Kingdom Living: Developing a Biblical View of Life (1)

Everybody has a worldview; most people simply don’t realize this – not even most Christians. But understanding our own worldview and working hard to live it out as fully as possible is, in a certain sense, the sum and substance of what it means to be a Christian. In this first installment of a 17-part series, Dr. David Naugle introduces the concept of worldview and why it matters.

Who is the smartest?

Who do you think was the smartest person who ever lived?[1] Aristotle? St. Augustine? Leonardo DaVinci? Immanuel Kant? Isaac Newton? Marie Curie? Thomas Edison? Albert Einstein?

What about Jesus Christ? Did He come to mind when you were thinking about this question? “Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?” you might think to yourself quietly. “The smartest person who ever lived? Well, no, not really.”

Now if the question was about the wisest, or kindest, or meekest, or most loving, or most gracious, or most holy person who ever lived, then certainly our Lord would immediately come to mind. For some reason, however, it seems “oxymoronic,” maybe even a bit sacrilegious, to associate Jesus with the intellect. He was a man of faith, but not necessarily a man of reason. Whatever the source of these doubts about Jesus as a particularly smart, intelligent, or intellectually capable person, the fact of the matter is this: Jesus was the smartest person who ever lived!

Every one of us forms an idea of Christ that is limited and incomplete. It is cut according to our own measure. We tend to make ourselves a Christ in our own image, a projection of our own aspirations and desires and ideals. We find in Him what we want to find. We make Him not only the incarnation of God but also the incarnation of the things we and our society and our part of society happen to live for.

—Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation

The New Testament certainly suggests as much. When Jesus was just a small child, the gospel of Luke states that He kept “increasing in wisdom, and the grace of God was upon Him” (Luke 2:40). At the age of twelve, He engaged the spiritual and intellectual leaders in Jerusalem, listening to them and asking them questions. And “all who heard Him were amazed at His understanding and His answers” (Luke 2:47). Throughout His public ministry, Jesus’ keen intellectual abilities can be seen clearly in His rigorous use of logic, His reasoning from evidence, His successful debates with adversaries, His interpretations of the Old Testament, His delivering sermons and theological discourses, His telling stories and parables, and so on.[2]

After all, Jesus was the Word (Logos) of God incarnate and the very light of the world (John 1:1, 14; 8: 12). The Apostle Paul also recognizes the incomparable intelligence of Jesus Christ, asserting that “all things have been created by Him and for Him,” and that He is the One “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 1:16; 2: 3).

Thus, with Dallas Willard, we must “understand that Jesus is a thinker, that this is not a dirty word but an essential work, and that his other attributes do not preclude thought, but only insure that he is certainly the greatest thinker of the human race: ‘the most intelligent person who ever lived on earth.’”[3]

Jesus’ worldview

If, indeed, Jesus is unmatched as a thinker and supreme in His intellectual abilities, then we would certainly want to know how His mind functioned and what it was He thought about. Fortunately, the gospels provide some insight into the mindset and thought style of our Lord. In short, He held a deeply biblical view of the world! Here’s the proof:

• Jesus believed in God as the Creator of the world and human beings, and that He providentially rules His creation (Matt. 5:45; 19: 4; Mark 13:19; Luke 12:6-7, 22-31).

• Jesus viewed human beings as uniquely valuable in God’s sight, that they were created to love God and one another, and that their ultimate fulfillment in life is found exclusively in a relationship with Him (Matt. 6:26-30; 10: 31; Mark 12:29-31; Luke 9:23-25; 12: 13-21).

• Jesus held that all people are sinful, lost, and in need of salvation (Matt. 7:11; 10: 6;15: 24; Mark 2:17; 7:20-23; Luke 15;19: 10).

• Jesus believed in the existence of Satan and the demons and knew that their goal was to oppose the works of God in creation and redemption (Matt. 4:1-11; Mark 1:32-34; 3: 23-26; Luke 8:12, 26-39).

• Jesus understood that His mission was to fulfill the Old Testament, proclaim the Good News or Gospel of the Kingdom of God, and bring salvation to humanity and all the earth through His own death, resurrection, and ascension (Matt. 5:17-18; 12:28-29; 16:21-23; Mark 1:14-15; 9:1; 10:45; Luke 17:20-21; 24:44).

Now since we are rightly concerned these days to do as Jesus would do (WWJD), then it seems to me, given Jesus’ credentials as a thinker, that we should also be equally concerned to think as Jesus would think (WWJT)! As a matter of fact, since our thinking shapes our living — as Proverbs 23:7 puts it, “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he” — we need to understand how Jesus thought so that we can both think like Him and live like Him.

Jesus saw the world through Bible eyes. Therefore, we must be about the task of forming a Biblically-based worldview just like He had. This is precisely the purpose this study!

