When I was in high school, one of the classes I took was biology. I actually enjoyed that class and learned a lot from it. One thing that helped, I think, was that I liked my teacher. She was very nice, and obviously very knowledgeable.
There was one unit that she taught, though, that ended up disturbing me quite a bit – the unit on evolution. The chapter on evolution was, obviously, written based on naturalistic worldview beliefs. It seems that the writers of the book, and the textbook selection committee, held the belief that the concept of naturalistic evolution is non-religious. People come to this conclusion simply because it excludes belief in God. Of course, the notion that naturalistic evolution is a totally secular belief is not true, but it is commonly held, none the less. The book taught that all of the living things in existence began with a common living ancestor, and evolved naturally to increasingly more complex forms until ultimately arriving at the place where we have the variety of life forms that now exist on earth.
Having grown up in a Christian family that was active in a Christian church, I had been taught about God from a biblical perspective all my life. I had been taught that God created the world and the various life forms. So the teaching about naturalistic evolution completely contradicted what I had been taught. This created a lot of dissonance in my mind, as I am sure it did in the minds of many of my classmates.
I, though, was generally not one to just sit back and accept it. I questioned my teacher, particularly about the implications it had concerning the existence of God. To my surprise, the teacher said she believed in God, and went on to explain that she believed God simply used naturalistic evolution to do his creating.
I didn’t know then what I know now, and didn’t really know how to respond to that. While I still had a hard time believing in naturalistic evolution, she did manage to keep me from probing further. She did that by teaching in a way that did not try to convince me that God did not exist. What she did, though, was to teach the subject “as if” God did not exist.
As we think more deeply about this “as if” dynamic, we can quickly see that the problem associated with the topic is not limited to educational institutions or instruction about science. The truth is, this issue goes to the very core of how we all think and live life.
People’s worldview consists of the assumptions they make about how reality is structured. These assumptions are rarely ever questioned, so everyone lives life “as if”’ their assumptions about what is real and what is not real are true – even if they are not. And since there are millions, or even billions, of people who adhere to each worldview, that means there are, literally, billions of people in the world who live life based on worldview beliefs that are not true – yet they believe them anyway, and live life “as if” they are.
In fact, this problem goes even deeper than that. Interestingly enough, a large percentage of people in the world claim they hold a particular belief, yet even while making that claim, they live life “as if” their foundational beliefs are something other than what they contend. This even happens with many people who consider themselves Christians. We have already mentioned people who believe in the theory of evolution, but let me give a couple of other examples.
I have heard numerous politicians make a big deal about how their Roman Catholic faith is central to their lives, yet they promote public policy that is totally contrary to what their church teaches. Perhaps the most prominent example of this are the politicians who are active advocates of abortion.
Another prominent example relates to people who claim they are Christians, but live their lives “as if” the teachings of the Christian faith do not exist. The Bible expresses very clear teachings related to sexual morality, lying, cheating, and the like. Yet many people who claim to be Christians have no problem cohabitating with another person outside of marriage, lying to get an advantage in business, or cheating on their spouse. Additionally, we see people actively promoting a homosexual lifestyle or using profane language – all while adamantly asserting that they are Christians. In fact, some of these folks try to actually justify their immoral behavior using the Bible itself. In other words, they claim to be followers of Christ, yet live life “as if” God does not exist.
The root of this problem lies in the fact that unless a person has actually made the effort to study worldview concepts, their worldview beliefs are completely unconscious. So for them, the beliefs that they outwardly claim as their religious faith do not actually reflect the faith they express in daily life.
As we live life out in society, we are bombarded with beliefs from sources that are diametrically opposed to the faith we profess. When those non-biblical beliefs are generally accepted in society, it becomes quite easy to begin accepting them into one’s own thinking – particularly when we are not consciously aware of “what” constitutes biblical morality, and “why” the non-biblical beliefs are not true. So, what we end up with is a situation where many people in society claim to be Christians, but they accept such things as the cohabitation of non-married individuals, belief in naturalistic evolution, non-biblical forms of marriage, and the like.
Because of this, it is critical for Christians to grasp worldview concepts and concretely know the beliefs of their own Christian faith. Beyond that, it is essential to not only know the tenets of our own faith, but also know why they are true.
On the flip side, it is also necessary for Christians to become conscious of the worldview foundation of the various non-biblical beliefs that are accepted in society at large. We need to know what they are, how they are expressed in daily life, and how they relate to biblical beliefs. The conscious awareness of these things is necessary if we wish to be able to see and fight off the many evil temptations that we face out in society.
People’s worldview profoundly affects how they live out their daily lives. Everyone lives life according to what they perceive to be true. And even if the beliefs they follow are not true, since they believe them, they still live “as if” they were. As Christians, we need to become consciously aware of these things. Unless we do, we will, ourselves, gradually and increasingly be sucked into accepting the non-biblical beliefs the dominate “the world.”
© 2020 Freddy Davis