Challenging our Culture | WOrld Changers | Cultural Conflict or Cultures in Conflict

Check out notes from Timothy Keller’s book Center Church (I only had temporary access to it so it may be out of LOGOS but I pasted chapters in notes)

J. D. Greear Sermon Archive Who We Are, Where We Come from and What We Do: 1 Peter 2:8–12

4 attitudes Christians have toward culture and politics.

J. D. Greear Sermon Archive Who We Are, Where We Come from and What We Do: 1 Peter 2:8–12

● Pietistic stance—this group has an indifference toward the world, things like politics and injustice; they’re like: “we’re going to be raptured; and it’s all going to burn up in the end, so our main focus should be to convert as many as we can.” I mean, how worried should you be about the arrangement of the deck chairs on the Titanic if you know it’s sinking?

● Conservative activists—they believe the problem with our culture is that our culture has lost its moral absolutes; we need to recover Christian worldview and make our society more Christian. We need to get prayer back in schools and God back in government. Jerry Falwell and Glenn Beck need more TV programs.

● Evangelical relevants—piercings, tattoos, say frikkin’ a lot. They say “No, no … the problem is that the church is too removed from culture, and when we do speak we’re always hostile to it: we’re always talking about how wicked Hollywood is and how depraved the music is; what we should be doing instead is speaking up for the poor and marginalized and trying to get guys like Bono to write more songs and more people to wear Tom’s. Rob Bell for President.

● Counter-culturalist—we really shouldn’t be concerned with making the world like the church, or trying to reform the world. We need to meet the marginalized where they are and shape a new Christian society. God’s arena is the church, not the world.1

Which one is right? Careful. Each has some truth in it; but each one is incomplete. I’m not going to fully answer this question today, but this passage gives you the central framework to begin thinking about it.

The Bible on Church and Culture

Timothy Keller April 1, 2008

At Redeemer we encourage Christian ‘cultural engagement,’ but there are critics who say that we should instead simply work at ‘being and building up the church’ and avoid any efforts to change or renew culture. I’d like to offer a few Biblical texts that serve as a starting point for Redeemer’s approach to this issue.  Loving your neighbor First, Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan teaches that we are not only to love our brothers and sisters in Christ but also our neighbors (Luke 19:25-37.) In Jesus’ day, the idea of ‘neighbor’ and ‘brother’ was the same thing. Love and support were to be only shown to one’s own tribe, race, and faith. By making the two main figures in the parable to be a Jew and a Samaritan, however, Jesus drove home the fact that a Christian must consider anyone at all, especially those of other races and classes, as my neighbor, even if he or she is of another faith. Paul follows up with the command to “Do good to all men, especially the household of faith” (Galatians 6:10.) Here Paul clearly tells believers to serve the interests of their non-Christian neighbors. The word ‘good’ includes giving material benefits (as in the parable of the Good Samaritan) out of love and desire for a person’s well being in every way. Thus Paul calls Christians to consider and work for the ‘common good’ of their neighborhood and city.  It is no wonder that Christians seeking to obey Christ and Paul have over the centuries worked to abolish slavery, repeal child labor laws, and open voting rights to all citizens, as well as to begin thousands of programs and ministries that help the poor and needy.  Working for your God’s glory Second, the New Testament tells us to do absolutely everything for the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31) and this includes one’s vocation and work. Work and cultural production is never neutral, but is always driven by particular beliefs about what life is all about, what people are for, what is right and wrong. In every profession, gospel beliefs will effect how we do our work. How they do so varies greatly from field to field. Sometime the differences between believer and non-believer are not very great in practice. But if we practice law and supervise our employees and do art in a ways increasingly informed by Christian faith, it will lead at least indirectly to changing social mores and norms. Salting and lighting your world Third, in Matthew 5:13-16 Jesus tells his disciples they are to be ‘the salt of the earth,’ and a ‘city on a hill’ whose ‘good deeds’ are a light that will lead non-believers to praise the Father in heaven. Salt dispersed into meat was a preservative. So Jesus is indicating that Christians out in the world who are living lives consistent with the gospel keep society from deteriorating, morally, socially, and culturally. In a parallel passage (1 Peter 2:11-12) Peter says that Christians living life in the world evoke persecution in some respects and yet will nevertheless influence many pagans to ‘praise God.’ In his article on 1 Peter, ‘Soft Difference’ Miroslav Volf shows how this tension Peter envisioned does not fit neatly into any of the historic models of relating Christ to culture. Unlike the models that envision a ‘transformation of culture’ or an older ‘Christendom’ alliance of church and state, Peter expects the gospel to always be highly offensive and to never be embraced and accepted by the world. Unlike the models that call for withdrawal from the world and are highly pessimistic about influencing culture, Peter expects some aspects of Christian practice to be highly attractive to any pagan culture, shaping and influencing people to ‘praise God.’ The classic example of being resident aliens is in Jeremiah 29, in which the Jews are called both to keep their distinct religious identity, not assimilating culturally to the Babylonians, and yet to be deeply involved in the economic and cultural life of Babylon, seeing to its peace, prosperity and common good.  Not power, but service   The commands to love our neighbor, to do all our work out of a Christian worldview, and to be salt and light, working for the common good of all city residents—mean Christians will of necessity be doing cultural renewal. People who say, “The church should not seek any impact on culture” should be asked, “should Christians have not worked to abolish slavery?” That was a response to God’s command to love our neighbor, but it also brought massive social change.  Nevertheless, looking back over the texts I am struck by the simple fact that cultural change is always a by-product, not the main goal. The main goal is always loving service. If we love and serve our neighbors, city, and Lord, it will definitely mean social changes, but Christians must not seek to take over and control society as an end in itself. If we truly seek to serve, we will be gladly given a certain measure of influence by those around us. If we seek power directly, just to get power and make the world more like us, we will neither have influence nor be of service. Everyone around us will view us with alarm, as well they should. https://timothykeller.com/blog/2008/4/1/the-bible-on-church-and-culture

Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption Worldview

What exactly is a worldview? Let’s start with a few illustrations; a little later in this chapter, we’ll move to a definition.

• A chain: Every chain of reasoning has to start somewhere.

• A building: Every brick of your knowledge has to be built on some ultimate foundation. It can’t just be bricks all the way down.

• A lens: A worldview is like a set of lenses through which you see everything around you

  What exactly is a worldview? Let’s start with a few illustrations; a little later in this chapter, we’ll move to a definition.

• A chain: Every chain of reasoning has to start somewhere.

• A building: Every brick of your knowledge has to be built on some ultimate foundation. It can’t just be bricks all the way down.

• A lens: A worldview is like a set of lenses through which you see everything around you.1

1 Ward, M. (2016). Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption (M. L. Ward Jr. & D. Cone, Eds.; p. 5). BJU Press.

COMING TO TERMS

The word worldview appears to have come into English as a translation of the German word Weltanschauung. Welt (velt) means “world,” and anschauung (ON-shao-ung) means “point of view,” “opinion,” or “perception.”

Christian thinkers have used or proposed different terms. The prime minister of the Netherlands at the turn of the twentieth century, Abraham Kuyper, was a strong Christian and strong proponent of worldview thinking. He liked to call the biblical worldview the “Christian world and life view.” But that’s unwieldy, like a couch being carried through a narrow door. Most people have settled on worldview.1

1 Ward, M. (2016). Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption (M. L. Ward Jr. & D. Cone, Eds.; p. 5). BJU Press.

This book will suggest that every worldview—whether Dr. Steve’s or yours—has three ingredients:

1. A worldview contains a “head-heart system” of basic beliefs, assumptions, and values.

2. A worldview tells a big story about the world.

3. A worldview produces action.1

1 Ward, M. (2016). Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption (M. L. Ward Jr. & D. Cone, Eds.; p. 6). BJU Press.

INGREDIENT 1: HEAD-HEART SYSTEM

Most definitions of worldview start here: a worldview is a set of basic beliefs, a more or less organized (and most people’s worldviews are less organized) system of assumptions and values. People’s thoughts tend to develop patterns and fit into systems. Even if they are content with numerous inconsistencies, their thoughts are never completely random—none of us can bear to live in total mental chaos. God made us to be like Himself; that’s what it means to be made in God’s own image (Gen. 1:27). God thinks logically, and we can’t help but want to as well.

