The Clash of Worldviews

Recently there were two media reports that show world view implications.  In the first report a Catholic school in Canada suspended a student who said that the Bible teaches that there are two sexes and there are not other genders biblically.  Some were also complaining about open bathroom and locker room policies for transgenders.  I suppose this school  was catholic in name only.

A second media source interviewed Jordan Peterson, the brilliant psychologist and cultural philosopher explaining the radical environmental movement in worldview terms.  Yes, he agreed, we should care about the environment.  However, the radical environmental movement has defined the earth (gaia-the earth goddess) as being raped and wounded by the cancer of the planet, human beings who consume too much, pollute too much and destroy too much.  It is a very dark picture.  He noted that nuclear power, which could solve energy problems, is rejected.  This is not a rational view but a type of irrational religion. Biblical faith is a rational religion.

It is not only these two issues, human sexuality and the environment, but several radical so called “woke views” that have now been joined together to produce an anti-biblical world view and could well lead to more persecution for those who are Bible believers.  The biblical world view provides us with a set of beliefs and norms arising therefrom.  It teaches that God created the world and human beings in His image.  And indeed, Thomas Jefferson was right that it teaches that all human beings are created equal. Therefore, we must find our self- definitions in Him and His Word, and cannot define ourselves.  In this it provides the norms and guard rails for human fulfillment.  It teaches us that human being were made as male and female and for lasting monogamous marriage.  Some few are called to celibacy.  It teaches the centrality of the family.  It also teaches that the earth is not goddess but was created for human beings who were given dominion but are to be wise stewards.  If we make the earth our deity we will destroy the earth since we will lose wisdom (Romans 1-“Claiming to be wise they became fools.”)  We are called to make a decision to conform ourselves to God’s Word.

The biblical worldview teaches that all have sinned and need the atonement and forgiveness that is found only found in Yeshua.  It also teaches that through Yeshua and His Spirit, reconciliation, practicing love, and sacrificing for others enables all races and ethnicities to join together communities where deep fellowship is possible.

The worldview that is now followed by the radical left so called “woke” roots itself in an idea of human authenticity that is the direct opposite of the biblical worldview.  It promotes the idea of the autonomous free human individual who looks deep into his or her own consciousness and discovers in experience their “authentic self.”  They define themselves.  As such they can define themselves as male or female or several other genders: transgender, fluid gender, non-binary gender, homosexual, heterosexual and more.  The society and all its members are called to support self-definition.  This includes medical treatments to change genders, hormone suppressants, taking hormones and surgery (even for minors).  Those who do not agree are labeled phoebes and are to be canceled and driven out of society.  They are disfellowshipped.  This is an enforcing of an orthodoxy.  The state and business corporations are the instruments of forcing compliance just as the inquisition was in Catholic Spain in the 15th century.  For America,  it is probably unconstitutional religious discrimination.

The radical environmentalists then enforce policies that will lead to increased poverty all over the world because their radical non-solutions value the earth above human beings.  They cannot produce solutions.  Solutions must be based on lifting human beings as the first priority of environmentalism.

Those who embrace “critical race theory” have defined the white races as bad and this includes all Europeans, eastern and western, including Russians, Poles and all others.  All other tribes and peoples no matter how depraved in are given a pass.  Whites are the oppressors.  When there is analysis of why there are disparities in opportunity, having rebelled against biblical teaching, they reject the importance of the factor of stable families.  The family is sometimes despised, and it is thought children must be raised by the state as in Marxism to overcome the resistance to progress.   Reconciliation, forgiveness, mutual service and love are replaced by hate and grievance forever.  Guilt and innocence is defined by skin color.  But in the Bible, all have sinned, and no one is given a pass.  Blaming others forever is contrary biblical norms.   

We are living in the most profound clash of worldviews.  Those who hold to the biblical worldview are called to act in love and compassion for the repentance and salvation those who are lost.  And we do see those who embrace these false views as very lost.  But God has given us the message of reconciliation, and we proclaim be reconciled to God.