With a Subtitle: Know Your Worldview

A brief Excerpt: This blog introduces the “Slippery Slope” downward from God’s TRUTHS and RULES that is occurring throughout Western Civilization. This blog is the first in a series. The ultimate goal is to equip and empower Christians to function at the Consciously…

The Author is: Bill Gray

This blog introduces the “Slippery Slope” downward from God’s TRUTHS and RULES that is occurring throughout Western Civilization.

This blog is the first in a series.

The ultimate goal is to equip and empower Christians to function at the Consciously Competent Level—aware of what’s occurring and able to stop this descent.

Future blogs will help Christians practice converting “head knowledge” into “practical know-how” (into Competencies comprised of conceptual understanding + verbal skills + confidence).

Christians will learn HOW to defend their Christian faith and Biblical Worldview (apologetics) and HOW to stand up to mockers (polemics).

This begins with understanding Levels of Awareness & Competency

This is the first Training Activity I’ve facilitated for 20,000 Mentor-Protege Partners, so partners are aware of which Competencies to develop.

My ultimate goal for Christians is to become Aware–and–Able, to consciously choose Biblical Theism as your worldview and develop Competency needed to stand up to atheistic worldviews.

Many Christians are functioning at one of the two lower Levels:

Unconsciously Incompetent (unaware of what’s happening, and totally unable to stop the slide).

Consciously Incompetent (aware of what’s happening, but still unable to stop this downward slide).

What happens when you are unaware of your worldview

King Solomon descended the “Slippery Slope” despite being given unmatched wisdom by God.

• Solomon initially had a personal relationship with God, who blessed him with wisdom to discern and live in accordance with God’s TRUTHS and RULES, as recorded in the 1,000 Proverbs he wrote (Theism).
• Solomon’s personal relationship with God declined as he relied more on his own earthly wisdom and became self-focused and self-reliant, until God became impersonal and distant (Deism).
• Solomon disobeyed God’s command and married foreign women and encouraged worship of their gods, while doing-his-own-thing in the natural realm (“under the sun”), such as accumulating unmatched wealth and prestige (Naturalism/Humanism).
• Solomon ultimately experienced life as totally meaningless and void, wishing that he had not been born (Nihilism).

We don’t know if Solomon returned to the God of his youth, because Solomon reflected back over his entire life and concluded:

“When I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 12:11).

Towards the end of his life, Solomon provided his final wisdom:

“Here now is my final conclusion: Fear God and obey his commands, for this is everyone’s duty. God will judge us for everything we do, including every secret thing, whether good or bad” (Ecclesiastes 12:13–14).

Overview of worldviews

Below is a free verse poem that overviews major worldviews, which impact individuals and society.

I wrote this after reading James Sire’s book, The Universe Next Door: A Worldview Catalog (1976 and 2009 editions). Sire’s examination of worldviews provided intellectual faith that supports my saving faith in Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior. [I’ve updated this poem since 1979 as I’ve learned more.]

Know Your Worldview

• When you’re weary and heavy laden
• Because troubles have beset you everywhere,
• And you wonder why you have such great worries and despair,
• Examine the worldview you’ve embraced. Is it
• Biblical Theism? Deism? Naturalism? Nihilism?
• Existentialism? Humanism? New Age? Post-modernism?
• Which -ism shapes your perception of the situation?
• Which -ism provides hope for your present and eternal future?

Biblical Theism is your -ism

• If you know that Supernatural God is with you,
• Personally planning, caring and providing like a loving Father,
• His greater thoughts and ways to fulfill,
• Sending Jesus to redeem and restore you to right standing,
• The Holy Spirit never leaving but guiding you with Truth,
• Giving hope and peace from knowing He is dwelling in you,
• Making good come from what bad befalls you, 
• Then, you’ve embraced the God of Biblical Theism.

Deism is your -ism

• If you sense some impersonal Designer is out there somewhere,
• Having designed everything and everyone to exist,
• Setting it all into mechanical motion, to function without intervention,
• Running like precision clockwork because it’s well-designed,
• Knowing this Clockmaker will be absence when most needed,
• While you’re in the deepest valley or suffering grievous loss,
• Then, you’ve accepted the impersonal god of Deism.

Naturalism is your -ism

• If you believe observable physical Matter is all that matters,
• And external reality evolved into existence somehow naturally,
• Because of random chance and survival of the fittest,
• Not governed by the purpose of a Supernatural Creator,
• But by fate, good fortune, blind luck or random chance,
• And Mother Nature is your god through trials and pain,
• Then, keep evolving as godless Naturalism just happens.

Nihilism is your -ism

• If you have no god and believe nothing truly matters,
• And see life as empty, without meaning,
• Happening all around without direction or purpose,
• While you despair in a giant void of nothingness,
• With neither hope nor any promise of it,
• More a victim than an agent of your own destiny,
• Then, keep on descending into bottomless Nihilism.

Existentialism is your -ism

• If you believe you’re responsible for choosing what to do,
• Each and every existential moment of your existence,
• As the only responsible agent for each ‘here-and-now’,
• Not as victim needing rescue, but as rescuer of your plight,
• With hope for the present but not for the future,
• Without concern for present or future consequences,
• Then, your lens for viewing you in the world is Existentialism.

Humanism is your –ism

• If Human Reason is your god and Self-fulfillment is your goal,
• And you value discovering truth and Self-development to
• Become fully functional and self-actualizing,
• To be the cause of what happens instead of its effect,
• Master of your destiny, captain of your fate,
• Employing situation ethics based on feelings as your guide.
• Then, trust the human promises that Humanism can’t deliver.

New Age is your -ism

• If the world outside you is only what you imagine it to be,
• So external reality becomes subjective reality inside your mind,
• Hallucinogenic drugs causing altered states of consciousness,
• Where you imagine Self-is-god and right-or-wrong are but illusions,
• And you are One with Ultimate Reality, just another god amongst millions,
• Somehow reincarnated from what to what, no one knows,
• Then, you’re ‘tripping’ into a New Age you cannot possibly imagine.

Post-modernism is your -ism

• If your fickle feelings determine what you prefer and do,
• Such as revising traditions, history and language as you please,
• Promoting political correctness as your latest social cause,
• Imposing your ‘woke’ values on others in the guise of tolerance,
• Excluding dissenters though touting inclusion of diversity,
• Changing gender despite unchangeable XY chromosome design,
• Promoting ‘your truth’ that’s relative and uncertain, and unproven,
• Then, you’ve chosen Post-modernism to who-knows-where.