Here are a couple of online resources that might be useful to you for sharpening your understanding of the biblical worldview compared to the alternatives and/or for teaching advanced worldview studies.

1. PBS’ “The Question of God” based upon a popular course taught at Harvard taught by professor Armand Nicholi that contrasts two worldviews: that of Sigmund Freud and that of C.S. Lewis.

In the PBS special, C.S. Lewis represents the “faith/religious” perspective (which for Lewis is the biblical worldview) and Freud represents the atheistic perspective.

2. Slates’ “Meaningoflife.tv” which is more topical, asking questions about God, evolution, consciousness, free will and the problem of evil — and having one critical thinker address each problem.

In Slate’s series of interviews, the respondents on camera are leaders in their various fields, all of whom believe that evolution is true. Most of the respondents do not affirm the personal, communicating God of scripture — but some of them (like John Haught, Owen Gingrich, Lorenzo Albacete and John Polkinghorne) do.

For further thought and discussion: In the biblical worldview, an essential aspect is affirming a personal, communicating God who has revealed himself through scripture and preeminently through Christ. Haught, Gingrich, Albacete and Polkinghorne go that far. However, be cautioned: you might want to consider taking some of the things these respondents say with grains, or shakers, of salt.

This is a historic night. America has elected its first black president.

I’m thinking of the Declaration of Independence, the Civil War, the words of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech, the Civil Rights movement.

What a great country.

Worldview lesson: The Bible says to pray for those in authority. Time to start praying for Barach Obama and his transition team. There are many challenges ahead.

California’s Proposition 8 is about defining marriage as between one man and one woman. It is intended to overturn a judicial decision to legalize same-sex marriage in the state.

Proponents of Proposition 8 and traditional marriage typically produce several arguments:

1. The theocratic argument: Civil law should enforce religious law. Since God has clearly shown us in scripture that marriage is between one man and one woman, therefore this view of marriage should be the law of the land.
2. The traditionalist or Natural Law argument: Civil law should reflect moral law. Since marriage has never been about homosexual unions, and since the great weight of tradition across thousands of years and many cultures points to marriage as between one man and one woman, and since God’s law in scripture reinforces this view, marriage should continue to be defined as between one man and one woman.
3. The negative social consequences argument: Society benefits from heterosexual marriage because it gives the best environment for the raising of children, society’s greatest resource for the future. Same-sex marriage, by definition, cannot produce children and therefore child-raising is not primary on the same-sex marriage agenda.
4. The religious liberty argument: If same-sex marriage becomes the law of the land, then the state will make Christians and others who object to homosexual marriage on moral grounds second-class citizens, will try to force on public schoolchildren the idea that homosexual marriage is okay, and will start to put legal pressure on religious groups to accept homosexuality. This has already happened in Canada and Massachusettes.

My evaluation: #1 is a bad argument. The biblical story has a brief period in which theocracy was the order of the day, but in no way is that normative for all times and places. Also, it goes against the principle of religious liberty ennunciated in the 1st Ammendment of the Constitution. #2, 3 and 4 are much stronger.

On the other hand, proponents of same-sex marriage argue that:

1. The rejection-of-religion argument: Religion should be a private affair and have no influence in law and the public sphere.
2. The changing-religion argument: Religion should change with the times; although traditional heterosexual marriage is taught in the Bible, there’s no reason we should look at that ancient view as normative for today.
3. The equality argument: All citizens should be treated exactly equally, thus eliminating the need for the state favoring traditional marriage.
4. The civil liberties argument: Marriage is a civil liberty and that the state should not discriminate against homosexuals.
5. The anti-racism analogy: Having the state favor traditional marriage is like favoring one race over another.

My evaluation: #1 is a flat-out rejection of the biblical worldview and very prejudicial against people of faith (Why should they alone not take their deepest convictions to the public square?). #2 completely rejects responsible biblical interpretation, re-interpreting the Bible according to the whims of the day. #3 rejects the obvious fact that the law should recognize differences between people, such as that between men and women. #4 states that marriage is whatever we want it to be; there’s no rational reason that this argument cannot be applied to polygamy, polyandry or other multiple-partner combinations. #5 confuses the good thing that the civil rights movement accomplished and improperly applies it to same-sex marriage.