There is a difference between functional beliefs and basic beliefs. You may believe that Reykjavik is the capital of Iceland, but this is not a basic belief. Worldview thinker Al Wolters suggests that basic beliefs answer questions like “Can violence ever be right? Are there any absolute, unchanging moral rules for human life? Is there a point to suffering? Do we survive death?”5 1

5 5 Albert Wolters, Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 3.

1 Ward, M. (2016). Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption (M. L. Ward Jr. & D. Cone, Eds.; p. 6). BJU Press.

JEFFERSONIAN TRUTH

Thomas Jefferson spoke of a Creator in the American Declaration of Independence, but he didn’t mean by this quite the same thing the Bible means. Neither was he a deist, exactly, though the Founding Fathers are often thought to be deists. Christian historian Gregg Frazer suggests that Jefferson—and Ben Franklin, and John Adams—are best described as “theistic rationalists.”6 They believed in a god, but a god who served reason—and not the other way around. Notice that he said truths can be “self-evident,” that is, drawn from within rather than revealed by God.1

6 6 Gregg L. Frazer, The Religious Beliefs of America’s Founders (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2012), x.

1 Ward, M. (2016). Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption (M. L. Ward Jr. & D. Cone, Eds.; p. 7). BJU Press.

INGREDIENT 2: MASTER STORY

The second major element in worldviews is story. A worldview tells a master story, a big story that begins in the beginning (like Genesis 1:1) and tells what happened afterwards to shape the world into what it is. (Such a “big story” is sometimes called a metanarrative.)1

1 Ward, M. (2016). Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption (M. L. Ward Jr. & D. Cone, Eds.; p. 10). BJU Press.

  The story of the world that Project Steve is promoting goes something like this: “Once upon a time, the big bang happened. We all evolved by random, undirected processes from non-life through lower forms of life to reach the top of the evolutionary heap (at least here on earth). Our problems exist because our evolution is incomplete. Our purpose is to evolve and progress still further toward … well, future extinction as the energy in the universe burns out.”

Some scientists have recognized that this master story is, to put it mildly, uninspiring. It does little to bring purpose to individual cultures or peace to individual people who find themselves hurting on the bottom of the heap. Those on top might even use this story to conclude that survival of the fittest justifies whatever violent choices they make. So some scientists have worked to turn the results of modern science into what they call “a story for our times,” a big story that will inspire us and guide us all morally on life’s path.

Two of these scientists produced a PBS* documentary called The Journey of the Universe. Host Brian Swimme, an evolutionary cosmologist,* opens the film with the following comments, as stirring music plays in the background:

Many of the world’s greatest stories begin with a journey, a quest to answer life’s most intimate questions: Where do we come from? Why are we here? From the dawn of time, all cultures have created stories to help explain the ultimate nature of things. And perhaps a new story is emerging in our time, one grounded in contemporary science and yet nourished by the ancient religious wisdom of our planet.12

In something of an odd twist, Swimme actually teaches at a Catholic university (the coauthor of the documentary, Mary Evelyn Tucker, is a scientist at Yale who also teaches at the divinity school there). But despite Swimme’s apparent respect for “religious wisdom,” God never shows up in this story of the universe’s journey:

The universe began as a great outpouring of cosmic breath, of cosmic energy, that then swirled and twisted and complexified until it could burst forth into flowers, and animals, and fish—all of these elegant explosions of energy.… These deep discoveries of science are leading to a new story of the universe: over the course of 14 billion years hydrogen gas transformed itself into mountains, butterflies, the music of Bach, and you and me.… The universe has a story: a beginning; a middle, where we are now; and perhaps in some far distant future, an end.13

The Power of Story

Swimme and Tucker recognize that human beings need stories to organize their lives and their ideas. The beliefs, assumptions, and loves found in Worldview Ingredient 1, the head-heart system, make sense because of the story into which they fit. It makes sense to believe that humans are valuable within a story that starts with God making them in His image—just like it makes sense for animal-rights activists to refuse to eat meat in a story that portrays humans as just another kind of animal.1

* * PBS: Public Broadcasting Service, a nationwide network that produces documentaries that are generally respected

* * cosmologist: a scientist who focuses on the big story of the universe

12 12 Brian Swimme, Journey of the Universe, PBS, June 11, 2011.

