What is a worldview, what it’s made of, and why it matters.
Short Answer
What is a worldview? A worldview is “the sum total of our beliefs about the world.” (Chuck Colson). We all have a worldview, it consists of certain parts, and leads to real-life actions.
Long Answer
Have you ever put on colored glasses? Slip on those colored glasses and everything you see takes on a shade of the lens color. If you put on red colored glasses, everything takes on a different hue of red. If you put on green colored glasses, then everything looks green – and so on. That’s like a worldview.
Definition: Worldview
A worldview is a way you look at the world. It’s the lens through which you interpret all your experience and through which you make decisions. It’s your colored glasses you wear, even if you don’t know you’re wearing them. More technically, according to David Noebel, author of Understanding the Times (Focus on the Family), a worldview is…
“The framework from which we view reality and make sense of life and the world. “[It’s] any ideology, philosophy, theology, movement or religion that provides an overarching approach to understanding God, the world and man’s relations to God and the world.”
That’s a great definition. But sometimes it helps to sum up many words with a few. So a more simple understanding comes from Chuck Colson who once said, a worldview is “the sum total of our beliefs about the world.” (Focus on the Family)
Everybody has a worldview. That worldview may not be well-developed or the person holding it may not be able to articulate it clearly, but each person has a distinct way they interpret their world. For instance, each of these people have a worldview…
- The crying 2-year old who believes he’s the center of the universe.
- The atheist biology professor who just finished a lecture on Neo-Darwinism.
- The Christian pastor who just posted a blog on his church’s website.
- The Hindu technical support rep who just answered your computer question.
- The stay-at-home mom who just finished cooking dinner.
You and I have our own worldview too. Whenever we overhear a conversation from someone in a coffee shop, or stumble upon lewd website, or when we read an unbelievable news story, we automatically file that new information into a grid of prior understanding. That understanding is our worldview.
Parts of a Worldview
A worldview, like a philosophy, has different aspects. Depending on the teacher, some divide worldviews by a few parts and others by many parts. Here’s a simple, but not too expansive worldview framework. Every worldview includes the following 8 areas:
- God (Theology)
- Knowledge (Epistemology)
- Origin (Cosmology)
- Humanity (Anthropology)
- Morality (Ethics)
- Salvation (Soteriology)
- Meaning (Teleology)
- Destiny (Eschatology)
God (Theology) – Every worldview has a theology – it says something about God or the divine. The view may be very precise or vague, explicit or implicit, negative or positive (i.e. atheistic vs. theistic), but every worldview talks about God.
Knowledge (Epistemology) – Likewise, worldviews usually attempt to explain knowledge: what we can know and how we can know it. It also comments on closely related subjects, like truth, logic, reason, experience, intuition, and revelation.
Origin (Cosmology) – Worldviews always explicitly or implicitly tell us where we came from. For instance, the secular worldviews relies on some form of molecules-to-man evolution. Biblical Christianity teaches special creation in six days a few thousand years ago.
Humanity (Anthropology) – In the same way, every worldview has a take on human beings. It represents a certain perspective on humanity. It articulates our origin, uniqueness (or non-uniqueness), purpose, nature, and destiny. Worldviews always address what we are and our significance.
Morality (Ethics) – Each worldview also has a distinct take on goodness and morality. Ethics covers areas like the highest good, whether morality is objective or subjective, what is right and wrong, and rewards for doing good or judgments for doing evil.
Salvation (Soteriology) – Worldviews also include a “salvation story.” When Christians hear the word ‘salvation’ we tend to think salvation from sin, death, and hell through the atoning work of Jesus. But here ‘salvation’ is more generic: what is the basic human problem and what is the solution to that problem.
Meaning (Teleology) – What is the meaning of life? Every worldview aims to answers this question. The answer to this question in each worldview tells us why we are even here.
Destiny (Eschatology) – Finally, a worldview tells us something about the destiny of the universe and everyone in it. Though the end has not happened yet, each worldview describes what will happen based on their understanding of reality and revelation.
Worldview Describes Your Beliefs Which Lead To Your Actions
In addition, every component of a worldview is interrelated. Theology relates to anthropology and anthropology relates to knowledge, and so on. What you believe about God has a direct impact on what you believe about humanity and our ultimate destiny.