What we have here is a classic clash of worldviews. The homosexual agenda and same-sex marriage may look innocuous, but in fact are religious bigotry in action, are profoundly antagonistic to the biblical worldview, and ultimately work against religious liberty.

For more reading:

Pro Prop 8

• Same-sex marriage threatens religious liberty.
• Same-sec marriage challenges religious liberty.
• Christians lose when gay activists win.
• Same sex marriage,  censorship, and the separation of church and state.

Anti Prop 8

• Book Review (Dec. 2007), Everything You Know About God Is Wrong.
• Gay Rights, Gay Marriage, Homophobia.

In this past Sunday’s Los Angeles Times’ letters to the editor, Stanley R. Moore of Claremont wrote a response to Gregory Rodriguez’ article “That Need for Opium” (October 6) that made a whole lot of sense.

It was also a fine example of worldview analysis.

The first thing you need to do in any worldview critique is identify guiding assumptions. Moore quickly identified two:

• the assumption that religious faith cannot be grounded in evidence;
• that therefore, religious faith must have a psychological basis that, from Marx and Freud, always turns out to be fear.

Moore says, “Both, methinks, are painfully condescending.”

Then Moore offers this very insightful paragraph:

People of faith believe for the same reason a person holds to any worldview — it makes sense of a wider range of our deepest experiences. The view that religion is ultimately grounded in fear is thus just as much an article of “faith” as any. And less cogent, for it fails to consider the possibility that faith appeals not to our weaknesses but to our strengths, that believers believe not because their fears are soothed but because, like hearing a great piece of music, they have been awakened, emboldened, “suprised by joy.”

This is a great point. I love how it dramatically shifts the value of faith in God from the negative to the positive.

One very slight quibble: I’d put it in more of a both-and than an either-or way. In other words, I would want to say that the biblical worldview best addresses both the universal human experience of fear (the death, judgment angle) as well as the universal human aspiration experience (the desire for meaning, belonging, contributing angle).

Thank you, Stanley R. Moore, for your observations from Claremont, the “mount of clarity.” May many more Stanley R. Moores arise!

Pope Benedict XVI recently said that the world’s financial system is ‘built upon sand.’

He quoted Jesus Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7:24-27, which distinguishes between builing your life upon “the rock” or building your life upon “sand.”

Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.

The pope elaborated:

He who builds only on visible and tangible things like success, career and money builds the house of his life on sand. . . We are now seeing, in the collapse of major banks, that money vanishes, it is nothing. All these things that appear to be real are in fact secondary. Only God’s words are a solid reality.

An observation

People often misunderstand this kind of statement. They think that the Bible, the pope, and Christians in general are, by definition, impractical because they devalue “this” world or treat it as if it is of no account.

However, this is not an accurate understnding of what the Bible really teaches.

The biblical worldview recognizes the reality of two worlds: the physical/material and the spiritual/immaterial. Furthermore, the biblical worldview says that “this” world (the physical/material) is temporary, while the spiritual realm is eternal.

In other words, “this” world is important because it is the world in which we live out our spiritual commitments. The spiritual world takes priority over “this” world; the eternal trumps the temporal; but the temporal world is still very important!

Now, when the Bible (or Christians) are emphasizing the priority of the spiritual, the language used sometimes sounds like a negation of the physical/material — as if the spiritual is everything and the physical/material is nothing.

This language problem is compounded by the worldview/philosophical belief that the spiritual is pure and good, but the physical/material is corrupt and bad — a belief comes from Greek philosophy and blends of Greek philosophy with Gnosticism. But it definitely is not what the Bible teaches!

On the contrary, the Bible teaches that God created the physical/material world and that it is good (see Genesis 1). God also gave humans authority to be creative and take dominion over the physical/natural world. This would include social contructs like societies, cultures, and financial systems.

Financial systems include human ingenious creations like money (from shells to dollars to digital computer sequences) and credit. We could call this “paper.”

So financial systems are not in themselves inherently evil. In fact, they can bring about much good — the streamlined exchange of goods and services; education; providing for the poor; and many other examples.

