“As our eyes are opened wide and on you, grant us the privilege of your worldview and may your kingdom be what wakes us up and lays us down” Toby Mac
Notes from R.C. Sproul’s Worldview series:
Biblical Worldview: Sees God as both transcendent and immanent. He is both superior in form and knowledge to His creation (transcendent) and intricately involved in its existence (immanence). Immanence comes to final reality in the person of Christ who comes as a man and dwells among us.
Secularism: Elevated view of the “now.” Secular-derivative of the latin word seculum which means “this world” or “now.” Ism- elevates the view of “this world” to a philosophy of thought or worldview. This is the broadest worldview existing in our time. From the trunk of Secularism comes other various forms or branches of philosophy i.e. Humanism, Existentialism, Pragmatism, etc. Though each have various points of contradiction, they come from the same origin of Secularism.
Our culture is not pagan, this is a pre-Christian condition, we have been given enough of the “message of Christ” to inoculate us from being confronted with the offense of the cross and responding in obedience to its requirements. So in this post-Christian culture, we are secularists…not pagans.
The Secularist believes the now counts for now. He denies the transcendent and eternal God, which lead to the Death of God movement and ultimately results in the despair and death of man.
My comments follow:
3 Implications this awareness brings to the believer:
1. Pray for God to cleanse the church of its love affair with Secularism by repenting of our sin, learning what this system of thought is and how it skews the believer’s view of Jehovah God. When our theology is tainted with ideas hostile to God, we end up worshipping a god of our own creation and not the God of the Word. The biggest offense to God is not that the lost think and behave like “lost people” but that His Bride is being seduced with ideas that do not honor him.
2. Pray that God will restore the repentant believer to a God-centered view of the world. This view understands we serve a transcendent and eternal God who is sovereign in His involvement with the “now.” This idea MUST be reapplied to the hearts of believers: Now counts for eternity!
3. Pray for understanding the world we live in and the lost we serve. Learn the worldview the world embraces and how to battle it with the gospel. Unless we are understanding the lens through which a person is seeing we will never gain a point of entry in appealing to them for Christ.
I truly think this is the “in the world” Jesus refers to…that we not become so disinterested in the lost that we have no means of appeal. His life is the perfect example of this tense concept. He came to the world but did not become worldly. Rather he impacted his “now” by challenging all their notions of truth. When we engage in this world… in this way—and worldview’s are challenged—we can expect to be outnumbered, persecuted and even killed (He was). If doing so, however, produces one convert…one person saved from the pit of fire… it would be worth my life being poured out like a drink offering over and over.
#1 is something I constantly need to work on, pray about, check, and re-check. I feel the only way to know the difference is through study in the word. Great post Laura!