We can’t spend all day analyzing or testing whether every single belief we hold is true or not. We have jobs, families, and responsibilities that usually preclude full- time philosophizing. At one point in our reflective lives, we settle on a core number of principles that we hold as true. These principles are broad in scope and usually touch on issues of origins, meaning, morality, and destiny. Together, these will form our worldview. This worldview then becomes a lens through which we see the world and process, incorporate, or test new information as it comes to us.
This lesson focuses on the necessity of teaching a biblical worldview. It contrasts this necessity with a naturalistic/materialistic worldview (i.e., that nothing supernatural exists, and everything [with a capital “E”] can be explained and be reduced to physics and chemistry). In contrast, central to the biblical worldview is not only the proposition that God exists, but that He is a personal God who engages with His creation. His creative power explains the material universe, including us. His redemptive power reveals His heart, displays His restorative purposes for the universe and humanity, and secures our futures. Worldviews that stray from the biblical witness, e.g., naturalistic evolutionary theory, can easily undermine human value. We can see this truth clearly in the grim examples below.
Part II: Commentary
Illustration
“Worldview” is one of those words rumored to be of vast importance. But since we seem to go through our days just fine without explicit reliance on it, there is a temptation to believe its importance overrated. It’s true; taking a stroll with a friend, arguing over this or that, rarely provokes occasion to speak of the first principles of logic or of competing ethical paradigms. But allow that stroll to take you down the Blutstraße (blood road) to the Buchenwald Memorial in Germany, and then worldviews take on a chilling significance. Buchenwald, along with other concentration camps during WWII, were part of the Nazi extermination machinery dedicated to killing Jews, political dissidents, Gypsies, and other “undesirables.” Listen to Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor himself, explain the origins of this nightmare:
“If we present a man with a concept of man which is not true, we may well corrupt him. . . . I became acquainted with the last stage of that corruption in my second concentration camp, Auschwitz. The gas chambers of Auschwitz were the ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment— or, as the Nazi liked to say, of ‘Blood and Soil.’ I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some Ministry [department] or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.”—Viktor Frankl, The Doctor and the Soul: From Psychotherapy to Logotherapy (New York: Random House, 1986), p. xxvii.
This is why worldviews matter. They can shape a reality in which light becomes darkness, and darkness light, where evil is good, and good is evil (Isa. 5:20). It is intellectually naïve and narrow-minded to explain atrocities simply by calling the perpetrators “monsters” or some other dehumanizing epithet without getting to the core of why people do what they do. Many “monsters” of history showed love to their wives and children, cracked jokes with friends, bounced their giggling grandchildren on their knees, and proceeded to get up each morning to perform the day’s atrocities. This is why worldviews matter. And this is why the answer to the psalmist’s question, “What is man, that thou art mindful of him?” (Ps. 8:4) must always begin with “in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Gen. 1:27).
Is there any religion or philosophical system that places a premium on human life higher than Christianity’s proposition that humans are the created, beloved image- bearers of the one divine God? This truth entails the belief that Christians, Seventh-day Adventists included, are in a sense the protectors of the worth and dignity of humankind and should be flanking competing worldviews, marshalling a high view of what it means to be a human.
Some may think it a delusion of grandeur to assume that the dignity of humanity needs to be defended in the modern 21st century. But (post) secularism has a difficult time grounding objective human value (or “objective” anything, for that matter). In a now-famous debate between Christian apologist Greg Bahnsen and atheist Gordon Stein, someone asked from the floor why “Hitler’s Germany” was wrong. Stein, representing the atheist position, could come up with no better answer than to say that what Hitler did went against western civilization’s moral “consensus.” Basically, it was wrong because western civilization had previously decided that behaviors of that nature (for example, genocide) were wrong. Within this moral worldview, if the decision had gone the opposite direction for some reason, then all that was done by the Nazis could just have easily been deemed moral. Remember, Gordon Stein is not some Nazi propagandist in the 1930s. He is a Jewish American scholar having a debate at the University of California, Irvine, USA, in the year 1985.
Notice that neither Stein nor the Nazis subscribe to a worldview that upholds the intrinsic worth of humankind. Stein’s framework of majority-determined morality has as much effectiveness at restraining evil as a paper tiger. Eventually, the person, or persons, who subscribes to this moral worldview will logically conclude that there is no objective moral obligation to go along with the majority and will simply do “whatever is right in his own eyes” (see Prov. 21:2, Deut. 12:8, Judg. 21:25). The fact that wicked regimes or individuals come and go is to be expected; what is disconcerting is that the core worldviews that shaped them can still be heard “at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.”
Worldviews and Law
Most people would agree that they subscribe to worldviews that encourage some form of law-keeping. However, if their concept of law-keeping is primarily influenced by the legal codes of their countries, there may be a crucial difference between a Judeo/Christian understanding of law and other formulas.
