Making Sense of Your World

A Biblical Worldview

How is the Book Organized?

Introduction

Part One: The Difference a Worldview Makes

  1. When Worldviews Collide

    Major events in life tend to force us to wrestle with the ultimate questions of origins, meaning, morality, destiny, and identity. Our answers to those questions reveal our worldview, which is a framework of our most basic beliefs that shapes our view of and for the world and is the basis for our decisions and actions. There are many worldviews to choose from, and we must keep in mind that it doesn’t matter whether or not a particular one suits us, but whether or not it suits the world; that is, does it match reality. All worldviews confront the three major concepts of human existence—God, humanity, and nature—and it can be helpful to compare and contrast them in those three arenas. If a worldview doesn’t match reality, then feel free to throw it out, but if it does, the only reasonable response is to search out its implications and consequences.

  1. The World of Worldviews

  1. Putting Worldviews to the Test

Part Two: A Biblical Worldview

  1. The Essentials of a Biblical Worldview

    FOO

  1. Why a Biblical Worldview?

    The Bible is God’s word—his truth—accurately received and written, and faithfully transmitted to us through the ages. Its authorship was supernaturally inspired by the Holy Spirit, and the product of that inspiration is inerrant and infallible in all things. Jesus assumed and relied on this view of inerrancy in his teachings, particularly in asserting his claim to be God incarnate. The inspiration of scripture took place through the prophets in the old testament and through the apostles in the new, and then stopped. The Bible we have today is the best historically attested ancient document we have by orders of magnitude; nobody does textual criticism like biblical scholars do. Many claim there are errors and contradictions within scripture, but closer examination of things like context and the meanings of words reveals these claims to have no foundation.

  2. What’s Wrong? The Problem of Evil and Suffering

  3. Who’s Right? The Problem of Pluralism

Part Three: So What? A View Of and a View For

  1. A View of and for the Self

  2. A View of and for the Family

  3. A View of and for the Church

  4. A View of and for the World

Questions

  1. Before you read, write out the titles of the major sections and chapters to see how the book is organized.

    Part One: The Difference a Worldview Makes

    1. When Worldviews Collide

    2. The World of Worldviews

    3. Putting Worldviews to the Test

    Part Two: A Biblical Worldview

    1. The Essentials of a Biblical Worldview

    2. Why a Biblical Worldview?

    3. What’s Wrong? The Problem of Evil and Suffering

    4. Who’s Right? The Problem of Pluralism

    Part Three: So What? A View Of and a View For

    1. A View of and for the Self

    2. A View of and for the Family

    3. A View of and for the Church

    4. A View of and for the World

  2. According to the authors, why does everyone have a worldview?

    We all have a “story,” a description of what life is about, why we are here and where we are going. A worldview is the framework of our most basic beliefs that shapes our view of and for the world and is the basis of our decisions and actions.

  3. Give a summary statement for each of the worldviews.

    Naturalism

    The natural world is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be.

    Theism

    There is some being, which we call God, outside the natural world that brought it into being.

    Transcendentalism

    Everything in the natural world is a part of the supreme being known as God.

  4. Write out several meaningful quotes from the book you want to remember.

    • Consistent thinking on the part of Christians does not exist. While some lament the nonexistence of the Christian mind, American Christianity charges full speed ahead in its course of incessan activity, indomitable individualism, and irrepressible pragmatism. Comprehensive and coherent Christian thinking has never been a major part of religious life in America.

    • The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less.

    • Many Christians brandish a commitment to a biblical worldview that goes little beyond a “moralistic therapeutic deism”, believing in a God who only exists to enhance their personal behavior and well-being.

    • A belief about God is really a belief about everything else.

    • Does a biblical worldview fit the actual world? If it does not, then it may be discarded onto the heap of misguided philosophies. If it does, then a careful search into its implications and consequences is the only reasonable response.

    • Those who do not consciously evaluate their worldview beliefs end up “catching” their worldview the same way they might “catch” a cold—they absorb it from the culture around them.

    • As late as the nineteenth century, most scientists gave the purpose of scientific investigation being to shore up religious belief.

  5. How does thinking “worldviewishly” help us to “make sense of the world?”

    Because our worldviews are at the root of all of our thoughts and actions, we need to think in terms of worldviews to understand what’s really going on behind the scenes. If we don’t, we’ll constantly be talking past one another, as we’re working from completely different paradigms. What makes complete sense in one worldview simply won’t compute in another.