Is it Time to Get Rid of Worldview?
An Overview and Defense of Weltanschauung (and Hallmark Movies)
She is intensely human, and lives to look upon life.
~Rudyard Kipling
All right, I’m gonna say it.
I like Hallmark movies.
Maybe I’ll lose some followers for that. Maybe this disqualifies me from being an armchair theologian. Maybe y’all think that it’s time for these plotless, sappy, repetitive Christmas specials to go the way of the dinosaurs.
I’d contend that you don’t understand their appeal - they’re predictable, sweet, and bring the promise of a happy ending. I like that.
Shoot, there have been times when I needed that.
Hallmark romances are cliche - I’ll give you that. But would you get rid of every romance movie because Hallmarks exist? The Princess Bride, Pride and Prejudice, or some great story of love, loss, and loyalty?
Even if it’s not your genre of choice, it’s hard to deny the impact of masterpieces like Les Miserables, War and Peace, and other such classics. The triteness of Hallmarks doesn’t take away from the value of classics - if anything, it emphasizes their importance.
A Further Contention
In recent years, I’ve seen a similar war against a biblical worldview like what I’ve seen against Hallmark movies.1
There are a lot of arguments against a Christian/biblical worldview,2 even from Christians. They complain that:
It’s based on tradition rather than Scripture
It doesn’t have to do with the Bible
It’s not Christ-centered
It supports outdated/dangerous views
It varies Christian to Christian and is therefore inconsistent
I’m not here to question the hearts of these believers - I’m sure that many of them are loving, godly, genuine brothers and sisters in Christ.
However, I pretty firmly believe (a solid 96% convinced) that we shouldn’t throw out an institution because it’s been misused. We should do better.
What is a Worldview?
Although it seems many Christians have an idea of what a worldview is (see Mel’s note above), I do want to give some context from which I will work.
Worldview is not a strictly Christian term.
Worldview comes from German philosophy - they call it Weltanschauung, which I think sounds very pompous. Apparently, it communicates one’s perspective on everything in life. No wonder Christians disagree! We are people, too….
Weltanschauung was used by philosophers Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Nietzsche, and sociologist Sigmund Freud - none of whom were outspoken Christians (if believers at all).
Today, other world religions use the term worldview to describe their beliefs.3 However, they typically use the term to explain the broad tenants of their faith. Many Christians also use the phrase biblical worldview broadly, which does not benefit their case.
Questions of Worldview
A better approach to worldview is to make it specific. Christian thinkers have tried to do so by creating definitive lists of questions a worldview must answer. Ravi Zacharias’ apologetics ministry championed four questions (origin, meaning, morality, and destiny). James Sire’s book The Universe Next Door suggests eight questions:
What is prime reality - the really real?
What is the nature of external reality (that is, the world around us)?
What is a human being?
What happens to a person at death?
Why is it possible to know anything at all?
How do we know what is right and wrong?
What is the meaning of human history?
What personal, life-orienting core commitments are consistent with this worldview?
Each list of questions have some strengths. The short list is easy to remember, to teach, and to test things with. Sire’s list includes this shorter list and expands on it. You’ll note that neither one directly deals with whether or not we should fold our hands and close our eyes when we pray… perhaps, even from a Christian standpoint, the topics wrestled with in the past when discussing a biblical worldview are not as helpful as some say.
My Beef with Worldview Questions
Although I appreciate the orderliness and comprehensiveness of Zacharias and Sire’s lists, I find it hard to use them in practicality. My problem isn’t the way that people have used them in the past. Rather, it’s that I don’t feel like I can fairly use them today.
Allow me to illustrate my problem with movies once again. Let’s say that you ask your buddy Kevin - a gun toting, flag waving, patriotic nephew of Uncle Sam - to pick the greatest movie or TV show of all time. You (logically) pick The Return of the King. Kevin picks Chuck Norris’ Walker Texas Ranger.
“No no no,” you say. “Chuck Norris can’t act. The special effects stink. And the theme song sounds like it was sung by a half-drowned skunk!”4
Kevin is appalled. He wasn’t judging the show on acting ability or quality of musical score - the more roundhouse kicks, the better!
There’s pretty much no shot that you and Kevin were going to agree on the greatest movie of all time if you’re working from a different set of criteria. Even if you’d given him your criteria (i.e., an adventure movie, Sean Bean is in the series, and Nicolas Cage was considered for a leading role) he probably would have picked National Treasure 2 or something ridiculous like that. You’re starting from a biased position (or at least, that’s what Kevin says).
That’s my beef with these lists of worldview questions. They’re from Christians. If I was a nonbeliever, and you confronted me saying that my belief didn’t meet these criteria, I would argue that they’re not criteria that intrinsically matter to me (even if I did care about the meaning of life, it might not make or break my view of religion).
So, I dug.
After all, Weltanschauung is a hoity-toity philosophical term. Philosophy isn’t inherently Christian. Shouldn’t there be strictly philosophical, non-religious questions of worldview?
The Six Philosophical Worldview Questions
Spoiler: there are. They’re from a paper from a secular university, sourced from philosophical books. These six questions are the ones that I like to use when discussing worldview:
Ontology (What is?)
Explanation (Where does it all come from?)
Axiology (What is good and what is evil?)
Praxeology (How should we act?)
Epistemology (What is true and what is false?)
Prediction (Where are we going?)5
Don’t be scared off by the fourteen letter words! They’re just code-words for concepts that those in the biz use to save on postage. The important part is the question attached to each code-word.
Looking Back, Moving Forward
I love the concept of worldview - I won’t keep that a secret. I recognize that worldview in general, but especially a biblical worldview, is a complex topic because it’s so broadly defined. We can do better. I’m not willing to throw out worldview yet, because I believe it’s a helpful framework for us to discuss faith.
Over the next few weeks and months, I intend on writing several more articles about integrating worldview to our lives. I know that some people question the need for definitions of worldview, but the numerous perspectives of the concept highlight the need to define it.
So, henceforth and hereinafter - know that when I say “I have a biblical worldview,” I’m not talking about tradition. I’m not talking about cultural norms. I’m not talking about the broad picture of what people think Christians are.
As you’ll see in the coming weeks, my worldview is more than that. It’s based on the whole of Scripture. It’s consistent. It’s changed my life.
I’m excited to explore it with you!
Please know that even if I use big theology words like “epistemology” and “Weltanschauung,” I’m a pretty normal person! I have a broken down truck, I drink too much coffee, and I there are more weeds than vegetables in my garden. My goal is to connect the big things of God to the normal things of life - or at least, to get you thinking about them.
Well, time to go pull some weeds! I haven’t been in my garden for almost a week - hopefully it’s not too much of a jungle in there.
So, until next time - go to church, invite a friend, and believe in the God who still works little miracles.
Faithfully,
Katie Stacey
PS - If you really like my writing, and you want to help me fund a replacement for my truck, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription! Thanks :)
See this article or this one for further examples.
Personally, I think these terms should be able to be used interchangeably, even though they often aren’t. I’d contend that the perspective and actions of a Christian should be determined by the teachings in the Bible. For this article, I will only use the term “biblical worldview” in order to eliminate confusion based on jargon.
Please note that this is for illustrative purposes only and doesn’t reflect my actual opinion of Walker Texas Ranger. Probably.
This question is also called the question of Teleology. Basically, it just means “What happens at the end?” The article I quote from has it as the third question, but I think it logically fits better as the last one.