Christian Worldview Research Paper

I have a Christian worldview. A worldview is the structure by which an individual or group makes sense of the world. Philip Graham Ryken describes it as “our orientation to reality.” It seeks answers to questions like, “How did we get here?” and “In what is our ultimate hope?” Ryken believes all worldviews are inherently religious because they reveal our “fundamental convictions,” particularly what we believe about God. Further, he believes we all develop a worldview, whether consciously or subconsciously, with regard to the fundamental question of origin, problem, and hope. There are many factors which contribute to one’s worldview, including one’s background, experiences, education, socio-economic circumstances and nationality. Of course,
we are social creatures and our worldviews are rarely private; they are often the language and expression of a community. One’s thoughts are of little consequence when divorced from action; the way individuals or a community live is a direct consequence of their worldview. The Christian worldview, like Jesus’ call to repentance, should change the way we think and how we see the world; it should allow an individual of faith to see the world as God sees the world. The Swiss theologian Emil Brunner characterized Christian ethics as “the science of human conduct as it is determined by Divine conduct.” Therefore, how one sees the world and how an individual of faith acts in the world should be in harmony with Divine conduct.
This extends in many directions: political, economic, and cultural, but also to the realms of the self, the family, and the church. The Christian worldview holds the Word—the Word made flesh—as revealed in the Holy Scriptures as the “sole authority for faith and practice.” Therefore, the Christian worldview ceases to be Christian if Jesus is not the final authority with regard to ethics and worldview. We can glimpse how God sees the world by studying how Jesus taught and lived. In relation to the “external, legal, ceremonial conformity to the law” which characterized Jewish righteousness in his day, Jesus’ righteousness was “internal, spontaneous, [and] never in adherence to a fixed set of rules for behavior.” This is not to say Jesus’ ethical teachings were relativistic but rather pointed toward the “righteousness of God” and not the customs of the culture. This leads the Christian to the third person of the trinity; it is the Spirit which allows the individual of faith to develop his or her moral character. Henlee Barnette declares, “To be guided by the Spirit . . . is to be led into a knowledge of the will of God as revealed in Christ.” Love is the basic ethical principle of the Christian worldview;
however, the Christian must further develop his thought in order to understand how love will redeem the world.
Ryken identifies four categories for how Christians understand the “human experience”: creation, or the fact that God created the world and everything which exists, the fall, or how humanity has turned away from God, grace, or the way the resurrection of Christ has reconciled all things to the Creator, and glory, or how God will usher in the Kingdom. This is the framework through which Christians answer life’s most important questions. All of humanity—indeed all of creation—is an expression of the love of God. From this, individuals of faith understand the basic human dignity of all and, as a result, racism, sexism, classism, or other human divisions cannot diminish one’s dignity. The fall gives us an explanation as to why the world is broken and why we are broken; this is not creation as God intended, or (even if it is), not creation as it will exist one day. Grace is God’s love made manifest, the celebration of the life we