Biblical Landmarks

The Signs of a Successful Worldview

Limitations. This is how you can tell a fake worldview.

A worldview has answers to questions. Not vague answers, but very specific answers. Those answers are intimately tied into and connected to the questions and answers that establish the worldview. By that, I mean that the answers flow straight out of your idea about who you are, how you know things, and the moral standards you inherently aspire to. And the answers to these things are directly related to your idea about God. Not just god in general, but specifically the Triune God of the Bible.

Consider this question: How much of its citizens’ money is the government morally entitled to? There are possible answers:

a. As much as it likes
b. No more than 50% (or it might be even no more than 10%)
c. Nothing

Whatever the answer, you need to ask these questions:

1. What is the standard?
2. How do you know what the standard is?
3. Has that standard been communicated to you in some form?

You can read the Old Testament many times over and get some of the answers that are provided today as part of the biblical worldview. Why do I insist the Old Testament is the measuring rod? Because it was there first. And whatever was there first defines what comes thereafter.

Contemporary Christianity has reversed things because of it’s belief about the New Testament. Somewhere along the way, the Old Testament was dropped as the standard and the New Testament took its place.

The result? No worldview. Take again the example of taxation. You can read the Old Testament, especially the Torah, and you find there is no scope for civil taxation as we know it. Certainly no grounds for personal income tax. (This, by the way, explains why in the Western world, personal taxes almost disappeared after the collapse of the Roman high taxes.)

Here’s another question: Should the government operate radio stations? What standard says they should? How will they pay for it? Voluntary advertising or compulsory taxation?

What, by the way, is the real role of the government? Is it the government’s role to make law, or simply to administer someone else’s law.

What’s the standard?

Now there’s a question, the answer of which eludes many people. So instead of specific answers we get vague notions of morality about how if the government did not act, we we would be a menace to one another.

Now you cannot read the Old Testament, particularly the first five books containing the Law of God, without coming away with at least one impression. There is no national government. There are national rules of right living, but no national government to enforce the rules. Apparently God is quite capable of enforcing His rules without aid from the government. (Someone should tell them!)

With Christianity’s progressive abandonment of the Old Testament, there are no more comprehensive biblical answers to the questions. But there has been a rise of national governments attempting to enforce the rules of right living.

Until there is a united testimony from both Old and New Testaments, the cultural questions will remain unanswered because those who claim to have the answers are divided. And we all know the prophecy that a divided city cannot stand.

Neither can a divided religious group.

Now I am going to bring this series to a close. But I have one more e-zine to go. Part 7: The distinguishing mark of the Christian World View in the modern era.

God bless you this week.