The Importance of Worldview Thinking

By Ricardo Barber

A worldview is the way one sees the world, and from this understanding they think and act out their worldview. A worldview contains a person’s answers to the major questions in life, and Nash suggests that almost all of the questions contain significant philosophical content.[1] The philosophical systems of great thinkers of the past outline their worldviews. Based on these systems we can determine how they view life and the world around them. Since we can categorize personal beliefs and put them in particular worldviews, it helps us better understand a person’s convictions, so our approach toward them will differ from another.

It is a biblical mandate for the Christian to witness. The study of philosophy can help us realize what a person's worldview is and assist them by providing new information that will fill and eliminate inconsistencies in their conceptual system. By removing these errors we push the person closer toward a conceptual scheme that contains Christian theological beliefs by which they can interpret and judge reality rightly. Worldviews contain at least seven elements of beliefs, namely beliefs about God, external reality, knowledge, ethics, human nature, human history, and what happens at death. Worldview thinking has important connections to Christian Theology. “Instead of viewing Christianity as a collection of theological bits and pieces to be believed or debated, individuals should approach it as a conceptual system, as a total world-and-life view,” writes Nash.[2]

Worldview thinking also has significant implications in regards to religiosity. A person cannot separate his beliefs and use them when he pleases, it is rather a dimension of life that shapes and influences everything we do and believe. Religion is an inescapable given in life because all humans have something that concerns them ultimately, and whatever that may be, that object of ultimate concern is that person’s god.[3] No human is religiously neutral quotes Nash from Henry Zylstra’s book Testament of Vision:

"Whether the person in question is an atheistic philosopher offering arguments against the existence of God, or a psychologist attributing belief in God to cognitive malfunction, or an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer attempting another tactic to remove religion from the public square, no human is religiously neutral."[4]

There isn’t a dichotomy that splits religious folk from nonreligious folk. The world is composed of only religious people who have different ultimate concerns and different gods and who respond to the living God in different ways[5]. All persons are “incurably religious,” as John Calvin taught; we just manifest different religious commitments. Nash states that, “This point obliterates much of the usual distinction between sacred and secular. A teacher or a politician who pretends to be religiously neutral is not thinking very deeply.”[6] Christianity isn’t a part of life religion; it is an all of life worldview that has something to say about the whole of human life. Understanding these concepts about worldview thinking can give us a clear view of God and also put us in better position to rationally justify our beliefs and actions in every area of life.

[1] Ronald H. Nash, Life’s Ultimate Questions: An Introduction to Philosophy (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999), 13.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid, 18.
[4] Ibid, 19.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.