What is a Worldview?

I remember when I was just a child seeing a red skinned banana. It was the most curious thing, since up to that point, I was under the conception that all bananas had yellow skin, so coming across one with red skin was most odd. The experience got me to rethink and revised all things bananas — they came in a variety of colors including yellow and red! What happened is I had a paradigm shift about bananas. While the connection of bananas with the color yellow was fine, the reality is the color yellow only represents one but not all varieties of that type of fruit.

This childhood experience shows that more often than not we think with our paradigms, but rarely do we ever think about our paradigms. We rarely bother with the question of whether or not our paradigms need adjusting, unless something prompts a reexamination — like supposing all bananas are yellow until coming across a red banana. More than just the colors of fruit, the paradigms we think with are built upon our answers to life’s ultimate questions. We can also call this our worldview.

One of the best reads that I came across on understanding and examining our worldviews is What is Your World View? An Interactive Approach to Life’s Big Questions (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2014).* What is a worldview? Anderson writes:

Your worldview represents your most fundamental beliefs and assumptions about the universe you inhabit. It reflects how you would answer all the “big questions” of human existence, the fundamental questions we ask about life, the universe, and everything.
Is there a God? If so, what is God like and how do I relate to God? If there isn’t a God, does it matter? What is truth and can anyone really know the truth anyway? Where did the universe come from and where is it going — if anywhere? What’s the meaning of life? Does my life have a purpose — and, if so, what is it? What am I supposed to do with my life? What does it mean to live a good life? Does it really matter in the end whether or not I live a good life? Is there life after death? Are humans basically just smart apes with superior hygiene and fashion sense — or is there more to us than that?
You get the idea. Your worldview directly influences how you answer those kinds of big questions — or how you would answer them if you were asked and gave them some thought (12).

Our worldviews are defined by the way ultimate questions are answered. We still go by our answers to the ultimate questions whether we have given much thought to those ultimate question or even realize the ultimate questions were being asked and answered to being with. Nevertheless, we can still revisit and reassess our answers to the ultimate questions.

What’s Your Worldview helps readers work through the ultimate questions in the style of Choose Your Own Adventure gamebooks. Just as choices made in the gamebooks determine the main character’s actions and the outcome of the plot, answers to life’s ultimate questions determine the path toward a particular worldview. Take, for example the question, “Is there a God?” Answer “No,” you wind up with atheism. Answer “Yes,” you wind up with theism. The beauty of Anderson’s book is that it presents a series of yes or no questions, and then, based upon the way the question is answered, presents a brief description of the worldview the reader has adopted.

What’s Your Worldview also challenges readers to understand the implications of the worldview they have adopted. For example, the worldview of nihilism maintains “there are no objective values: nothing is really good or bad in any objective sense. In particular, there are no objective moral values,” and “whatever you choose to do is jus as valuable — or, rather, just as valueless — as anything else you might choose to do.” Anderson points out to readers “for the bona fide Nihilist, if you this book and throw yourself off the nearest tall building, that decision would be no better or worse, in any objective sense, than continuing to read this book. Ultimately, it really doesn’t matter one way or the other.” (75). The implication of nihilism is ominously shocking to the senses, but nihilism is the result of denying the existence of objective moral values. This is certainly cause to give a close examination to the world according to nihilism.

What’s Your Worldview takes the very complex and difficult philosophical subject and makes it accessible to the masses. It is certainly a great addition to any Christian library.

— WGN

* A couple of other books on the subject that I have benefitted from are Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004) and The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997) by James W. Sire. These two along with What’s Your World View? make for a great trifecta.