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You're listening to breakpoint this week where we talk about the top stories of the week from a Christian perspective. On today's episode, we're going to play audio from a speech John gave recently at the Stand to Reason conference. We're excited to share this with you. Stick around. Welcome to breakpoint this week from the Coulson center for Christian Worldview. I'm Maria Baer. Normally, I am coming to you alongside John Stonestreet, president of the Coulson Center. And John is traveling this week. So in his absence, we are going to share with you audio from a talk he gave recently at the Stand to Reason conference. John was answering the question, what is worldview? This is obviously something that is close to his heart and close to our mission here at the Colson center for Christian Worldview. So we thought it would be a good opportunity to break this down and to share why we think it's so important to that Christians know what they believe and that we can examine how we're living and whether it reflects what we believe. John is going to talk about this in five origin, identity, meaning, morality, and destiny. John says we might not be living exactly how we say we want to live, but we will live according to what we believe is really real. We're so excited to share this with you this week. This is gonna be a treat, so thank you for listening. And I'm gonna turn it over to John.
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Several years ago, I was on a plane. I was flying from Colorado Springs to Atlanta, and I sat down next to this lady who was really upset. And it's really interesting when you sit down next to someone who's really upset. This woman was also in her late 80s. And so people in their late 80s who are upset, they don't even care. They're just upset. You know what I'm saying? And so I was trying to kind of calm the. And so we started to talk. And as we started to talk, she said, well, what is it that you do? And I said, well, I work for a Christian organization here in town. And she looked at me and said, huh, I'm an atheist. Prove me wrong. We weren't even off the ground yet. This began a three hour flight. And that three hour flight was essentially a three hour fight. I know what you're thinking, like, you're not allowed to talk about this stuff on airplanes, you know, at least not since, you know, the last couple years. But we did. We argued the entire way. And after about 30 minutes, I stopped and I looked at her and I said, now listen I know not everyone likes to have these kinds of conversations, but I'm having so much fun in this conversation. I love talking about these things, but I don't want to ruin your flight. Like, if you want to sleep or pretend like you're sleeping so you don't have to talk to me, that's completely okay. She's like, are you kidding? I'm having a great time. Are you okay? And I'm like, yeah, well, let's do it then. So that's what we would do. We would talk. Well, we would fight for 30 minutes, and then we would stop and check on each other and. And we talked about everything. But it was so fascinating. The conversation began this way. She looked at me and she said, why, do you believe in God? Now, listen, I went to seminary. Do you know how much money I paid to have the answer to that question? But I had learned something, that before I should answer that question, I should ask my own question. And so instead of answering, here's all the reasons why I believe in God, I said, well, what do you mean by God? And she said, a grumpy old man with a beard in the sky that can't wait for you to do something wrong so he can strike you dead with a lightning bolt. And I was like, lady, I don't believe in Zeus. Like, I'm not gonna defend. I'm not gonna defend him. But it was interesting. That was the beginning of this conversation. And throughout the course of the conversation, we talked about everything. We talked about history. We talked about morality. We talked about hurricanes. We talked about the problem of evil. We talked about the abuse scandals in churches. We talked about scripture. We talked about what counts as scripture. We talked about just art. I mean, we talked about everything. And suddenly I realized very quickly that we didn't just disagree on the question of God. Now, we did disagree on the question of God, but we didn't just disagree on the question of God. We disagreed on the nature of reality itself. We disagreed on everything. Why? Because we had different worldviews. We had different perspectives, not just about spiritual stuff, but about reality itself. And if you have the ability to think about life in the world and think about your faith at the level of worldview, not just about specific beliefs, but about the whole story, the big picture. It's incredible. Everybody has a worldview because all of us as humans have to do something. It's something that's distinctly human. We. We have to make sense of life. And that's what humans do. We not only live, we think about living we not only exist, we wonder why we exist. We ask the big questions of life, like where did everything come from? And why am I here? And how am I different than the animals? And what happens when I die and what's right and wrong and how do I know? And where is history headed? How many of you guys have pets at home? Your pets don't ask these questions. They don't. Your dogs don't go around wondering, where did I come from? What happens when I die? Your cats don't wonder, do all dogs go to heaven? These. I'm sorry, that was a terrible joke. But that's what humans do. All animals care about is where they're going to find their next meal, where they're going to find their next nap, and where they're going to find their next mate. And I know that sounds a lot like college freshmen, but humans. One of the things that it means to be a human is to ask bigger questions and to wonder why