As we continue through our year long series, Know the Story, Live the Story! I want to highlight reasons why it is so important for Christians to know the Bible. You see, I believe the Christian is in a “worldview” battle. That is, there are varying worldviews that exist all around us vying for supremacy. Whether you are aware of it or have ever even considered the notion, we all have a worldview. Whether consciously or not, our worldview is shaping and guiding us as well as filtering the information we are getting from the world around us. It is sort of like the operating system on your computer. You may not be thinking about it while you are using your computer, but all the while it is in the background guiding and forming how your computer interacts with the information you are putting into it.
A worldview at its most basic level is the filter or set of lenses through which one looks at the world, events, etc. For example, a Hindu in India has a very different set of lenses through which she views her experiences. Let’s say that you have an exchange student from India and while the two of you are driving through the Michigan countryside, you hit and kill a deer. Though you might be upset (it’s never fun to kill an animal, especially Bambi’s mother or father!), you have no problem seeing this as one of the realities of living in Michigan. The exchange student, however, may find herself much more distraught, concerned that something of a far greater nature has just taken place. What’s the difference? Worldview.
As a Christian you view the world through the lenses of Genesis. That is, God created everything and made it good. Humanity, though not divine (i.e. a god), is created in the image of God and given the responsibility by God to care for all of God’s creation. Thus, though animals are special in that they are part of creation, they are neither divine nor on the same plane as humanity. History then because God is creator is seen as having a beginning and moving toward an ultimate culmination in which all creation will give an account, and as humans we get only one go around at this life. In a nutshell, this is the Christian “operating system” in place as you stand staring over the poor, dead deer.
Now your Indian friend, on the other hand, has a drastically different operating system. As a Hindu she doesn’t believe that history is linear (i.e., in a line with a beginning and an end) but rather cyclical. She believes in something called reincarnation that holds that all creatures are attempting to progress from various levels of “rebirths” through the lower forms of life on up to human life and eventually to the liberation from human existence all together. One’s karma (bad things one does or the results of the past lives you lived or the culture/caste into which one is born) is thought to keep a person trapped in this cycle until you get it “right.” As a person does well in one life, she is reincarnated in the next life, but now up a level. If, however, she doesn’t live that life well, she may go backwards. Of course, since Hindus see all of creation as divine (or an emanation or part of God), when you ran that deer over, you might very well have been running over your dead aunt Maude! (who is now dead once again!)
You see, how you and I view the world makes all the difference as to how we interpret tragedy and celebration, trials and victories. If there is a Creator God who is both Judge and Savior before whom we will all one day stand, this perspective will effect everything we do and think.
This is where our year-long series comes in. How does one gain an informed Christian worldview? By studying the Bible. By knowing the story and how it flows. By living within that operating system (story or narrative). The better we know the story…the better we know the Author of the story…the more we will live that story out in a way consistent with the way God views the world.
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