WORLDVIEWS

'The purpose of a worldview is to explain our experience of the world  - and any philosophy can be judged by how well it succeeds in doing so. When Christianity is tested, we discover that it alone explains and makes sense of the most basic and universal human experiences. This is the confidence that should sustain us when we bring our faith perspective into the public arena, whether in persoanl evangelism or in our professional work.'

Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth, p.396.

WORLDVIEWS

'Having a Christian worldview means being utterly convinced that biblical principles are not only true but also work better in the grit and grime of the real world.'

Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth, p.370.

WORLDVIEWS & EVANGELISM

'...the truths of experience are not self-explanatory. Instead they merely constitute the data that cries out to be explained within an overarching worldview. Why is it that the bits of matter we call our bodies have consciousness and are able to navigate the wolrd so effectively? Why are we capable of building societies with some measure of justice and compassion? As I write, NASA has just released stunning new photographs of the surface of Mars - but why is it possible for humans to calculate a trajectory and land a spacecraft on another planet? What kind of world permits these fascinating acheivements? Our claims as Christians is that only a biblically based worldview offers a complete and consistent explanantion of why we are capable of knowing scientific, moral and mathematical truths. Christianity is the key that fits in the lock of the universe.

Moreover, since all other worldviews are false keys, we can be absolutely confident, when talking with nonbelivers, that they themselves know things that are not accounted for by their own worldview - whatever it might be. Or, to turn it around, they will not be able to live consistently on the basis of their own worldview. Since their metaphysical beliefs do not fit the world God created, their lives will be more or less inconsistent with those beliefs. Living in the real world requires them to function in ways that are not supported by their worldview.

This creates a state of cognitive dissonance, and at that point of tension, the gospel may find an opening. In evangelism we can draw people's attention to the conflict between what they know on the basis of experience and what they profess in their stated beliefs - because that is a sure sign that something is wrong with their beliefs.'

Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth, p.318.

WORLDVIEWS

'A wonderfully simple and effective means of comparing worldviews is to apply the same grid of Creation, Fall, and Redemption. After all, every worldview or ideology has to answer the same three sets of questions:

1. CREATION: Translated into worldview terms, Creation refers to ultimate origins. Every worldview or philosophy has to start with a theory or origins: Where did it all come from? Who are we, and how did we get here?
2. FALL: Every worldview also offers a counterpoint to the Fall, an explanation of the source of evil and suffering. What has gone wrong with the world? Why is there warfare and conflict?
3. REDEMPTION: Finally, to engage people's hearts, every worldview has to install hope by offering a vision of Redemption - an agenda for reversing the "Fall" and setting the world aright again.'

Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth, p.134.

WORLDVIEWS

'...worldview is not an abstract, academic concept. Instead, the term describes our search for answers to those intensely personal questions everyone must wrestle with - the cry of the human heart for purpose, meaning, and a truth big enough to live by. No one can live without a sense of purpose and direction, a sense that his and her life has significance as part of a cosmic story. We may limp along for a while, extracting small installments of meaning from short-term goals like earning a degree, landing a job, getting married, establishing a family. But at some point, these temporal things fail to fulfill the deep hunger for eternity in the human spirit. For we were made for God, and every part of our personality is orientated toward relationship with Him. Our hearts are restless, Augustine said, until we find our rest in him.'

Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity fropm Its Cultural Captivity, p.55.  

WORLDVIEWS

'...everyone tends to have two worldviews: a confessional, professed worldview and a functional, actual worldview; the one they claim - even to themselves - and the one they really live. We may carry around a well-crafted, theologically precise, and biblically consistent worldview. But against the tug of daily living, that professed worldview does not always exercise the pull it should. At the street level of daily life, the way we actually live reveals what we truly believe.

For example, many Christians who have the sovereignty of God as a principle element of their professed worldview still fret over their circumstances or work too hard to establish control over things. Many Christians say they are sinners, yet stubbornly defend themselves when confronted with an area of sin in their life. Many Christians claim to believe that the most important things in life are unseen, yet they invest their time, energy, and resources in a life-long pursuit of physical pleasure and comfort.'

Paul David Tripp, Broken-Down House, p.216.

MEANING

'I had a motive for not wanting the world to have meaning; consequently I assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics, he is also concerned to prove there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to to, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in a way that they find most advantageous to themselves...For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.'

Aldous Huxley in Randy Newman, Questioning Evangelism: Engaging People's Hearts the Way Jesus Did, p.67.

IDEOLOGY

'The essence of ideological statements is that, unless our political senses are developed, we will fail to spot them. Ideology is released into society like a colourless, odourless gas. It is embedded in newspapers, advertisements, television programmes and textbooks - where it makes light of its partial, perhaps illogical or unjust take on the world; where it meekly implies that it is simply stating age-old truths with which only a fool or maniac would disagree.'

Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety, p.214.