Your house might be close to your neighbor’s house, and might even have similar architecture. But when you traipse out your front door, down the walk, and into your neighbor’s home, you just might enter a wormhole. The views about reality espoused by the inhabitants of those two houses might be light years apart.

Thoughtful Christians need to ponder carefully the changes of the last hundred years as the forces of individualism, globalism, and the proliferation of “universes” have brought many diverse worldviews into close proximity.

Enter the Nonsense

There was a day when most Americans embraced a broad, cultural “Christian” consensus, with certain common worldview assumptions about the origins of the material universe, individual life purposes, and a basic moral framework in which society could prosper. If you are like me, you are bewildered by the evaporation of any consensus about, well, anything, and by the harmful, nonfunctioning, and perverted “truths” now embraced (and more and more imposed) as mainstream.

This proliferation of worldviews means that at younger ages our children are encountering contradictory ideas and are forced to think about the foundations of their faith. It means that all of us are pressed to ponder what philosophers call epistemology, or how we know what we know. It means that the mall, the school, or the neighbor’s house might be a place where Christian presuppositions learned in RPCNA churches are challenged and often demeaned.

Order Amidst Chaos

James Sire’s classic book, The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog, has helped many sort through what are actually a limited number of possible answers to life’s big questions.Rather than comparing the historic religions, Sire employs the concept of the worldview. One’s world­view is like a pair of eyeglasses through which one sees everything. Sire defines 8 major worldviews, or ways the glasses color perceptions. This powerful idea enables Christians to work with similarities between various ideas while also recognizing the uniqueness of our neighbors’ understanding of reality.

Because we love our neighbors and view them as image-bearers of God, we must carefully guard against the temptation to “tell someone what they believe” rather than asking careful questions that draw out a person’s convictions. This is the intellectual discipline King Solomon praised when he said “The purpose in a man’s heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out” (Prov. 20:5). I’m more and more persuaded this quality needs to be a marked feature of Christian evangelism in this 21st Century.

Subjective and Objective

You must understand there is subtle humor in Sire’s book title, The Universe Next Door, because in physical terms there cannot be more that one universe. There are many star systems. There are many galaxies. There are even clusters and superclusters. But there is only one universe—the very word means all the parts of reality considered as a whole. But Sire’s book is pointing out that there are many “verbal or conceptual universes” and that every robust worldview makes absolute or universal claims. Even the postmodern assertion that there are no absolutes is a self-defeating, universal claim!

The marvelous fact is that, though there are subjective universes next door, we are all “stuck” in one objective universe made by the eternal God. This material universe testifies exquisitely about the existence and nature of this one God. The Apostle Paul’s classic statement in Romans 1 has far-reaching implications: “that which may be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them…ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made” (Rom. 1:18-20, emphasis mine).

This “true truth” (Francis Schaeffer’s term) means we can kindly and firmly insist that, though our non-Christian friends may have exchanged the truth for a lie (see Rom. 1:23, 25, 27) and are actively suppressing the truth (v. 18), they nonetheless know the God in whose image they are made. It means they know of their ultimate accountability to the God whom they deny exists. It also means that we can patiently make the cumulative case from physical features of God’s world (and doctrinal truths from God’s Word) that it is not logical to hold to a “oneist” view—that is, that the universe created itself out of nothingness. I have found the work of Illustra Media’s Design of Life series (www.designoflife.org) a helpful resource in learning to explain the myriad of design features of the natural world that simply cannot be explained with naturalistic assumptions.

Worldviews Incarnate

Sire’s careful definition of worldview is worthy of extended consideration:

A worldview is a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true, or entirely false) that we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic constitution of reality, and that provides the foundation on which we live and move and have our being. (p. 20)

This is a pretty heady and theoretical definition, but it brings us to one place where we need to learn about worldviews: the classroom. We need to grow in our conceptual understanding of alien worldviews. We need to cultivate the skill of putting them under the microscope and dissecting them to see what animates their adherents around the world.

But after the lab work is done, we must go out into God’s amazing world to observe and interact with people made in God’s image. We must observe these worldviews “with skin on.” It helped me tremendously to see that we must train our children in both propositional conviction and relational kindness, in both catechism and the good manners of polite conversation. My prayer more and more for covenant children is that they would learn from their teachers, elders, parents, and, especially, the Word of God to be philosophically tough and relationally kind. Parents and leaders need to model both a logical and systematic understanding of Christian truth claims and a love of neighbor that is engaging, personal, urgent, and kind.

From the Classroom to the Mission Field

Each year Topeka RP Church hosts LifeFocus Week, a live-in discipleship program that trains students to feed on the Scriptures and to stand confidently for Christ in a hostile world. This year we delved deeply into The Universe Next Door, and we analyzed four distinct worldviews presented in Sire’s book: Christian theism, Secularism, Eastern Pantheistic Monism, and Islam. (You can hear my introductory sermon at www.lifefocusweek.info.) We concluded the week by turning again to behold the mediatorial kingship of Jesus Christ, a central Christological doctrine that animates the confession of the Reformed Presbyterian Church. It was a stimulating week for students and teachers alike. But it was what followed that drew me most deeply into worldview studies.

Three days after LifeFocus concluded, I joined up with other two other RPCNA pastors to travel to South Asia as part of a new RPCNA mission work. This was an amazing two-week opportunity to travel very far from my comfort zone and the routines of ministry. During this trip I was stunned to find myself conducting field observations about the very visible roots and fruits of all four worldviews we had previously studied in the classroom.

While sitting at the Abu Dhabi airport, I observed an articulate Christian engage in thoughtful worldview dialogue with an American, Eastern monist on her way back from studies under her guru in India. Then in the courtyard of a gracious Christian host I listened (through translation) as a friend quietly witnessed to his Muslim friend about the person of Jesus Christ in the Scriptures. It was remarkable to see the worldviews I had analyzed in the classroom now interacting in the everyday lives of fellow human beings. My heart was stirred with compassion.

Bring It Home

During my trip, I saw the need to bring the scalpel of God’s Word to bear on the worldview lies that shaped their alternate “universes.” These and many other experiences motivated me in ministry in the local church. I came home resolving anew to listen carefully, to ask clear and patient questions, and to develop personal friendships.

In the context of existing relationships I am motivated to fervently pray that God will use me (and all His people) as tools to bring the Word of God to others. I pray that He will effectually call them to repentance and faith in Christ.

May the Lord use this worldview concept to enable us to more clearly see the image of God in our neighbors. May He equip us to ask clarifying questions that get to the heart of their worldview. And may we more boldly and kindly speak the truth of Scripture into the lives of unbelievers.v