Essentials of Apologetics - Lesson 2

What is a Worldview?
Sean McDowell
Lesson 1
Essentials of Apologetics

In our first session, we talked about what is apologetics and why is it important? One helpful next step would be to look at what is the worldview to understand how people think and see the world so we can do evangelism and apologetics that makes sense to people where they are at. So I've got a little challenge for you. I'm going to give you about 12 seconds to silently count the number of times you see the letter F appear on this screen. Go. Three seconds. All right, how many of you got none? That's a good sign. How many got one? How many counted two? How many counted three? Anybody count four? Anybody count five? Did anybody count? Six? Keep your hands up, you got it correct. There are six F's on that screen.

Now what happened is you likely missed the of's for a few reasons. Number one, it doesn't sound like an F, it has a different sound. But there's also a sense where rather than just looking for the letter F, you read it, didn't you? Your mind defaulted into reading words like of and an and the are connectives that don't add any content and our minds can skip them over. Isn't it interesting that we have wired ourselves to read a certain way and in many ways are not even aware that we read that way? This is in a sense what a worldview does. We've adopted certain beliefs, we've adopted certain ideas, we've adopted a certain way of seeing the world that we naturally operate from. But very few people have taken the time to stop and think, "What is my worldview? Where did it come from? Why do I hold this worldview? And are my beliefs actually true?"

See, the reality is we've all adopted ways of seeing the world that shape how we live. We've all adopted ways of seeing the world that shape how we live. Now, one helpful way to look at this is just kind of a worldview triangle that my father and I have put together on the top. Think of behavior. Behavior is above the surface. These are actions, our choices, the way we spend our time, our money, etc. The question is, what shapes our behavior? So this is like how we treat our parents or friends, how hard you work at school, how you spend your time, what do you eat, et cetera. These are actions we are doing moment by moment, day by day. Well, I may argue that these are motivated primarily by our values. What we value in life is going to shape the choices that we make.

So if you value education, you've probably saved money for your kids' education and encourage them to go through high school and go to college and beyond. If you value pleasure, you've probably spent money and resources on things that give you pleasure. If you value caring for the poor, you've probably spent your time and your money caring for the poor. So our behavior's motivated by our values. By the way, realize this, behavior is above the surface, if you think of an iceberg. Values, in a sense, are below the surface, we can't see them. So people can engage in the same exact behavior but have very different values motivating why they do so. Now, what shapes our values? I would argue it's our worldview. Our worldview shapes our values. Now here's a complex definition of worldview, but I'll break it down. You ready? A worldview is a view of the world.

You can tell I'm being sarcastic. I actually think sarcasm is a spiritual gift. It's the sixth love language. You might think of a worldview as a mental map of reality. If you have a map and it matches up with reality, you can navigate physical places accurately. But if your map is inaccurate, you would get lost. So a worldview though is not about where parks and streets and buildings are, it's about ideas. It's about the kind of world that we live in. It deals with questions like, what is a human being? Is there life after death? Is there purpose to life? What is the good life? Does God exist? What brings true happiness? All of us have answers and thoughts about these that shape our values and that ultimately shape the way that we live. That's what we mean by a worldview. So everybody has a worldview.

You can't not have a worldview. It's inescapable. But because it's below the surface and sometimes something we've simply adopted without reflection like the way we read, not a lot of us have analyzed carefully the worldview we hold and why we hold it. Now, you would notice on our triangle that there's actually one more component. What shapes our worldview? I think our worldview is primarily shaped by relationships, by the people that we know, by the experiences that we have profoundly shape our relationships. So some of you know my father Josh McDowell was an agnostic for years, grew up in a profoundly dysfunctional family. And when he set out to disprove Christianity, Christians would say things like, "You have a heavenly Father who loves you." Well, my grandfather, my father's father was a drunk and abusive to my dad's mom. The idea of father profoundly shaped the way my dad thought about Christianity.