13 13 Ibid.

1 Ward, M. (2016). Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption (M. L. Ward Jr. & D. Cone, Eds.; p. 10). BJU Press.

The true story about the world will work. It won’t tell you to believe what your everyday experiences tell you is false. It won’t tell you that God doesn’t exist when, in actual fact, “the heavens declare the glory of God” (Ps. 19:1). It won’t tell you morals are up for grabs when, in actual fact, every “conscience also bears witness” that God’s law has been written on the human heart (Rom 2:14–15). It won’t tell you there’s no hope when your whole heart knows that there is, somewhere (Eccles. 3:11).1

1 Ward, M. (2016). Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption (M. L. Ward Jr. & D. Cone, Eds.; p. 11). BJU Press.

Alternate Stories

Swimme’s is not the only big story that people in our world find persuasive. Many other stories have told whole nations and cultures where they came from, who they are, and where they’re going:

• Secularism tells a story that goes like this: “However we got here, we’re here now. And the one unchanging fact about humanity is that we won’t all agree why we’re here anyway because we all believe different things about the gods—or lack thereof. Our societal problems come from the way religion heats up simple, solvable conflicts into holy wars. Because we just can’t know who’s right, religion should stay out of education, law, politics, and the marketplace. Humanity will improve if people can just learn to keep their religion private.”

• Marxism’s big story, which once ruled much of the world, goes like this: “As the proletarians* begin to notice that the bourgeois* are getting rich off their labor, they stage a revolt. This revolution ushers in a new socialist society in which everyone owns the means of production and benefits fairly from it.”

• Postmodernism has a fuzzy big story which basically boils down to a deep skepticism that anyone can even tell big stories. How can we claim to view the whole world when each of us is rooted so firmly to the ground? Postmodernism’s story is this: “Once upon a time, there were no big stories, only local ones. So don’t pretend you know the big story of the world because you might start to believe yourself and therefore begin oppressing people who disagree with your story.”1

* * proletarian: member of the proletariat (working class); a person who has no money and must therefore “sell” his labor

* * bourgeois: (boor-ZHWA) members of the middle class; owners of industrial factories

1 Ward, M. (2016). Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption (M. L. Ward Jr. & D. Cone, Eds.; pp. 11–12). BJU Press.

POSTMAN ON POSTMODERNISM

Look at what public intellectual Neil Postman had to say about the effects of the postmodern worldview combined with the unbelievable amount of data spraying at us in this information age:

Like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, we are awash in information, without even a broom to help us get rid of it. The tie between information and human purpose has been severed. Information is now a commodity that is bought and sold; it comes indiscriminately, whether asked for or not, directed at no one in particular, in enormous volume, at high speeds, disconnected from meaning and import. It comes unquestioned and uncombined, and we do not have … a loom to weave it all into fabric. No transcendent narratives to provide us with moral guidance, social purpose, intellectual economy. No stories to tell us what we need to know, and especially what we do not need to know.15 1

15 15 Neil Postman, “Science and the Story We Need,” First Things 69, January, 1997.

1 Ward, M. (2016). Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption (M. L. Ward Jr. & D. Cone, Eds.; p. 12). BJU Press.

The Christian Story

Christianity, of course, must be added to the list of powerful big stories (metanarratives) that people tell themselves about our world. The argument of this book is that biblical Christianity tells the only big story that works, the only one that is true. We’ll talk a great deal more about the Christian metanarrative, but here’s a short summary: the Bible is the story of what God is doing to glorify Himself by redeeming His fallen creation. This is the story of Creation, Fall, and Redemption—CFR.*

Every little story in the world, from the Bible’s stories to your own life story, makes the right sense only when seen within this big story. Choose anything God put in this world, and you can be certain that (C ) it is fundamentally good because God created it, (F ) the Fall of Adam has tarnished it in some way, and (R ) it can be restored to its original purpose by Christ, the rightful ruler of this planet.1

* * CFR: an acronym for Creation, Fall, Redemption

C C Creation

F F Fall

R R Redemption

1 Ward, M. (2016). Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption (M. L. Ward Jr. & D. Cone, Eds.; p. 12). BJU Press.

