Corrective Lenses
By: Ian McKerracher
I have corrective lenses on my face. They help me see clearly so that, when I drive my truck, I can see all the mistakes that the other drivers make. Strangely enough, they don’t seem to help me to discern whatever slight departure that I may make from the obviously stellar commission of my own exemplary driving when I rub the edges of legal propriety. But I SEE! And that without fuzzy edges. And that’s the point of wearing them.
“It is popular in all sorts of contexts, anytime people are talking about how human beings sort out the train of experiences running past them at the speed of 3600 seconds per hour. ”
I have been told that having a worldview is a lot like that…the wearing of lenses in front of my eyes so that I view a world that makes sense to me. If you have spent any time around the environs of Christian apologetics ministries, I am sure that you have encountered this term, “worldview”. It is popular in all sorts of contexts, anytime people are talking about how human beings sort out the train of experiences running past them at the speed of 3600 seconds per hour. We all have a worldview, which we believe is just a comment on Reality (notice the Capital ‘R’) and are always surprised when others don’t agree with us.
Worldviews come in various sizes and types. There are Formal Worldviews and informal worldviews. The easiest way to discern the difference between the two is that most times, Formal Worldviews have a suffix of “ism” attached at the end of it, like the pronouncement of a magic spell. Chasing money isn’t formal. Capitalism is! Eating only vegetables isn’t a big deal. Vegetarianism is a big money maker. “Isms” are the things that you see along the spine of big serious books in libraries and university bookstores. Fascism, Socialism, Keynesianism, Cubism, Volunteerism etc. are all Formal Worldviews, providing a contained view of a particular topic. Every Formal Worldview author attempts to influence the reader into believing that their point of view, their informal worldview, related in the pages of their book, is the correct one.
“The end result of the entire collective experience of being a human being will conspire to produce, in us, a lens through which we look at the world to make sense of it.”
That leads us to the construction of the real, personal worldviews, the informal worldviews. Certainly, reading books like I described above will have some impact on the reader in the grinding of their worldview lenses. An informal worldview, though, has a lot more objects to apply to the glass than just our personal library. Everything that we have experienced in our lives will find some location in the edifice of our worldview. Our family and upbringing, our education, both in and out of the classroom, our career, our friends, our enemies, our spouses, and our children will all add to our informal worldview. The end result of the entire collective experience of being a human being will conspire to produce, in us, a lens through which we look at the world to make sense of it. We will use it to understand how this amazing and complicated world around us REALLY works. The holes created for our ideological pigeons will all be filled.
If we are all looking at the same world, why do we come away with different worldviews? Since it is a given that none of us have the exact lived experiences of any other on this terrestrial ball, it is no surprise that we have different worldviews, even when we include those close to us, like siblings, for example. Because of those differences and because they are multiplied by our natural tendencies, it is not possible for any of us to look at whatever is in front of us with any modicum of neutrality. You may have noticed that the claim of neutrality is universal in personal worldview claims, though it is a myth. Everyone speaks as if their point of view is not influenced by anything but their five senses. Everyone else who is listening can immediately perceive that the speaker is only saying their opinion about the matter, mixed with greater or lesser amounts of objective information. That’s why we argue and debate. (Help me, Lord!)
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So, when we talk about the Christian Worldview, are we talking about a Formal Worldview or an informal one? I mean, it isn’t called Christianism. There IS something that is called Christianism. Christianity is just not that.
“ Much of real Christianity is imported from outside of the human experience.”
Much of real Christianity is imported from outside of the human experience. The things that we naturally pick up along the way to our present day are contrary to Christianity and need to be meta-morphed into place in a Christian worldview. I know of no person naturally interested, for example, in acting on the idea of “love your enemies” without being impacted by some sense of Divine intervention. (Although they may be interested in saying they are when they are not faced with an enemy). The very idea that God concerns Himself with me enough to leave the comforts of Heaven, suffer crucifixion until dead, endure three days in a Hell made for demons, and committing for the rest of History to being involved in the lives of people who struggle to do the right thing, are all foreign concepts to us. That is, other than fleeting moments of clarity when we catch a glimpse of something truly beyond ourselves. Christianity is not generated by a human mind. We couldn’t make this stuff up.
But we, Christians, still have all our natural-man worldview to deal with! In many ways, a personal worldview is an automatic construct of our minds that we didn’t intentionally create. It's just there. It is a fence around our thinking, so the world makes sense. Anything outside the limiting corral seems to be absurd and NOT the way that world works. And, in Christianity, we keep running into those things that are beyond the borders of our worldview that would be absurd if we didn’t know that it was God driving it. One of the big reasons I know that it is God speaking to me is that He keeps asking me to do things that I don’t want to do. When I do them, I find that living with myself is much more comfortable, regardless of the privation that I may experience. It works out best for all concerned.
This is the place where those who do not know God are confused by Christianity. Atheists, for example, think that it is absurd because, like I said, it is outside of their corral. I have a sneaking suspicion that they secretly wonder about it even when they give us the brave face on the rare occasion when they tell us of their commitments to their limited point of view. People with other religious worldviews hope that their collection of metaphysical ideas can provide a shelter from the storm, sometimes mentioned and sometimes undefined in their religious literature. The difference for Christians is that we are not called to seek the shelter for ourselves as much as being called to go out into the storm to point others in the direction of warmth and light. That is so against our natural worldview!
What do we do with this? The only remedy of this intolerable circumstance is to religiously (snicker) pursue the Truth, the objective Truth. We must turn the unintentional aspects of our worldview into intentional puzzle pieces being put together to make the picture of Reality. We must investigate ourselves first, following the advice of Socrates who said (apparently), “An unexamined life is not worth living.” We must root out any aspect of our worldview that does not correspond to what we know to be true. That includes what we believe as Christians, even if they are commonly held beliefs and run-of-the-mill renditions of scripture interpretations. That is the only way we can do the combined actions needed; the simultaneous efforts of removing things that are untrue in our worldview and making way for true things.
The importance of personal study and investigation cannot be gainsaid. The equal importance of ensuring that we are not carrying a self-imposed illusion of Truth is provided by being close enough to faithful friends that they would call us on it. It is grand that Jesus, Himself, encourages us to band together in Churches to get this done.
The insurance of these two efforts, personal and corporate, are the ways that our lenses are ground into shape. As we put on the specs of a Christian Worldview, we do so with confidence that what we are looking at is Reality. It is the way to look forward with 20/20 vision.