These worldview components also affect how you will live your life and your ethics. And your ethics lead to real world actions. Then think about it like this…
Thought Experiment: The Atheist & The Mentally Ill Child
Pretend you’re an atheist. In your atheist mind, us humans are just a cosmic accident floating on a remote rock in a cold, dying universe. We are stardust, as an old song says. That’s a standard understanding in an atheistic worldview. If that’s true, what makes killing a mentally ill child wrong?
You may think it’s wrong because it feels wrong, and it’s not something you really want to do. But if you’re a consistent atheist, can you really justify your uncomfortable feelings about murder? Perhaps that’s just your unreasonable self who hasn’t come to terms with your atheism just yet. In your new reality, that child is just stardust and you’re stardust too.
So what’s really wrong with some stardust snuffing out another speck of stardust in the mind of an atheist?
See how one aspect of someone’s worldview can affect their life. And that’s just one example of how someone’s atheism (theology) affects their view of a mentally challenged person (humanity) and whether it’s okay to kill that person (ethics).
Of Worldviews and Philosophies
Studying worldview is a fascinating area. It’s essentially a fresh way to consider yours or others basic philosophy of life. Worldview analysis can uncover what you and your friends believe which can be helpful in important conversations.
Suffice to say: we all have a worldview, it consists of certain parts, and it describes your foundational beliefs which leads to real-life actions.
Resources
James Anderson: What Is A Worldview?
James Anderson: What it Takes to Make a Worldview
Del Tacket: What’s A Christian Worldview?
Matt Slick: What Are Some Christian Worldview Essentials?
Hello, Todd! Thank you for your post about worldviews. I’m a Christian who believes that Science only helps us see God’s infiniteness more and more clearly. Our professor back then taught us about paradigm shifts, like the colored lenses but you wear different ones to see things in a different like. I like to think about our different faiths in this world as different colored lenses. No matter how confident one claims his lens to be, it’s always colored. It’s like the three blind men and an elephant. Everyone’s worldviews is influenced by what a person feels the elephant to be (a man who holds on to the snout believes the elephant to be a slithering snake, while the man holding the trunk believes it to be as thick as a tree) and they’re not entirely correct, but they’re not wrong either. For me, that and a lot of other things make it seem more clearly to me that no one can know the whole Truth because it’s impossible. Taken another way, no one can know God’s infinity despite how many synaptic connections you make in your brain.
It’s great to know that there are people like you who advocate the coexistence of science and faith, standing to be the counterculture in a world that tries to kick God out of the picture. I wish more people would wear the clearest kind of lens I know: the lens of humility. The lens that knows it doesn’t know everything.
Just one last comment before I go. I’m pretty concerned with the ethics of killing a baby, an argument which a lot of Christians use against Atheists. I’ve seen a lot of Apologetics writers write the same thing, but I’m always disturbed by it because it would seem like the whole Atheist groundwork would crumble at this question, when it fact it can easily be explained by evolutionary theories. People who develop the hardware to “see themselves in others” are sure to survive far better than those who sacrifice or kill their own kin. It can definitely explain why it feels wrong to do this.
Though I agree that Atheism always falls apart at some point. For me, what’s actually more concerning and more difficult to tackle is Agnosticism. Knowing that there’s a God out there, but you don’t really care about what He says and does. For me, that’s one of the truest manifestations of a heart that has been hardened towards God. Atheists actually look for Christ, but don’t know it. Agnostics know the possibility that He is there, but choose to disregard it as a waste of time, maybe even a cultural machine that has produced abominations throughout the centuries.
This is just my two cents on the matter. Thank you for this refreshing post! Hope to hear from you sometime.
Thanks for writing, A Christian Socrates. Indeed, more will profess Agnosticism than Atheism – it seems like an easier position to take. But it is self-refuting. When someone says they “don’t know if there is a God”, they are professing some bit of knowledge – namely that they KNOW “there is no God.” Agnosticism is prevalent, but is not easily defensible.
Your statement “When someone says they ‘don’t know it there is a God’ they are professing some bit of knowledge – namely that they KNOW ‘there is no God,’” makes no sense. Your def of agnostic also does not seem to match Christian Socrates.
I am agnostic and I do not know if there is a god or God or gods or Gods. I certainly do not know there is no god or God or gods or Gods.