Rather, the abuse of financial systems - through greed, short-sightedness, placing material concerns as superior over spiritual, lack of wisdom — is evil. The Bible is very clear: all human systems can be (and in the real world are) perverted by sin, which essentially is putting our ultimate loves and loyalties in the wrong place.

Ultimately, if we trust in riches, we’re builing upon sand because they are temporary and they are not a worthy goal in and of themselves. We’re put here on earth to learn to trust God and to show it by loving our neighbor in practical ways (that are very likely going to involve money).

What insights does the biblical worldview give us when financial markets collapse, or come close to collapsing as they have this past week?

1. We get a real, emotional gut check. Are we trusting our money more than God?
2. We have the opportunity to consider the eternal vs. the temporal.
3. We get to sort out what we love.
4. We have to decide what to do about our anxiety.
5. We have to re-examine what prudence, wisdom and ethics in finances mean.
6. We need to consider justice issues: not just what’s good for “the economy” or “the banking system,” but the average American citizen. Any thought of golden parachutes for the wealthy men who got us into this mess must be resisted tooth and nail.

What’s your opinion?

Worldviews entered the U.S. presidential election yesterday in vice-president nominee Sarah Palin’s inteview with Charles Gibson, anchor of CBS’ “World News” (September 11, 2008). Below I will quote from the transcript of the interview and add my own comments, which will be italicized and begin with “Subtext” plus a colon.

GIBSON: You said recently, in your old church, “Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God.” Are we fighting a holy war?

Subtext: Reading between the lines, Gibson believes that Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals are little different from viloent Muslim jihadis — and he’s trying to trap her and make her look no different from them.

President Roosevelt prayed and asked for prayer during World War II. General Patton ordered his chaplain to pray for good weather so his army could kill more German soldiers and thereby defeat the Nazis. Is it really so strange that Americans, from the president to generals and on down, when fighting against intolerable violence and evil, pray to God for help and, yes, victory?

But Gibson seems deathly afraid of invocations of the Almighty in war — as if the only possibility when that happens is evil and atrocities. It breaks his worldview rules.

PALIN: You know, I don’t know if that was my exact quote.

GIBSON: Exact words.

PALIN: But the reference there is a repeat of Abraham Lincoln’s words when he said — first, he suggested never presume to know what God’s will is, and I would never presume to know God’s will or to speak God’s words.

But what Abraham Lincoln had said, and that’s a repeat in my comments, was let us not pray that God is on our side in a war or any other time, but let us pray that we are on God’s side.

That’s what that comment was all about, Charlie.

Subtext: Palin is referring to Abraham Lincoln’s famous Second Inaugeral Address, chiseled in the marble walls of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. For Gibson and other secularists, any mention of God and public policy is at the least very impolite, and is supposed to be out-of-bounds.

GIBSON: I take your point about Lincoln’s words, but you went on and said, “There is a plan and it is God’s plan.”

Subtext: Gibson conceeds Palin’s point! But then he presses her about the idea of “God’s plan” — another idea he finds incomprehensible and dangerous from his own worldview perspective, which, of course, he is not acknowledging. I have never heard any secularists in seats of media power own up to the fact that they, too, have a worldview and that they are not the neutral, objective observers that they portray themselves to be. (Maybe they’re out there; I just haven’t heard them. Can any of my readers point out a single example?)

PALIN: I believe that there is a plan for this world and that plan for this world is for good. I believe that there is great hope and great potential for every country to be able to live and be protected with inalienable rights that I believe are God-given, Charlie, and I believe that those are the rights to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

That, in my world view, is a grand — the grand plan.

Subtext: Palin lays out her worldview: that God has a plan, that God’s plan is good, and that God endows humanity with inalienable rights. This is straight-down-the-line biblical worldview stuff, all of which can be found in the first chapter of the Bible. And do I need to remind anybody that here Palin is quoting from the Declaration of Independence, one of the most powerful theological statements ever produced?

Nothing here is weird or odd from a history-of-America perspective — but to the secularist mindset and worldview, they are an impermissible mingling of church and state. Be very scared!

