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Worldviews, Glasses and Contact with Reality

The Importance of Worldview

Contemporary Western culture is in the midst of an epidemic of anxiety and depression. Psychologists Edmund Bourne and Lorna Garano claim that three social factors lie at the root of the problem. Besides the increase in stress and the loss of community, they cite the emergence of moral relativism as the three chief culprits of the contemporary human condition:

There is no shared, consistent, socially-agreed-upon set of values and standards for people to live by, as there tended to be prior to 1960. In the vacuum left, most of us attempt to fend for ourselves, and the resultant uncertainty about how to conduct our lives leaves ample room for anxiety. Faced with a barrage of inconsistent world views and standards presented by the media, we are left with the responsibility of having to create our own meaning and moral order. When we are unable to find that meaning, many of us are prone to fill the gap that's left with various forms of escapism and addiction. We tend live [sic] out of tune with ourselves and thus find ourselves anxious.¹

We all carry around a map from which we engage in self-talk, make our value judgments, decide what to do with our lives, and much, much more. That map is our worldview — the set of things we believe about life's most important topics and their relationship to one another. For this and other reasons, it is important for Christians to pay close attention to the various worldviews that are competing for the hearts and minds of us all.

Because this is such a pressing topic in our culture, I will be addressing it through a 12-part series titled, Explorations in a Christian Worldview. Through this series, I hope to provide you, the reader, with a clearer understanding of our culture's contemporary worldview struggle, a deeper confidence in the truth and power of a Christian worldview, and a greater understanding of the centrality of worldview to issues related to the nature of human persons.

In this first installment, I shall present what I believe is a typical, though inadequate way of presenting the nature of a worldview, followed by a more adequate depiction.

A Widespread, Problematic Understanding of a Worldview

One of the ways the explanation of worldview is most commonly (although I feel, inadequately,) presented can be seen through Michael Wittmer's book, Heaven is a Place on Earth.² In it, Whittmer claims that a "worldview comprises the lens through which we see the world" (p. 21), and he compares a worldview with contact lenses.

Second, he holds that a worldview has a set of core, ultimate beliefs which he calls ultimate commitments (notice the use of volitional language in "commitments" and not cognitive language) or presuppositions (p. 25). He tells us that these lie at the very center of our worldview and illustrates what this means by the following (p. 26): "If you believe P on the basis of Q and Q on the basis of R, eventually you reach some ultimate presupposition Z about which you say 'I don't know why I believe Z, I just do.'"

This is your ultimate "faith commitment," your "most basic presupposition," your "starting point." Whittmer summarizes: "As a starting point, your presupposition is a belief you argue from, not to. It is not a destination but a place to begin."

Two things follow from all this:

1. There is no place given to the role of direct contact with/experiences of reality (including God); indeed, on this view, one is trapped behind one's worldview (remember, it is a set of glasses through which we see. That is, our worldview is between us and reality such that we never directly experience reality itself. We are trapped behind our worldview).
2. The act of acquiring your basic presuppositions is a choice — in fact, an arbitrary choice for no reason whatsoever. There is, in principle, nothing more fundamental than basic presuppositions in light of which alternative sets could be rationally appraised. In a subsequent article in this series I shall show that, to the contrary, there is a test for ultimate worldview presuppositions, and that test is direct experience of reality in which we compare our presuppositions to reality itself. Below I will make brief reference to this issue.

Whittmer goes on to say that in addition to serving as a lens through which we see the world, our ultimate worldview presuppositions "determine how we interpret reality," they "mediate experiences of the world," their role implies that "where we start determines where we end up," and "our experiences do not come self-interpreted" [italics mine].

Here's a summary of Whittmer's depiction of a worldview:

1. One's ultimate presuppositions are arbitrary faith commitments that have to be chosen. All argument is from them. Nothing can be used to argue for them. Things that happen in the world are religiously ambiguous. Many interpretations can equally explain the facts, so a choice of interpretation is just that: an arbitrary choice.
2. There is no direct experience of or contact with reality. Instead, our worldview presuppositions determine what we see. We see things through our worldview; it stands between us and reality.

Response and Clarification of the Nature of a Worldview

A person's worldview contains two important features. It includes the set of beliefs the person accepts, especially those about important matters such as reality, God, value, knowledge and so on. But a worldview isn't just a set of beliefs.

To see this, consider this sentence: "The best time to visit Disneyland is in the fall during the week." It is not just a list of thirteen words. Rather, it is a grouping of words whose unity consists in the grammatical structure that links the words together into a proper structure.

Similarly, a worldview includes the rational structure that emanates from the set of beliefs that constitute it. Some beliefs are central and basic, while others are relatively peripheral. In general, the more central a belief is, the greater change it would cause to one's worldview if abandoned. Central beliefs support and give justification to more peripheral ones. Belief in the reality of God, the inerrancy of the Bible, the deity and humanity of Christ are central to a Christian worldview. Less central are beliefs about local church structure, the nature of spiritual gifts, and so on. In understanding a worldview, it is important to grasp the relevant set of ideas along with the various support relations among them.

While a worldview affects what one sees, I believe it is a mistake to compare a worldview with a set of glasses such that:

1. The worldview stands between us and reality and we see through it and
2. Knowledge by acquaintance with or direct awareness of reality does not take place. Glasses stand between a person and the external world such that a person's access to reality is mediated through the glasses. One does not have direct access to reality itself.

However, I believe it is wrong to place things between knowing and experiencing subjects and the real world; things like one's cultural, historical location, one's tradition, or one's worldview. One troublesome implication of such a model is that people can never correct their beliefs by comparing them with direct experience to things themselves. Yet people, including little children, do this all the time.

I think a better way to describe the role of a worldview in seeing reality is to depict it as a habituated way of directing our attention or inattention, as the case may be.

Let me explain. One day a missionary spoke in Talbot's seminary chapel, and without telling us where they were taken, he showed a set of slides from a culture he had visited. He asked us to list on paper everything we saw. After we were finished, he spoke a while, and then put the slides up again and asked us to start with a fresh sheet of paper and list everything we saw this time. Interestingly, people's second list was virtually identical to their first one. Why? Because people tend to look to confirm what they already see and believe, rather than adopt a fresh perspective and launch out from scratch. Over time, people fall into ruts and adopt ways of seeing things; certain features are almost always noticed, while certain other features are usually neglected.

Your Worldview: Is It In Touch With Reality?

I suggest that a worldview functions as a set of habit forming background beliefs that direct our acts of noticing or failing to notice various features of reality. Depending on various factors, this worldview function may yield accurate or inaccurate experiences and beliefs. It's not that we cannot see reality itself. In fact, through effort we can look at things from a different perspective and further confirm or disconfirm our previous viewpoint. Habit-forming beliefs do not stand between a person and reality as do glasses. Rather, they habitualize ways of seeing and thinking which, through effort, can be changed or retained, hopefully on the basis of comparing them with reality itself.

This depiction of worldview has two important features. First, because we can have direct contact with reality, reality itself is the basis upon which we form, test and adjust our worldviews. Second, our adoption of basic presuppositions is not an arbitrary choice but, rather, something which can be adjudicated on the basis of the evidence of direct experience of reality.

C O F F E E  S H O P

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How do you see people's worldview affect the way they live?

Join the discussion!

The importance of these observations will be reinforced in the next article in which we shall examine the three-way worldview struggle currently raging in Western culture.