If father equals this, why would I want a heavenly Father? His worldview was shaped by his relationships. Paul Vitz is a psychologist who grew up in a Christian home, but interestingly enough, when he went to graduate school in New York, he was from the Midwest. He kind of felt embarrassed where he was from in this secular school of psychology in New York. So he said as a result of that, he learned how to talk, he learned how to dress, and he naturally adopted how to see the world. You see, his worldview began to shift, not because he was given good arguments that God doesn't exist and the Bible's false, but relationally, he wanted to fit in. He wanted to ground his identity. It wasn't until years later in his 30s that he revisited his faith and came back and was convinced that it was true. But Paul Vitz wrote a very interesting book called Faith of the Fatherless.

Now, this is a controversial book and idea, but he said as he examined some of the great atheists, Nietzsche, Freud, Camus, Sartre, he said he found something all of them had in common - a dead, distant, or harsh father. Now, what's his point? His point was simply that we tend to project our earthly father onto our Heavenly Father in ways many of us don't even realize. Now, that is not a way to dismiss genuine atheist objections to the faith. We have to address those and we will. But the point is we can have all sorts of relational motivations to believe in God or not believe in God that profoundly shape our worldviews. So worldview is not just mental, it's a part of the heart. It's a part of our relationships and a deep part of our experiences. Now, another way to look at worldview that I think you might find very helpful is that worldviews answer three questions.

Every worldview is going to answer at least three questions. Now, why does it answer three questions? Because really what a worldview is it's a story. As Greg Koukl says, "It's a story about reality." So every worldview is going to have some creation story about how we got here. Where are we from? Why are we here? Every belief system is going to have some creation story. Now of course, if they don't believe in God, there's not a creator, but there's still a creation story about how and why we're here. Now, the second component is what we would call the fall. It's in the sense of what went wrong. Why is the world broken? I'm not aware of any worldview that says things are just fine and they're perfect as they are. That's what we would call delusional. Now, worldviews differ over what they think is wrong with the world, but every worldview identifies something broken in the world.

And then the third one is redemption. How do we fix it? And what follows from fixing the problem? Now, of course, sometimes we word this differently rather than creation, fall, redemption, sometimes I'll say origin, problem, solution, to use non-Christian language, origin, predicament, solution. But notice something, the only way you can have a solution that works is by doing what? Properly identifying the problem. The only way you can fix your car if it's out of gas is not by rotating the tires, not by getting new spark plugs, and not plugging in an EV to charge it if it's a gas-powered car, got to identify the problem and fix it. The question is, which worldview accounts for why we're really here? What is actually the root of brokenness in the world? And if you identify it properly, then you can fix it. So what different worldviews do is they explain it differently.

So Buddhism, for example, doesn't have a creation moment in the past because that requires a creator. Eastern religions, for the most part, would say that the universe is eternal. Well, what's wrong with the world is we suffer and we suffer because we have desires. Well, if we suffer because we have desires, then the solution would be to get rid of our desires. But is the problem of our suffering simply because we have desires? So on Buddhism, you follow the Eightfold Path in the sense you begin to purge yourself of such desires. That's the Buddhist story. Now, Islam is a monotheistic religion. They believe in a personal creator, but there's not original sin in Islam. What's simply wrong is that we are not submitted to Allah. In fact, the Muslim is one who submits. So you follow the five pillars and through obedience, in a sense, earn your salvation so Allah would grant you eternal life.

But there's no substitutionary atonement in Islam because there's no original sin. Take a religion, and I call it a religion, such as secular humanism. Secular humanism is an atheistic religion. And of course, they would have some evolutionary story about how we got here. What's wrong with the world on secular humanism is you nice folks, and me. Religion is the problem. Religion brings wars, religion brings bigotry, religion brings divisiveness. So if the problem is religion, what's the solution? Create a secular state void of religion. And I'm pretty obviously not a secular humanist, but if I really thought the problem in the world keeping us back from a better world was religion, then I would probably support some of the efforts of secular humanists. I think they just diagnosed the problem incorrectly. Another worldview that's become more and more prominent today is called critical theory.