INGREDIENT 3: MAKING SOMETHING OF THE WORLD1

  If, after reading Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption, you start to see the power of our world’s various head-heart systems, this book will have achieved only partial success. If you are skilled at seeing the importance of the Bible’s metanarrative to a truly Christian worldview, success will still be incomplete. The goal of this book is to be God’s tool to move you to live out the Christian worldview. This is the third aspect of our definition of worldview: action.

Worldview talk can sound like useless intellectual discussion to some Christians. But if you will use the Christian worldview to influence and shape your life—your job choices, your family size, your community involvement, your use of media—you can have an impact on your world.1

1 Ward, M. (2016). Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption (M. L. Ward Jr. & D. Cone, Eds.; p. 13). BJU Press.

Salt and Light

Jesus Christ Himself, a masterful teacher, used two metaphors to make this point. He urged His followers to be “salt” and told them to shine as “light.”

You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. (Matt. 5:13–16)

Light shines. That’s its job. Jesus’ disciples are supposed to shine a light through doing good works, a light everyone can see. There may be places of great influence available to you in this world, and it is not wrong to stand in those places: a taller lampstand can give light to more people. Film, education, journalism, sociology—all of these fields are open to Christians with the right knowledge and skills. All of them are powerful tools for spreading light. No Western nation, at least currently, bars Christians completely from positions of shining influence.

Light shines, but salt flavors. If salt loses its sharp, distinct taste, it’s worthless. Some positions of influence will be available to you only if you are willing to diminish the unique taste of your biblical views. You can have the job only if you agree to be a little less salty.

But Jesus says you have to be influential and distinct at the same time. You have to be light and salt. Don’t drop your Christianity in order to gain more influence; then what will you be influencing people to do? And don’t pass up opportunities for legitimate influence (state senator, TV journalist) out of some fear that it’s wrong for a Christian to have influence.

Jesus’ call here is, at the very least, a call to bring glory to God by living out the Christian worldview. Keeping your Christian worldview inside the class you’re now taking will be like covering your headlights with duct tape. You won’t see where you’re going, and people won’t notice your presence. So let this book be a call to you to go live out what you learn.

Dominion over the Earth

This call has deep roots in the Bible, going all the way back to the first page. God created Adam and Eve with several purposes, according to Genesis 1:

• be fruitful and multiply

• fill the earth

• subdue the earth and have dominion over it

We’ll explore these commands in much greater detail in the next unit, but for now simply notice that powerful word dominion. Who has dominion? Kings, queens. God wanted mankind to be kings and queens over His planet, to fill and rule the world as His representatives. That’s one reason we are, according to that same chapter, made “in God’s image.” We are, in other words, to be like God and to represent Him. He is a ruler, and so are we supposed to be.

But the territory God made man and woman to rule over is not merely spiritual; it is physical. To subdue the earth and have dominion over it is to press it toward its ideal, to maximize its usefulness for humanity. It means taking whatever little section of this world God gives you and making the most of it.

Interestingly, this kind of dominion is just what the scientists in Project Steve are good at. And in this they’re really on to something. Many of them, even the most atheistic, admit having a certain eager awe that pushed them into science at a young age. Listen to what Dawkins, as a scientist and one of the world’s most influential atheists, has said about his own response to nature: “The fact that I do not subscribe to supernaturalism* doesn’t mean that I don’t respond [to the discoveries of science] in an emotional way that one might almost describe as spiritual.”17 (This calls to mind a comment reportedly made by apologist* G. K. Chesterton: “The worst moment for an atheist is when he has a profound sense of gratitude and has no one to thank.”)

A desire to obey Genesis 1:28 is not what motivates most scientists, but they are, in fact, subduing the earth and having dominion over it. They are making something of this world. They are living out their worldview, inconsistent though it may be, in such a way that it overlaps with the Christian faith. Scientists—along with musicians, artists, writers, engineers, chefs, and people in nearly any other profession—have inherited a tradition of doing their jobs a certain way. Previous generations have made advances and improvements in all these areas, and that’s a good thing. That fits well with God’s command to have dominion.

