In our last step in triage, we learned that truth exists, and that reality is immaterial as well as material. These two pieces are foundational to a Christian worldview. They may not necessarily be directly tied to the Christian faith, but they are philosophically essential to a worldview.
If you’ve never heard of a worldview before, it’s essentially your understanding of reality. Your worldview is the lens through which you view the world and everything in it. Your worldview is basically your answer to the question of which story fits best with the facts of our world. This means that not everyone’s worldview is true. Your view is only true when your view fits reality. Every worldview has four main parts to it. Let’s take a look at what those are:
1. Creation: Why is there something and not nothing? Every belief system in the world has its own understanding of this question, and it really boils down to only two options. It’s either: in the beginning the particles or in the beginning God.
2. Fall: Why are things not the way they should be? This question addresses the problems with the world we live in. Again, the answer only boils down to two choices. Either things are broken in the world and there is a better way, or things aren’t broken and that’s just the way the world is. Your answer to this question stems from your beliefs about the value of humanity. Do humans have some measure of intrinsic value, or are we no more valuable or special than any other animal on earth?
3. Redemption: What will make things right? If things have gone wrong, there are really only a few possible ways to answer this question. Either humans save humans with God’s help (religion), humans save humans with no help (irreligion), or God saves humans (Gospel).
4. Restoration: When will things be made right? This one can be tough to test for. It’s where we long for justice, a sense of home, and where hope sets in. It’s hard to test, but we can test to see if it flows out of the rest.
If you’re going through a spiritual emergency, your path to healing starts here. You need a coherent, factual story that runs through these four things.
At this point, you need to hear something that’s so, so important: faith is not the foundation of our faith. When we begin to construct our worldview, we don’t actually start with faith, we start with facts. We can see an example of this in the life of the Apostle Paul as he is in the city of Athens talking to a group of people that doesn’t share his worldview. Let’s take a look at Paul’s argument in Acts chapter 17:
22 “Paul then stood up in the meeting Areopagus and said: ‘People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship – and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.’” (Acts 17:22-23)
Paul and the Athenians here both had an immaterial worldview that included truth. The problem was that the Areopagus missed the truth, and Paul wanted them to know, so he explained it in a way that would connect to their current worldviews. He then tells them a better story, one rooted in reality:
24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’” (Acts 17:24-28)
Why is there something and not nothing? Paul’s answer is God. He is the creator, and He is personal.
Paul continues:
29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone – an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.” (Acts 17:29-31)
Here Paul says that the problem with the world is that people have turned from God, which we know because God invites them (and us) to repent and turn back to Him. Paul even speaks to the fact of the resurrection as the validation for all of this. Finally, he looks ahead to justice on the day of judgment. With this final building block of restoration, Paul moves his argument through all four of the essential pieces of a solid worldview.
Let’s look at what happened next:
32 “When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, ‘We want to hear you again on this subject.’ 33 At that, Paul left the Council. 34 Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.” (Acts 17:32-34)
They placed their trust in Paul’s description of reality.
This is all the starting point for a Biblical worldview. Who is God? What is sin? Who is Jesus? These are the three main questions that you have to wrestle with as you begin to rebuild your own worldview through spiritual emergency. But how do we know that Paul is right? Here’s what he wrote later in his life about what is most important:
1 “Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. 2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. 3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was risen on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.” (1 Corinthians 15:1-8)
What Paul is saying here is that this entire worldview hinges on the resurrection of Jesus, which is why he points to the evidence that supports its truthfulness. The risen Jesus appeared to many people before appearing also to Paul himself.
When it comes to rebuilding a worldview, it can be easy to get lost on a lot of different issues. There are lots of things that have been debated both by those inside and outside of the church for centuries. You will get the chance to tackle those things in time. For now, just stay focused on these primary questions and try not to get sidetracked by the smaller things. For now, this is your treatment plan for rebuilding your worldview.
A similar treatment plan has been used by Christians for about 1,800 years. They called it the Nicene Creed. The Nicene Creed is one of the most famous and influential creeds in the history of the church and it is essentially a product of two different ecumenical councils – one in Nicaea (modern-day Turkey) in AD 325, and one in Constantinople (now Istanbul) in AD 381 – and a century of debate over the nature of the relationship between God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. This council was called together to address a problem that had split the church for a number of years regarding the deity of Jesus. In Alexandria in AD 318, a presbyter named Arius began publicly proclaiming his theory that Jesus was not God at all, only a celestial servant of God. The creed itself mentions all three members of the Trinity in a similar order and retains the snapshot of the gospel story when it describes Jesus. Basically, it’s a summary of the entire Gospel. It describes the triune God, who turns toward humanity in the person of Jesus, the God-man who suffered, died, rose again, and ascended. The creed also goes on to express our future hope and the purpose of living the Cristian life. I want to encourage you to read it on your own time when you get a chance, and I pray that it would be helpful as you rebuild your worldview.
Ultimately, we want to encourage you to know that the Christian story of reality can be your story of reality. A Christian worldview is a fact of reality and as simply as possible we could say it like this: God made it all, we ruined it all, and Jesus is restoring it all. That’s a rock-solid worldview.
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