You will be interested to know that according to a January 31, 2003 news story from CNN America has 2,630 religions and is still counting. This includes everything from 116 Catholic denominations, and over 100 Pentecostal groups. We have 8 religious groups that practice drug use, 22 that believe in UFO’s and 12 mail-order religions. Three groups include vampires in their doctrine.
Beyond that – for the last several decades we have been facing direct challenges to the practice of Christianity in America. No more prayer in schools, a challenge to remove “under God” from the pledge of allegiance, and the removal of displays of 10 commandments in many court houses across our land. Nativity scenes are taboo, although you can display a Jewish menorah, Islamic crescent, and so forth. But not Christian symbols. Students can study the Koran or the teachings of Buddha in a history class but can’t study the Bible as history.
We continue to face multiple challenges to our Christian moral values – open pornography – filth and lewdness on TV and movie screens, rap music and other forms of pop music that leave little to the imagination. Don’t forget gay rights and same-sex marriages. Drug and alcohol abuse is rampant. Morality is defined by your own personal tastes.
As Christians we are being attacked from every angle. What has happened that it has now become unacceptable to be a Christian or to speak of Christianity as a valuable part of our society?
Well, it’s a matter of perspective. Take a look at the picture below. I’m sure you’ve seen this drawing before. As you look at the picture, what do you see?
Some see an old lady while others see a young lady. It really depends on your viewpoint, your perspective.
Everybody in America today has a set of presuppositions or assumptions or perspectives called a worldview. A worldview is a set of informal beliefs about the world in which we live.
A more technical definition of worldview would read like this: an explanation and understanding of the world in which we live that will include such things as an interpretation of the origin of the world, our purpose here on earth, and the destiny that awaits us.
The key here is to realize that our behavior—the way we act—arises directly from our worldview. How we view the world in which we live goes a long way in determining how we live out our lives.
A world view will attempt to answer these relevant questions:
1. Who are we? I mean, what are we really?
2. Where did we come from? How did the world come to exist? Questions of origin.
3. Where are we going? What is our ultimate destiny? What happens after we die?
4. What is good and bad, right or wrong? What is of value?
5. What is the real meaning of life? What is it all about? Why am I here?
6. What is true, what is false? What is really real?
7. How should we act or behave in our lives?
People have sought to answer these questions in a multitude of ways, but let’s look at just three world views that have dominated the scene throughout the last 2000 years.
Christian Worldview – this has been the viewpoint that dominated the history of Western Civilization from around the 4th century A.D. until about the 17th or 18th centuries. This is the view that is centered in God. God exists, He created the world and the universe in which we live, He is in control of history, He is intimately involved in our lives, and He has a perfect plan for every person who has ever lived. Scripture is the authority for what we know about life and our purpose and ultimate destiny in life. This theistic, God-centered, viewpoint served as the prevailing viewpoint for centuries.
Modernism or the naturalistic viewpoint - Around the time of the Renaissance, the 16th and 17th centuries, a shift in the general worldview began. Humanity became increasingly important. Culminating in the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, people began to think in terms of humanity’s unlimited ability to take care of himself/herself and solve all problems. Science and technology became king. Mankind replaced God as the center of the universe. Initially God was pushed to the side, but later God was declared dead and dropped from the picture altogether. We didn’t need God to explain how the world was formed – we had Darwin and the theory of evolution to explain it. We didn’t need the supernatural, because we could fix it ourselves. We didn’t need the Scriptures as our authority because we could reason things out for ourselves using the scientific process. Human reason became the authority to which we turned.
Suddenly, we began to live in a universe where man was god and God was dead and everything about Jesus Christ and the Bible could be analyzed or explained away using scientific reasoning. This is where we found ourselves throughout the late 19th and all of the 20th century. Is it any wonder then that our society continues to push Christianity out of the way. We don’t need Christianity anymore—we’ve got it figured out all by ourselves and we can take care of ourselves—we don’t need God or His Savior Jesus Christ. This is the worldview of modernism or naturalism.
Postmodernism or nihilism – Let’s define the terms: Post-modern – the era after modernism. Nihilism – a word with several meanings, all of which describe the current perspective of many in our world. The word can mean an extreme form of skepticism that denies all existence. It is also a doctrine holding that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. Nihilism includes rejection of all distinctions in moral or religious value and a willingness to denounce all previous theories of morality or religious belief. For some, nihilism includes the belief that destruction of existing political or social institutions is necessary for future improvement.
The seeds of this philosophy or world view began in the 60s with anything-goes permissiveness. Interesting to note, however, that the post-modern worldview hums with the presence of the supernatural – but not a supernatural God. Instead God has been substituted with angels, spirits, and even demons. Post-modernism teaches that there is no inherent meaning to life, we are not responsible to others, but only to trying to find self-fulfillment for ourselves. There is no authority other than intuition and feelings. I do what I feel like doing, whether you think it is right or it’s wrong. In postmodernism there are no moral absolutes.
This, my friends, is where America finds itself today. So, how did we get here? Check for subsequent blogs as we explore the slips on the slippery slope that led us to this point.
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