The call of the Christian worldview is for you to become a “creative cultivator,” someone who takes the traditions of your calling (history, politics, literature, art, computers, or whatever) and cultivates those traditions in a faithfully Christian way. This book, then, will end up being something of a waste if you don’t ever take your worldview into the real world.

Culture

One last note: You’ll find that as you work out your worldview, you won’t be alone. You will naturally find yourself aligned with (and influenced by) other people. You will be part of a “culture.” Culture is what you and others together make of the world. Your worldview will unite you with others, and the things and ideas you all produce will change and develop the culture you’ve inherited from previous generations. Culture is a good thing. God built culture into this world.

But not everyone who fills the earth, subdues it, and takes dominion over it does so in a God-honoring way. Great artists and scientists take dominion, but so do dictators and mad Nazi doctors who experiment on living children. So let’s end with two warnings about the work of creating and cultivating:

• “Engaging the culture” is a common catch phrase. If it means taking part in our God-ordained work of taking wise dominion over the world He gave us, then fine. But for some Christians it seems to mean going to sexually explicit movies in order, somehow, to gain a platform for telling others about Jesus (a platform that rarely seems to materialize). This is a world created by God, but it’s also a world that has fallen into sin. Some elements of a given culture may be too twisted by sin for you to get involved in them. We will discuss this in much greater detail later on.

• “Changing the world” is another buzzword you might have heard. And again, if God lets you do some world-changing, then fine. But because of the sinful twisting the world has undergone, God warns you not to love it (1 John 2:15–17) and not to let it shape you (Rom. 12:2). It is naive to assume that you can change Hollywood without Hollywood changing you. Though you should make every effort to represent God as a creative cultivator who bears His image, there will be some aspects of nature, culture, and your own life that will not be made right until Jesus, God’s Son, comes back to rule in person on earth (Rom. 8:23; Phil. 3:20–21; Rev. 19:11–16).

So be careful how you view your role in this world. God will one day triumph over all His enemies, but this triumph does not give Christians the right to be “triumphalist”—full of arrogance about our supposed virtue and future success compared to others’. Your life’s calling may be a humble one that makes a difference that only God and your own family notices. That’s up to God, not you.

Make it your life’s ambition to be faithful to God’s words in Scripture, and—despite all the ways every Christian is inconsistent with his or her own worldview—you will find that the Christian worldview will bring contentment. Only people who live God’s way will feel satisfied with God’s plan for the world He made.1

TV TV Television

* * supernaturalism: the idea that there is something above or outside of nature, such as a divine being

17 17 Richard Dawkins, quoted in “The Reading File,” New York Times (website), November 9, 2003.

* * apologist: defender; often refers to one who commends and defends the Christian faith

1 Ward, M. (2016). Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption (M. L. Ward Jr. & D. Cone, Eds.; pp. 13–15). BJU Press.

EVERYONE HAS A WORLDVIEW

This all adds up to a definition of worldview that goes something like this:

A worldview is

1. a set of basic beliefs, assumptions, and values,

2. which arises from a big story about the world and

3. produces individual and group action—human culture.

All three of these things are visible daily in the lives of every human on earth. What do you say when you’re at the graveside of a friend? How about when you vote? How will you respond when someone deeply wounds you? What set of values will guide you as you raise your children? Having a worldview is simply part of being an adult.

Many modern liberals, influenced by the secularist worldview, don’t like to be upfront about their deepest beliefs, values, and commitments. They hide behind a veneer of neutrality that often deceives even those liberals themselves. But one reason Christians can see the world with clarity is that we can be upfront. In the secularist worldview, everyone’s beliefs have equal value. There is no authority to appeal to apart from other humans—humans who disagree, who all have their own biases, who are finite.* But Christians have access, through the Bible, to the one Person who has a true worldview—He can see everything. By faith we understand.1

* * finite: limited by space, time, and gifting; the opposite of infinite

1 Ward, M. (2016). Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption (M. L. Ward Jr. & D. Cone, Eds.; pp. 15–16). BJU Press.

1 Ward, M. (2016). Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption (M. L. Ward Jr. & D. Cone, Eds.; p. 13). BJU Press.