GIBSON: But then are you sending your son on a task that is from God?

Subtext: Palin’s son made the courageous decision to the U.S. Army to defend his country. He is being sent to Iraq. Gibson again tries to make Palin look like a jihadi Muslim on a “holy war.” He can’t bring himself to see the difference between patriotic defense of freedom and liberty and religious fanaticism.

Conclusion: Whether you are for or against the war in Iraq, worldviews will definitely come into play: biblical, secular, jihadi or moderate Muslim, New Age, whatever. Knowing about worldviews can help us make educated guesses about where others are coming from — and give us avenues for possible discussion. Sarah Palin was open and honest about her worldview; would that more of us were.

Here’s a great example, from the Arts & Books section of the Los Angeles Times (Sunday, 8/17/2008), of worldviews getting some play.

John Albert’s article “Rock ‘n’ other roles” is a story on rock musicians who have other careers. The first mentioned is Greg Graffin, a UCLA professor of life sciences and lead singer of the punk band, Bad Religion.

Graffin explains how he became interested in evolution:

I had big questions about where we come from. The things that religion usually satisfies, I was learning from science. The band had started two years before that, and it was really a good synergy because we were talking about Bad Religion, and its implicit in evolution that there are no gods.

Here are a few lines from an early Bad Religion recording:

Early man walked away, as modern man took control, their minds weren’t all the same, to conquer was his big goal. So he built his great empire and slaughtered his own kind. Then he died a confused man, killed himself with his own mind.

Here are some lyrics performed at a recent concert in Irvine (California):

If there’s a purpose for us all / it remains a secret to me / don’t ask me to justify my life.

And here’s what Graffin told the interviewer about what it’s like to have such a passionate following of concert-goers (after the Irvine concert):

I don’t have any control over what people think about me. And I understand that they don’t really know me. What you saw out there were thousands of totally different experiences. But my goal has always been to elevate the art form. If a fan tells me they did a term paper on evolution because of one of my songs, it’s very touching.

Here are some worldview thought questions:

• What are some possible meanings behind the name of the punk band Bad Religion?
• What is Graffin’s worldview?
• What clues from what he says or does make you think that?
• What role has evolution played in Graffin’s worldview journey?
• What does Graffin say that shows, even though his worldview implicitly denies God (or gods), that he’s a person made in God’s image?

On Thursday, August 14, under the title “A married dad is no great ‘catch,’” the “Ask Amy” advice column (Amy Dickinson’s syndicated column) had a query from “D” in which her husband’s sister is having an affair with a married man dubbed “Jimmy.”

D’s husband’s sister has two young children produced from two failed relationships. She says her husband’s parents think Jimmy is a real “catch” because he has money and a great job.

D and her husband agree that Jimmy is a scoundrel because he lives with his wife and two children who “says he can’t divorce his wife because he is a Catholic and Catholics don’t believe in divorce.”

D complains that “D’s” family is bad-mouthing Jimmy’s wife because she wants to keep her husband. They want D and her husband to welcome Jimmy at family events. They say D and her husband should like Jimmy because he is “a man of such integrity.”

D says, “We don’t have it in us [to encourage Jimmy]. We can’t but empathize with his wife and the four young children who are being hurt.

Then D says, “Amy, are we being judgmental? Should we just act as if all is well and go on?

This is oh, so sad on oh, so many levels. At least D and her husband empathize with Jimmy’s wife and the four chidlren who will be impacted; and they seem to have a problem with Jimmy’s behavior. However…

1. Even though D and her husband have made a moral judgment about Jimmy’s behavior (he’s a “scoundrel” in their eyes) — D is actually having second thoughts about it! (”Are we being judgmental?”)
2. Jimmy’s ridiculous reason for continuing in his fornication and not divorcing his wife — that he’s Catholic and Catholics don’t believe in divorce (adultery is okay as long as it doesn’t lead to divorce!).
3. D is quick to make a moral judgment about Jimmy, but reluctant to make a moral judgment about her husband’s sister’s behavior — who’s trying to break up a family, fornicating with a man who has a child and two kids and she doesn’t care what consequences that has on her own two children or the children of Jimmy and Jimmy’s wife. If D had a problem with her husband’s sister’s behavior, she’d be calling her a “scoundrel,” too.
4. D’s husband’s parents and family think two-timing Jimmy, who’s cheating on his wife and kids, is a “catch” just because he has money and a good job.