You see this in queer theory, critical race theory, certain kind of post-colonial studies. And according to critical theory, the world can be divided into the oppressed and the oppressors. That is the metric by which everything is gauged. So if you have certain intersectional qualifications, so to speak, a certain race, certain sexual preference, certain gender, so on, you are in the oppressor class. Now, what's interesting about this is if you want to know who the ultimate oppressor is, you are looking at them. I dot every I and I cross every T. I'm white, I'm heterosexual, I'm not rich, but I live in southern Orange County, so compared to a lot of the rest of the world, maybe on some level, I'm doing fine financially just to live here. I'm Christian, I'm able-bodied. I in the ultimate sign and mark of oppression. So what's wrong with the world is those in power are oppressing those who have minority status according to intersectionality.

That's the problem with the world. So through revolution, overthrow those who are in power and we can have a more just society. This is what's called critical theory. So it sees everything in the world through the lens of power and balance, oppressors and oppressed. Now, there's many more worldviews than this. You can look at consumerism as a kind of worldview, right? We are born to be happy and we're happy by buying things. And you start to understand that's actually a worldview sold to us in America and beyond. But a helpful way to look at this is just big categories that worldviews fall into. So for example, naturalism is a broad category that basically says, "God does not exist and natural forces are sufficient to explain everything." So under naturalism would be worldviews like Marxism, worldviews like secular humanism. Even arguably certain kinds of Buddhism might have a strain of naturalism within it.

So when I look at something like naturalism, I say, "What's the story of naturalism?" Well, the creation, there's a universe that came from nothing and human beings are a cosmic accident. You're not planned. You don't have intrinsic value. It's, in a sense, an accident that we're even here. What's wrong with the world is, well, humanity has messed things up. Human beings have messed things up in the world. How do we fix it? Aslan is not coming to say things. Human beings broke it, so we must solve our own problems. Now, according to naturalism, what's the mechanism that largely solves the world problems and its science? Because what does science do? Science studies physical matter. So in a naturalistic worldview, things like angels and the soul and heaven and hell are not real. So theology doesn't really inform us about anything. Philosophy, I'm not really quite sure about philosophy.

Psychology maybe if we're studying the brain, but it's scientists who really carry the authority in a culture shaped by naturalism. Now, you see naturalism in certain popular TV shows like Stranger Things if your kids or your grandkids or you have watched this. At first glance, it feels like a supernatural story because there's somebody who gets possessed, there's this upside-down world, and there's demon-type beings. It feels like a supernatural tale. In fact, there's even a haunted house and seeming like possessions that take place. But if you probe more closely, when the kids are trying to understand what happened, they don't go to a priest, they don't go to a shaman, they go to their science teacher who unlocks for them how to access other dimensions. So it's not another spiritual realm, it's a different physical realm within our same universe. That's what we mean by naturalism.

And you see that in shows like Stranger Things. Another prominent worldview is what we would call pantheism. Now, pan means all. Pantheism in a sense is that all is God, all is divine. You are God, I am God, trees are God. Everything is a part of God. It's all divine in a sense. It's like an energy current pervading everything is what we mean by pantheism. So it's a creation account. Humans are part of the eternal divine consciousness. Now, for there to be a beginning creation moment, there has to be a personal creator to start the process. In pantheism, there is no personal creator, so the universe is eternal. You see this in New Age. You see in forms of Buddhism, Hinduism, and other Eastern worldviews, the universe is eternal. What's wrong with the world is we forgot that we are divine. So perhaps the biggest difference between pantheists and theists is what it means to be human.

