What is a Christian Worldview?
A worldview is a set of lenses that allow a person to view reality. People use their worldview when looking at issues whether they recognize it or not.
A worldview is framed by answering four questions:
- What is the origin of humanity?
- What defines the meaning of life?
- What is the foundation for morality?
- What is your destiny?
Therefore, a Christian worldview is a set of beliefs that answer these questions. I’ve resolved there are no better conclusions to the questions of origin, meaning, morality, and destiny, than Christianity.
Thus, my actions and faith demonstrate my Christian worldview. However, at times I fail because of sin in my life.
Noted Christian apologist and author, Ravi Zacharias has occasionally replaced the word “sin” with an explanation of what it means to sin. As a result, he says, “We have lost the purpose for which we were created—to be in relationship with God.”
I like it!
Throughout my life I occasionally get “lost” and need to re-prioritize the godly “purposes” in my life because there is no place I’d rather be than in a relationship with God.
Moreover, there is no other worldview with that kind of purpose, according to Zacharias, and I could not agree more.
Zacharias told a story about his daughter losing her car keys. As she frantically searched for them, she smacked her forehead with the palm of her hand, and said, “I must be losing my mind.”
“Mommy, don’t ever lose your heart,” her six-year-old son replied, “because I am in there.”
The apostle Paul talked about his relationship with God through Christ Jesus and he mentions a “heart piece” that I’d like to connect to the last vignette:
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:14-19).
That little boy placed his love and faith in his caring mother. She provided a level of security for him that was immeasurable.
Transpose the scenario a bit and Paul writes that Christ may dwell in our heart and we may be strengthened with the power of His Spirit. Therefore, I never want to lose my heart since that is how the triune God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—works in my life.
Zacharias shared an experience he had during a debate with a leading Shiite cleric from Syria.
“Professor Zacharrias,” Sheik Hussein, the respectful Islamic scholar from Damascus said, “maybe it’s about time for us, in the Islamic world, to stop asking if Jesus died on the cross, but to ask, why?”
The answer to this question, according to the Christian worldview, can be life altering. “Because I am a sinner in need of a Savior,” is my reply.
– Jim McNeff
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Watch Ravi Zacharias answer the question, “What brings us to believe that Christianity is the exclusive way to truth?”
