Three Worldview Tests

October 5, 2009 Posted by Roger Overton

I suspect that most people, including most Christians, give more thought to specific individual beliefs they hold than to the complete picture their beliefs convey. This complete picture is a worldview- it’s the lid of the puzzle box showing us how each of our beliefs fit together (if they do). Regardless of how much we think of our worldviews, we all still hold them. We all see the world in some way and process the information through the beliefs we hold about it. Since we all have worldviews, it’s important for us to understand them and be able to judge whether or not we hold a good worldview.

A worldview is the set of beliefs a person holds. These beliefs can be something like, “I believe it was wrong for Luke and Leia to kiss in Star Wars because they’re siblings.” However, it also includes more subconscious beliefs most people don’t utter like, “I believe in the law of non-contradiction.” All of our life experiences are bound up in our worldview; it is incredibly difficult to escape seeing things through the belief system we already have in place. Worldviews act like glasses. If we wear red glasses, then everything we see is tinted red. If I try to be a consistent atheist, then I must see only an organized clump of cells when I look at other human beings. However, if I’m a Christian, then I see other human beings as valuable creatures made in the image of God.

Our postmodern culture would have us believe that no worldview or paradigm is better than another. Some tell us that since we cannot escape our worldviews, we cannot see if our worldview grants us more access to truth than others. This is of course self-refuting, since they posit their worldview (that we can’t tell which are better) as better than those that claim we can tell which are better.

So how do we tell? I believe there are three tools available to determine the validity of a worldview. (These are based on Ronald Nash’s great books Faith and Reason and Worldview in Conflict.)

1) Practice. Can we live out our worldview in the real world? Say someone believes all truths are socially constructed. In other words, they believe their community constructs truths true for them but not necessarily true for other people. When this person travels to the opposite end of the planet they will invariably drop at the sound of gunfire and look both ways when they cross the street. They cannot live consistently (for long) with their belief that truths are social constructs.

2) Experience. Do our beliefs resonate with what we experience in the real world? Hindus tell us that evil does not exist. However, this does not correspond with what most people encounter on a day-to-day basis. It’s hard to believe evil does not exist when we consider the Nazi gas chambers and Saddam’s torture chambers. Some worldviews don’t resonate with our experiences of the real world.

3) Logic. Are our beliefs logically consistent? Someone who says, “There is no truth,” fails this test since they believe “there are no truths” is true (it’s self-refuting). Each belief must be consistent with all other beliefs in the worldview.

Whatever worldview we hold must pass all three tests to provide us the greatest possible access to truth. The only perfect worldview is God’s, which we do not have. Our goal should be to continually reform our view to His. The Christian is the only person whose worldview corresponds to reality (experience), is coherent (logic), and is liveable (practice); and the standard for this worldview is the Bible.