Dr. Joel Hoffman brings out a rarely mentioned difference between the Ten Commandments and other legal codes. He offers an illustration of a conniving teenager who reflects on securing his financial future by marrying a wealthy older woman, killing her, and facing seven to twelve years of prison. He weighs the consequences; he would get out of prison at about thirty years old but would be wealthy for the rest of his life. He decides it’s worth it. Hoffman then says that there is nothing in the entire body of American law that says you are not entitled to make that calculus. Nowhere does American law state that if you are willing to do the time, you still shouldn’t do the crime.
This is where the Ten Commandments stand out in contrast, precisely because they don’t state specific consequences for their disobedience. They are moral law, not legal law. Of course, later these commandments also make up the legal code of the nation of Israel. But the commandments tell us what to do and what not to do, not in order to avoid certain specific consequences but because God is communicating what is morally right and what is morally wrong, something American law (America is likely representative of other countries in this respect) doesn’t do. Perhaps this is also why the Ten Commandments are not introduced as “commandments” (mitsvot), but instead as “words” (debarim) (Exod. 20:1). (See Joel M. Hoffman, "Interpreting Language," n.p. [cited 22 Dec 2018]. Online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ek_q0qvfBqE.)
As Seventh-day Adventist Christians who find ourselves in positions of teaching, we need to communicate the uniqueness of the law of God to the next generation. We often contextualize the Ten Commandments as a legal code to “scare” young people into obedience, but in doing so, we may divest God’s law of its unique moral authority. Any foolish tyrant can make up a law on a whim and command subservience on pain of death. Instead of motivating people to obey God’s laws by listing severe consequences, perhaps we as teachers can communicate what a privilege it is even to know and understand what the moral law of God (and the universe) is. And that is just the beginning. To have these moral laws and principles inscribed on our hearts and minds by the Spirit of God so that we may reflect His character is a privilege almost beyond comprehension, not to mention the tremendous and innumerable blessings that follow (Jer. 31:35, Rom. 8:4). Contrast this with the world’s massively confused morality and consequent pain, and one would hope that people would be lining up to learn of God’s laws and have their lives changed by them (Isa. 60:1–3, Mic. 4:2).
Part III: Life Application
Discuss:
What are the different worldviews today that leave an open door for evil and tyranny to gain a foothold in society? How does one explain that these worldviews can be held by individuals who are extremely kind and, as the saying goes, “wouldn’t hurt a fly”?
Frankl provides a definition of man and the consequences of that definition: “When we present man as an automaton of reflexes, as a mind-machine, as a bundle of instincts, as a pawn of drives and reactions, as a mere product of instinct, heredity and environment, we feed the nihilism to which modern man is, in any case, prone.” In what ways does evolutionary theory support this dangerous worldview?
The Christian worldview holds to a high view of humanity. Here are two reasons why:
We are created by God; we are therefore His and are to be treated according to His criteria, not someone else’s (Isa. 43:1).
We are redeemed by the blood of God’s Son, and therefore our value is beyond measure (Rev. 5:9).
Name all the ills we are plagued with socially and individually that would at least begin to be resolved if the above two biblical truths were incorporated into one’s worldview.
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We can’t spend all day analyzing or testing whether every single belief we hold is true or not. We have jobs, families, and responsibilities that usually preclude full- time philosophizing. At one point in our reflective lives, we settle on a core number of principles that we hold as true. These principles are broad in scope and usually touch on issues of origins, meaning, morality, and destiny. Together, these will form our worldview. This worldview then becomes a lens through which we see the world and process, incorporate, or test new information as it comes to us.
This lesson focuses on the necessity of teaching a biblical worldview. It contrasts this necessity with a naturalistic/materialistic worldview (i.e., that nothing supernatural exists, and everything [with a capital “E”] can be explained and be reduced to physics and chemistry). In contrast, central to the biblical worldview is not only the proposition that God exists, but that He is a personal God who engages with His creation. His creative power explains the material universe, including us. His redemptive power reveals His heart, displays His restorative purposes for the universe and humanity, and secures our futures. Worldviews that stray from the biblical witness, e.g., naturalistic evolutionary theory, can easily undermine human value. We can see this truth clearly in the grim examples below.
Part II: Commentary
Illustration
“Worldview” is one of those words rumored to be of vast importance. But since we seem to go through our days just fine without explicit reliance on it, there is a temptation to believe its importance overrated. It’s true; taking a stroll with a friend, arguing over this or that, rarely provokes occasion to speak of the first principles of logic or of competing ethical paradigms. But allow that stroll to take you down the Blutstraße (blood road) to the Buchenwald Memorial in Germany, and then worldviews take on a chilling significance. Buchenwald, along with other concentration camps during WWII, were part of the Nazi extermination machinery dedicated to killing Jews, political dissidents, Gypsies, and other “undesirables.” Listen to Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor himself, explain the origins of this nightmare:
“If we present a man with a concept of man which is not true, we may well corrupt him. . . . I became acquainted with the last stage of that corruption in my second concentration camp, Auschwitz. The gas chambers of Auschwitz were the ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment— or, as the Nazi liked to say, of ‘Blood and Soil.’ I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some Ministry [department] or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.”—Viktor Frankl, The Doctor and the Soul: From Psychotherapy to Logotherapy (New York: Random House, 1986), p. xxvii.