He who with his whole heart believes in Jesus as the Son of God is thereby committed to much else besides. He is committed to a view of God, to a view of man, to a view of sin, to a view of redemption, to a view of the purpose of God in creation and history, to a view of human destiny, found only in Christianity. This forms a …”Christian view of the world,” which stands in marked contrast with theories [of life] wrought out from a purely philosophical or scientific standpoint.

— James Orr, The Christian View of God and the World

Definitions of “worldview”

But exactly what is the meaning of this term “worldview”?

Please don’t be put off by it as something for “intellectuals” only. Nothing could be further from the truth! In fact, everybody has a worldview. It seems to be an inescapable characteristic of being human. In fact, as Richard Weaver has suggested, our worldview is the most important thing about us![4] Perhaps these definitions of the concept suggest why:

• “A worldview is a “systematic way of looking at the world. It conditions how we interpret the meaning of daily life.” (R. C. Sproul)[5]

• A worldview is “The comprehensive framework of one’s basic beliefs about things.” (Albert Wolters)[6]

• “A worldview is a set of presuppositions . . . which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic make up of our world.” (James Sire)[7]

• A worldview is “A comprehensive life system that answers all of humanity’s age-old questions: Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? Does life have any meaning and purpose?” (Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey)[8]

• “A worldview . . . is a set of beliefs and practices that shape a person’s approach to the most important issues in life. Through our worldview, we determine priorities, explain our relationship to God and fellow human beings, assess the meaning of events, and justify our actions. Our worldview even speaks to the most ordinary practices in everyday life, including the types of things we read and view, the types of entertainment and leisure activities we seek, our approach to work, and much more.” (Michael Palmer)[9]

I have defined a worldview as a “vision of the heart.”[10] I have so defined it because the Bible teaches that the heart is the center and core of every human being — the source of what we worship (whether God or an idol), and the seat of all our thinking, loving, and doing. Life, therefore, proceeds “kardi-optically” (kardia = Greek for “heart”), that is, by a viewpoint generated out of our hearts!

For this reason, Solomon offered this wise counsel in Proverbs 4:23: “Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.”

But there are some people, nevertheless—and I am one of them—who think that the most practical and important thing about a man is still his view of the universe. … We think the question is not whether [one’s] theory of the cosmos affects matters, but whether, in the long run, anything else affects them.

—G. K. Chesterton, Heretics

This concept of worldview, therefore, is of utmost importance. How essential it is for sincere, thoughtful disciples of Jesus Christ to have a scripturally-grounded vision of life rooted in their hearts just like He did! Furthermore, there are some solid benefits that result from developing a biblical worldview. It helps us to overcome three serious problems in the Christian life.

Biblical worldview benefits
The problem of bits and pieces. A teaching here, a doctrine there, a ministry activity here, a church event there. But how do these “bits and pieces” fit together to form a coherent Christian vision of life?

Sometimes it seems as if our spiritual lives are like the unassembled components of a large jigsaw puzzle! However, the biblical worldview focuses on the “big picture.” In fact, it is like the picture on the box of a jigsaw puzzle that shows how the pieces fit together. Christianity in worldview perspective helps us understand how the parts of the faith relate to the whole, and how the whole relates to the parts, imparting deeper meaning and greater power to both. A biblical worldview provides the glue that holds the bits and pieces of the Christian faith together, forming a clear and systematic view of life!

The problem of connecting the Old and New Testaments. Many people in the Church today are what we might call “New Testament, Psalms, and Proverbs” believers. Their Bible reading is often limited to the New Testament, with only an occasional excursion into the Old Testament. As a result, however, they have an incomplete story. Their Bibles in a sense start with the gospel of Matthew, thirty-nine books too late! It’s like showing up for a movie an hour after it begins! You can pick up on some of the action here and there, but you don’t really know what’s going on! Everything is out of context, and as a result, easily misunderstood. For, indeed, every text (even a movie!) outside of its context is a misunderstood text!

The same thing can happen in our understanding of Scripture. Unless we know how the two testaments are vitally connected, what the relationship between Israel and the Church is, and how God’s purposes in creation are worked out in history from beginning to end through His people, serious errors can result.

A Christian worldview, however, takes the whole counsel of God — from Genesis to Revelation — into consideration. It deals with the whole Bible, not just the New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs! It ties the Old and New Testaments together. It shows how God’s original purposes in creation were corrupted by sin and have been renewed for believers through redemption in Jesus Christ. It explains how the Biblical story moves from creation through the fall to new creation. It helps us to understand the overall plot and essential theological unity of God’s larger story. It gives us the big picture of Scripture from beginning to end!

The problem of dualism. The single most debilitating problem plaguing the Church throughout her history has been the ingrained human tendency to divide life itself up into the airtight compartments of the sacred and the secular. This “split-vision” of reality regards church-related activities such as prayer, Bible study, fellowship, and evangelism as spiritually significant and of eternal value. Everything else outside this sacred realm — education, work, play, art, politics, nature, rationality, culture, etc. — has no real connection to God’s kingdom, and is viewed as temporal and basically unimportant.