This situation demonstrates several truths:

• The moral bankruptcy of moral relativism and “tolerance.” Look at all the terrible behavior and consequences being tolerated here.
• The tyranny of non-judgmentalism. The “absolute rule” of non-judgmentalism acts snuffs out what little moral judgment D and her husband have about the situation.
• The harmful consequences of sin. When we sin, we hurt others. That’s one of the main reasons God calls sin wrong.
• A society that rejects the biblical worldview idea of sin falls into all kinds of ridiculous foolishness — that ends up damaging relationships.
• Heaping shame and disapprobation on foolish, harmful and destructive behavior is not wrong!
• Everybody makes moral judgments all the time (including those who insist we should always be non-judgmental). Therefore…
• The questions should be: Are we making wise moral judgments? Are we holding others to double standards? And how well are we holding to our own moral standards?

A few days ago, Fred Schruers wrote a book review of Hollywood Under Siege: Martin Scorsese, the Religious Right and the Culture Wars by Thomas R. Lindlof.

Martin Scorsese directed the 1988 film “The Last Temptation of Christ,” an adaptation of the novel by Nikos Kazantzakis. I haven’t ever read the book or seen the film, but (spoiler warning immediately follows!) in the climactic scene the character of Jesus imagines himself in a domestic scene married to Mary Magdalene.

Schruers says Scorsese intended the film to explore Jesus as portrayed in the Gospels: “fully divine, fully human in one entity” — a theologically orthodox motive, but an unorthodox way of portraying it. As a result, “The Last Temptation” caused an uproar among a large sector of Christians. People protested and boycotted the film. Lindlof shows that Universal studios representatives, perhaps hoping to make more money on the film, tried to amp up the crisis and leverage it to make the protesters look bad.

The film barely broke even (making only about $8 million) and Hollywood took this message from the experience: “Do not make controversial movies about Jesus.”

Now if you’re schooled in worldviews, it’s easy to see that Lindlof and Schruers pushing their own worldview agendas. For one thing, Schruer’s account ignores the Catholic side of the protest, which doesn’t fit his narrative that “the Religious Right” is defined mainly as violent-prone fundamentalists and evangelicals.

For another, Lindlof and Schruer tar “the Religious Right” with an overly-broad brush, likening “The Last Temptation of Christ” to the furor in the Islamic world over Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses.” In their narrative, Christian and Islamic “fundamentalists” are like peas in a pod. But the differences are immense: Rushdie was slapped with a death fatwa and had to go into hiding for decades. There was no Christian death fatwa against Scorsese and Scorsese was not forced to go into hiding.

Third, Schruer implies that the Religious Right’s political base is kissing cousins with the Ku Klux Klan.

Overall, however, Scorsese’s film managed to excite the very base that ideologues were only too happy to bring to protest rallies. Many [protests] were well-meaning, but there are inevitably disturbing snapshots, such as the day in Chattanooga, Tenn., when the Lookout Mountain Knights of the Ku Klux Klan were warmly greeted by local ministers.

Obviously the Ku Klux Klan is an evil, racist, violent group. Whoever those local ministers were, they never have allowed that meeting to take place, they should have immediately publicly confessed their sin for allowing it to happen, and they should be forever ashamed of themselves for partnering in any way the the KKK. With their Klan sympathies, they brought undying discredit to themselves and the gospel.

All Christian believers should take this story as strong medicine — we need to look in the mirror honestly, and we need to look at our history honestly.

My main point, though, and the point of this blog, is to alert you to worldview agendas! Many social and political commentators (like Lindlof) and many in the mainstream media (like Schruer) have their own “last temptation.” They can’t stop themselves from believing that people in “the Religious Right” (conservative Christians, evangelicals and fundamentalists) are predisposed to follow a script of thinly-veiled racism and violence, little different the KKK or from Islamic fundamentalists.