22, II Timothy 4: 3 – 5 & Romans 16: 18]. The foundation for modern science comes from the pages of the Bible. God explained the basics of where matter and energy came from and then challenged man to subdue the earth (through scientific advancement) and have dominion over it (through science’s technological innovations). Some interesting end results of applying the biblical falsification process are that Bible followers are now highly skeptical of extreme environmentalists (because their predictions about environmental outcomes over the past 5 decades have simply not come true – they are “false prophets”) but are in favor of genetically modified foods (GMOs), because tests on them are proving that they are safe.
After proving itself to be true, the Bible provides all the info we need to understand why we are here and what our purpose is. In addition to laying out the moral framework which should guide our lives (our religious, family, personal and business lives), it also taught us how to determine truth from error and accumulate knowledge. As stated above, I will provide additional information on each of these 5 points in future posts. There is also a great deal of information on the topic in my book Clear Vision: How The Bible Teaches Us To View The World, which can be purchased here.
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