Christian worldviews, we are body and soul. We are physical and non-physical. In a new age pantheistic worldview, we are just soul. There's no distinction between body and soul, and we are intrinsically good. Now, what would you rather hear, somebody say, "You are God. You are good. Tap into your energy within," or, "You are a miserable sinner and you need to repent"? Well, hopefully, we would say, "We want to know what is true," but we can understand why certain worldviews like New Age, which an actress from, really, a couple of generations ago, Shirley MacLaine, who's New Age, said, "Look in the mirror every morning and say this three times, I am God, I am God, I am God." That's the original lie going back to the garden. So a solution is to become one with the universe, to tap into our inner divinity because we are intrinsically good. And of course, you see this in the Avatar shows, in the Star Wars series, and in many Disney and other stories such as Pocahontas, Moana, and so on.

And the last one, more broadly, you really could say theism, but we're going to focus on Christianity. So really, every worldview is either naturalistic and atheistic. Either it's some kind of new age or it's some kind of theism in which there's a God or many gods. But the Christian story, of course, is in the beginning, God created. You're not an accident, God is eternal, and God made a conscious choice to bring us into existence. God is the author of this story. What went Wrong with the World? It's not a lack of economic distribution as we see in Marxism. What's wrong with the world is not religion. What's wrong with the world is sin. At the root of the issue, Jesus said is what? We have to be born again because we are sinful and our hearts are broken. So you might say some worldviews identify the problem out there in the world.

Marxism, the problem is out there. Christianity, the problem is in here in the human heart. We need to be born again. And how do we fix this? Everybody knows the answer.

Jesus.

Jesus. One guy got it. If you're at a church event and someone asked a question and you know the answer, just say, "Jesus," you'll get it right half the time. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, whosoever believed in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. Jesus lived the sinless life we could not live ourselves. Jesus paid the debt to God that we owed to God and by grace, through faith, offers us eternal life if we're humble enough to accept it.

Now, as we move forward, we're going to start talking about, given that we're supposed to defend our faith, and there's people with so many different worldviews that are out there, how do we best defend our faith? What does it look like to know which worldview is true? Which one is false? What makes Christianity unique? That's where we're headed next. But do we have one or two questions related to this that might be helpful? Yes.

Do you often start conversations by asking questions trying to understand what their worldview is?

Do I start conversations by asking questions? I absolutely love this because believe it or not, even though I'm talking for a long time through this class, and I'm a teacher, my daughter actually gave me a mug, she's 16, and it said, "I don't need Google, my dad knows everything." And I chose to take it as a compliment, even though she winked at me when she gave it to me. My job, I'm a professor, this is what I do. In conversations, I try to ask far more questions than I do giving answers because I spent a lot of time in my life answering questions that people aren't really asking. And how do you know what somebody's really asking? You ask questions and you listen.

Now, as we get to the end of this course, we're going to talk about how to discover the question beneath the question. But you're on the exact right track. I want to listen, I want to ask questions, I want to gather information. And frankly, questions also put the burden of proof on somebody else rather than yourself. And then when we understand where somebody's coming from and why we can ask better questions and make headway with evangelism. By the way, we have recorded 339 questions of Jesus, 262 questions of Paul. The God who made us and made our brains ask us questions through scripture, that's one of the best ways to engage people. But we'll come back to that. Great question. One more. Go ahead.

Where does Mormonism fit in [inaudible 00:24:17]?

Great question. So Mormonism fits under theism but really is a kind of polytheism. Now, many Mormons will not use this term and some will resist it. But if you study Mormon theology, Lorenzo Snow, who is a prophet, a number of years ago said, "As man is, God once was. As God is man can become." According to Mormon theology, the God that we worship was once a man. And when he was once a man, he had a God who was once a man, who had a God who was once a man. I was that BYU talking with some students and I said, "Is there kind of a first God that started this whole thing because I want to worship that God?" And the answer was, "It's a mystery."

But the reality is there are multiple gods within Mormon theology. And a part of the promises, if you follow certain Mormon teachings, you're married in a temple, the word of wisdom, you can become a God someday. Now, those ideas are deeply buried and you don't learn them right when a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints knocks on your door. They want to get you baptized, get you in the church, and then they start to reveal that theology much later. But they're certainly not atheistic, certainly not pantheistic. They would say they're monotheistic, but in reality, they're polytheistic.