This is why worldviews matter. They can shape a reality in which light becomes darkness, and darkness light, where evil is good, and good is evil (Isa. 5:20). It is intellectually naïve and narrow-minded to explain atrocities simply by calling the perpetrators “monsters” or some other dehumanizing epithet without getting to the core of why people do what they do. Many “monsters” of history showed love to their wives and children, cracked jokes with friends, bounced their giggling grandchildren on their knees, and proceeded to get up each morning to perform the day’s atrocities. This is why worldviews matter. And this is why the answer to the psalmist’s question, “What is man, that thou art mindful of him?” (Ps. 8:4) must always begin with “in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Gen. 1:27).
Is there any religion or philosophical system that places a premium on human life higher than Christianity’s proposition that humans are the created, beloved image- bearers of the one divine God? This truth entails the belief that Christians, Seventh-day Adventists included, are in a sense the protectors of the worth and dignity of humankind and should be flanking competing worldviews, marshalling a high view of what it means to be a human.
Some may think it a delusion of grandeur to assume that the dignity of humanity needs to be defended in the modern 21st century. But (post) secularism has a difficult time grounding objective human value (or “objective” anything, for that matter). In a now-famous debate between Christian apologist Greg Bahnsen and atheist Gordon Stein, someone asked from the floor why “Hitler’s Germany” was wrong. Stein, representing the atheist position, could come up with no better answer than to say that what Hitler did went against western civilization’s moral “consensus.” Basically, it was wrong because western civilization had previously decided that behaviors of that nature (for example, genocide) were wrong. Within this moral worldview, if the decision had gone the opposite direction for some reason, then all that was done by the Nazis could just have easily been deemed moral. Remember, Gordon Stein is not some Nazi propagandist in the 1930s. He is a Jewish American scholar having a debate at the University of California, Irvine, USA, in the year 1985.
Notice that neither Stein nor the Nazis subscribe to a worldview that upholds the intrinsic worth of humankind. Stein’s framework of majority-determined morality has as much effectiveness at restraining evil as a paper tiger. Eventually, the person, or persons, who subscribes to this moral worldview will logically conclude that there is no objective moral obligation to go along with the majority and will simply do “whatever is right in his own eyes” (see Prov. 21:2, Deut. 12:8, Judg. 21:25). The fact that wicked regimes or individuals come and go is to be expected; what is disconcerting is that the core worldviews that shaped them can still be heard “at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.”
Worldviews and Law
Most people would agree that they subscribe to worldviews that encourage some form of law-keeping. However, if their concept of law-keeping is primarily influenced by the legal codes of their countries, there may be a crucial difference between a Judeo/Christian understanding of law and other formulas.
Dr. Joel Hoffman brings out a rarely mentioned difference between the Ten Commandments and other legal codes. He offers an illustration of a conniving teenager who reflects on securing his financial future by marrying a wealthy older woman, killing her, and facing seven to twelve years of prison. He weighs the consequences; he would get out of prison at about thirty years old but would be wealthy for the rest of his life. He decides it’s worth it. Hoffman then says that there is nothing in the entire body of American law that says you are not entitled to make that calculus. Nowhere does American law state that if you are willing to do the time, you still shouldn’t do the crime.
This is where the Ten Commandments stand out in contrast, precisely because they don’t state specific consequences for their disobedience. They are moral law, not legal law. Of course, later these commandments also make up the legal code of the nation of Israel. But the commandments tell us what to do and what not to do, not in order to avoid certain specific consequences but because God is communicating what is morally right and what is morally wrong, something American law (America is likely representative of other countries in this respect) doesn’t do. Perhaps this is also why the Ten Commandments are not introduced as “commandments” (mitsvot), but instead as “words” (debarim) (Exod. 20:1). (See Joel M. Hoffman, "Interpreting Language," n.p. [cited 22 Dec 2018]. Online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ek_q0qvfBqE.)
As Seventh-day Adventist Christians who find ourselves in positions of teaching, we need to communicate the uniqueness of the law of God to the next generation. We often contextualize the Ten Commandments as a legal code to “scare” young people into obedience, but in doing so, we may divest God’s law of its unique moral authority. Any foolish tyrant can make up a law on a whim and command subservience on pain of death. Instead of motivating people to obey God’s laws by listing severe consequences, perhaps we as teachers can communicate what a privilege it is even to know and understand what the moral law of God (and the universe) is. And that is just the beginning. To have these moral laws and principles inscribed on our hearts and minds by the Spirit of God so that we may reflect His character is a privilege almost beyond comprehension, not to mention the tremendous and innumerable blessings that follow (Jer. 31:35, Rom. 8:4). Contrast this with the world’s massively confused morality and consequent pain, and one would hope that people would be lining up to learn of God’s laws and have their lives changed by them (Isa. 60:1–3, Mic. 4:2).
Part III: Life Application
Discuss:
Name all the ills we are plagued with socially and individually that would at least begin to be resolved if the above two biblical truths were incorporated into one’s worldview.