I was a formerly about as devout as possible and understood my belief to be the actual truth, truth that was obvious and supported by the evidence available from all around. However by trying to articulate that evidence to others, I came to the unfortunate realization that almost all believers gave nonsense – truly false – answers like yours to Christian Socrates when those believers were queried on any point about the support for their faith. I could never formulate legitimate arguments showing either (1) the absolute truth of my then beliefs about God or gods (which I had thought was absolute truth up to that point) or (2) even reasonable confidence for any belief in God or gods.
The most honest, indeed the only honest answer, I ever heard to my questions was from one of the most devout believers I have spoken with. That answers was that it is a matter of faith, there is no support for it; it just has not been proven absolutely false, so one can still believe despite the evidence.
That last point also seems to be the bottom line position of the most honest and well educated believers, such as Polkinghorne. (I familiar with some of Polkinghorne’s statements, but am not familiar with all of Polkinghorne’s positions, so I am not sure that was his bottom line position.)
Agnosticism seems to be the ONLY defensible position. Even the “new atheists” all seem to be agnostics in technical fact, because they allow the possibility that they could be wrong, but that their being wrong is phenomenally unlikely in their view.
Rich – Biblically speaking you do know, and you’re trying to convince me and the other readers of your “agnosticism.” Seems like a curious past time of agnostics and atheists (along with yourself in this thread): evangelism. Why do it? Why try to convert people if you truly were agnostic? You sound very convinced in your “agnosticism.” So much so you had to write something here. Okay, “agnostic”! (wink, wink)
Romans 1: 19-20: “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”
what does it mean when I say “we find what we are looking for?” within my world view, I believe in God and His son Jesus died and rose again. Why do I know and believe this?
Hi Sheila – not sure where you’re seeing ‘we find what we are looking for’. As for why you believe in Jesus, it likely relates to how God has caused you to be born again. Regenerate (born-again) people believe the gospel because God has done a miraculous work of grace so that you would believe.
So God CAUSES people to believe? Based on what elective standard? Why some and not others? Would not His ” UN ELECED” be a cause in itself, removing the ability from the ” UN ELECT” to believe in the first place? Does that not imply we have no ultimate real choices at all? Without a standard of WHY God elects, and HOW we can know beyond mere profession, NO ONE can KNOW anything. Does that not imply that God’s election process is ARBITRARY? If pre determinism is the case, then who is really asking these questions?
Please subscribe me to your blog.
Thanks for the overview. I really appreciate the breakdown into the various philosophical areas. I printed to use again, as I think this will make an excellent framework for lessons for our youth group. Solid resources are always a good find. I will return to your website again. Thanks again!
Thanks, Dena. Blessings!
Wauuh! Excellent deliberations here!
Thanks this really helps me. I needed this for school work.
Thank you for this article. I have recently written a discipleship manual workbook, where worldview is one of the topics which is covered. The desire is to add this link to the additional resources, where people can get a better understanding of what to include when forming their worldview. I am thankful for your desire to be informative for others to glean this understanding. As I write in the workbook, if someone does not have a worldview, then they are a blank page for others to write their views on it.
Hi every one, Tom Seath here from cold and windy and rainy wintery South Australia.
I have been reading up on every one’s replies and I am wondering why anyone wants to reply to Todd’s and Rocks comments at all?
If you do not believe as they do, then why comment at all, because you are not going to change their world biblical view.
Look at the rainbow and tell me you do not instantly feel that sense of ease and comfort and joy each time you see it in the sky.
Why do you feel that way if you are not made in the image and likeness of God as He so stipulates to every one everywhere, each day and night that He is keeping His promise to Adam and to Noah and to their generations to come after them in Genesis 9: 8-17
Genesis 8- 17
“And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.
And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations:
I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.
And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud: And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.
And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.
And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.”
And from that sincere heart warming knowing and seeing and believing that every thing is going to work out alright, and then you go about the rest of the day comforted in your mind body and soul.
This is also true when you are irritated and restless most times because there is in you as it is in me that experience of once knowing only good, to now knowing both good and evil, and you rise up against the good as much as you do against the evil in you and in the world too (Gen 2, then 3: 14 and 15.
The next world view question from me is – Why does God mention those to specific trees in the Garden of Eden? The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and The Tree of Life?
This is a great world view changer for me, going back 32 years ago, now.
Many thanks every one.
See ya.
Many blessings to come