Though applauded as super-spiritual, this false, fragmented approach to Christianity hands huge chunks of life over to the kingdom of darkness. It results in serious psychological disintegration and personal fragmentation in the lives of believers. It is an unbiblical perspective on Christian living and borders on heresy. In fact, it is!

In place of this sinister dualism, a Biblically-based worldview offers a fresh, motivating vision of wholeness. It embraces the entirety of life. It redefines the nature of sacred and secular in terms of obedience and disobedience respectively. It brings the totality of life under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Christianity is concerned about the whole person, the whole of life, and the whole world! For God is not a God of dualism, but of unity, integrity, and completeness. This is exactly what a truly Biblical view of life teaches! We must learn to just say NO! to dualism through a Christian worldview!

Conclusion

In recognizing the importance of imitating Jesus not only in what He does but also in how He thinks, (after all, He is the premier thinker of the human race!), we, too, must seek to cultivate the mind of Christ by developing a biblical view of life (see 1 Cor. 2:16). We must become mature in our thinking (1 Cor. 14:20). We must bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ (2 Cor. 10:5). We must learn to love God with our minds as well as with our hearts and souls (Matt. 22:37). This is our exciting project! What is our game plan?

Overall, it is quite simple. We will be unpacking the meaning and implications of the three essential themes at the heart of the biblical worldview: creation, fall, and redemption. As we will see, the doctrine of creation in Genesis 1-2 answers three big questions: where am I? Who am I? Why am I? The doctrine of the fall of humanity into sin in Genesis 3 answers the question: what’s gone wrong?

We will also examine what Jesus in the gospels and Paul in Romans 1-3 have to say about the problem of sin as well. The doctrine of redemption, promised in the Old Testament and fulfilled by Jesus Christ in the New, answers the question: what’s the remedy?

Through this study, we should get a good idea of the complete Biblical story and how the Old and New Testaments hang together. We will form a coherent framework that properly relates the whole and parts of the Christian faith. We will (hopefully) get rid of any debilitating dualism through a fresh discovery of God’s concern for wholeness. We will discover the Bible’s answers to the deepest questions of human existence. We will also see how this biblical view of life affects our lives at the most practical levels of vocational calling, education, the media, and competing perspectives on life.

Most of all, by God’s grace, we desire to be renewed in the spirit of our minds (Rom. 12:2)! We seek to be transformed at the root of being and in the fruit of our lives! May God help and bless us as we embark upon this adventure of forming a biblical view of life and learn what kingdom living is really all about. After all, we want to learn how to think and live like the smartest Person who ever walked on the face of the earth!

Coming up next: Where on earth are we? Genesis 1.

For Study or Discussion

1. Explain in your own words what Dr. Naugle means by a “worldview.” Why is it important that we understand the worldviews operating in the world today? Why is it important that we have a clear, concise, working, and Biblical worldview to guide our own activities in the world?

2. In what ways have you experienced or observed the three problems Dr. Naugle mentioned in this lesson:

- The problem of bits and pieces:

- The problem of connecting the Old and New Testaments:

- The problem of dualism:

3. Paul wrote that Christians have “the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16). Take five minutes and, in the space that follows, jot down every idea, term, or thought that captures what you understand by that phrase, “the mind of Christ”:

What does it mean for Christians to have this mind? What is our responsibility with respect
to having the mind of Christ?

4. At TheColsonCenter.org, read the article, “Worldview in a Nutshell: Everything You Need to Know” by T. M. Moore (just type the title in the search box on the home page). How does this article help to flesh out your understanding of the Biblical worldview?

5. What do you hope to gain from these studies in the Christian worldview? How do you hope they will help you to grow in your relationship with the Lord? In your calling to follow Him?

Dr. David Naugle is Professor of History at Dallas Baptist University and author of the book, Worldview: The History of a Concept.

¹This discussion is inspired by Dallas Willard, “Jesus as Logician,” The Christian Scholars Review 28 (Summer 1999): 605-14; James W. Sire, Habits of the Mind: Intellectual Life as a Christian Calling (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2000), chp. 9, “Jesus the Reasoner.”

[2] See Sire, Habits of the Mind, pp. 188-202 for examples of each of these.

[3] Willard, “Jesus the Logician,” p. 610.

[4] Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Phoenix Books, 1948), 3.

[5] Lifeviews (Old Tappan, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell, 1986), 31.

[6] Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985), 2

[7] The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog, 3^rd ed., (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 16

[8] How Now Shall We Live? (Wheaton: Illinois, 1998), xi.

[9] “Elements of a Christian Worldview,” chp. 1 in Elements of a Christian Worldview, compiled and edited by Michael Palmer, Foreword Russell P. Spittler (Springfield, Missouri: Logion Press, 1998), 24.

[10] David K. Naugle, Worldview: The History of a Concept (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 267-74.