Identifying Your Worldview

Did you know you have a worldview? We all do, whether we realize it or not. And if we identify as a Christian, does that mean we have a Christian worldview? Or are we playing “Hokey Pokey” with our faith?

Not everyone who identifies as a Christian is a Christian. For many, the label Christian is a default status. In other words, some check the “Christian” box on a form simply because they can’t relate to other options as Jewish, Muslim, or Buddhist.

There’s a significant difference between self-identifying as a Christian—even if you attend church—and actually being a Christian. As the adage says, “Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than sitting in a garage makes you a car.”

So how do you determine if you’re a default Christian? Becoming a follower of Christ involves more than walking an aisle or saying a formulaic prayer. It’s more than attending church on Christmas and Easter, or even every Sunday.

• Being a Christian begins by taking God at His Word.

• Understanding sin separates you from a holy God.

• Knowing you can do nothing to pay for that sin yourself.

• Understanding God paid for your sin by sacrificing His Son, Jesus—fully God and fully man—in your place.

• Accepting the substitutionary death of Jesus paid the full price to restore you to your heavenly Father.

• Receiving the gift of eternal life by faith, beginning now and carrying forward beyond physical death.

• Living in the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit to maintain an intimate relationship with God.

Being a Christian means our life is not our own. We were bought with a price and our desire is to live the rest of our life in gratitude for what God has done. But how is this related to our worldview?

Christian Worldview

A worldview is the filter through which we evaluate the world around us. It influences our beliefs and our choices. Sadly, in our Western culture today, the Christian worldview is under intentional attack.

We hear it all the time:

• God? Belief in a deity is merely a crutch grasped by those who are superstitious.

• The Bible? Just a relic left over from ancient times for ignorant people.

• Creation? Yet another mythical account believed by the uneducated.

• Jesus? A person who may or may not have actually lived, but if he’s real, he was only a man.

Problem is, these incessant attacks on the Christian faith begin to influence us in ways we may not even realize. And the result can easily develop into a compromised Christian worldview.

For example, many Christians buy into the lie that it’s okay to believe “Bible stuff” as long as we keep it to ourselves. Or that you can still be a Christian without believing the Genesis account of creation. And faith in Jesus is fine if you understand that following His moral teachings is what restores us to God, instead of His death and resurrection.

But without a biblical, Christian worldview, our faith is gutted.

• Rejecting the Genesis account of creation empowers humanity to think we can avoid accountability to our Creator.

• Accepting that Jesus was just a good, human teacher dismisses the justice of a holy God whose righteousness requires a payment for sin by One who is sinless.

• Believing the theory of evolution enables us to ignore and even support the killing of unborn babies in the name of a right to privacy because they’re just “clumps of cells.”

• And keeping the good news of salvation to ourselves requires us to stand idly by, watching lost people race down the highway to disaster, their choices cementing eternal separation from the One who offers love and life.

A growing number of Christians seem to be sitting on the proverbial fence, intimidated into a private biblical worldview while knowing the worldview of our culture leads to destruction. However, Jesus said, "He who is not with Me is against Me; and he who does not gather with Me scatters” (Matthew 12:30 NASB). Sobering words for those who are determined to play “Hokey Pokey” with their faith: one foot in and one foot out. But a hokey pokey faith leads to a worldview promising much yet delivering little. The choice is ours. What will you choose?

What is your worldview? And how does it influence your daily life?