we exist. I mean, these big questions, this is the stuff of philosophy. Like the great philosopher Jean Paul Sartre wondered about the meaning of life. And this is what his conclusion was. It is meaningless that we are born, and it is meaningless that we die. He was quite an optimist, as you can tell. Not just the great philosophers, but the great scientists like Stephen Jay Gould, the top evolutionary theorist of the 20th century, answering that same question. Why are we here? He said, we're here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures. Because the Earth never froze entirely during the Ice Age. And because a small and tenuous species arising in Africa a quarter of a million years ago has managed so far to survive by hook and by crook. We may yearn for our high answer, but none exists. It just makes you happy to be alive right there, doesn't it? But there's another answer to those questions. Not just the great philosophers and the great scientists, but the great artists like Woody Allen, the filmmaker. He said this more than any other time in history. Mankind faces a crossroad. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly. What's life all about? What's the meaning of life? Even the great philosopher Lance Armstrong, just kidding, he's an athlete. What's the meaning of life? For Lance Armstrong, he said, yellow. No, really, yellow. For him, it was about yellow. Yellow wakes me up in the morning. Yellow gets me on the bike every day. Yellow has taught me the true meaning of sacrifice. Yellow makes me suffer. Yellow is the reason I'm here. Yellow. Now, of course. What did he mean by yellow? I'll get to that in just a second. What did he mean by yellow? Not just the color, but the what? The jersey. And for him, as he said, life is short. It's better to win. If you're wearing the yellow jersey, that means you are winning. And for him, winning was so important that he was willing to. He was willing to cheat in order to get there. Now, it's one thing when you're talking about an incredible athlete and maybe someone who cheats the Tour de France. But of course, we've seen business leaders that are willing to do this. We've seen dictators that are willing to lie and to steal and to cheat and to kill and to do everything that they can in order to just win. In other words, what you believe about the meaning of life and what it's all about really makes a difference. Here's another way to say that. Ready ideas have consequences. Good ideas have good consequences. Big ideas have big consequences. Stupid ideas have stupid consequences. It matters what you believe about these questions. Tom Brady knows that as well. After winning three Super Bowls, here's what he said. Why do I? By the way, he went on to win seven, so maybe he changed his mind after these. But why do I have three super bowl rings and still think there's something greater out there for me? I mean, maybe a lot of people would say, hey, man, you've reached your dream, your goal. Me, I think there's got to be more than this. There has to be more than this. It's a darn thing being human, because we don't just eat and drink and sleep and have fun. We ask these big questions about life in the world. And your generation in particular has been robbed. You've been robbed by being told over and over and over again that whatever you believe about these big questions that all humans ask, it's up to you. It's not really true. It's only true for you. You've not been told to pursue truth. You've been told silly things like follow your heart. You've not been told to figure out what the real meaning of life is. You've been told, make your own meaning, as if you could. These big questions, the philosophers call them the moral questions or the ultimate questions. The tragic thing in our culture is instead of encouraging you to wrestle deeply with the meaning of life, we distract the heck out of you. Instead, we give you a million different illusions and a million different delusions. We give you a million different ways to distract yourselves so that you never have to stop and think, what's it all about? What's it all about? What's it all about? In this particular cultural moment in which you live, if you are going to make sense of your world, you have to be intentional about it. That's the great opportunity. One of the great theologians who I love to read, and you should read him as well, is a guy named GK Chesterton. Chesterton's brilliant and he's always grumpy, so he's a lot of fun to read. Chesterton said this. The modern habit of saying this is my opinion, but I may be wrong is entirely irrational. If I'm saying that it may be wrong, I'm saying it's not my opinion. The modern habit of saying every man has a different philosophy, this is my philosophy, it suits me. That's mere weak mindedness. Why? Because a cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man. A cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon. Some of you have been fed not only the wrong thing about life in the world, not only been captivated in a culture like ours, with so much distraction, but maybe you've even bought this about Christianity. Maybe you've gone to church your whole life and you think that what Christianity is, is whatever is personal and private to you. I'm going to tell you something about Christian truth. Christian truth is personal, but it's not private. CS Lewis was asked what's the most profound philosophical statement of all time? He said, in the beginning, God. Because everything that follows from that is different if it's true than if it's false. Does that make sense? If there is in the beginning God, then everything that follows looks one way. If in the beginning there is no God, everything that follows follows looks another way. But we've been told that the belief in God is just my personal, private belief. Yes, God has personally revealed himself to you, praise God. But it is not a private truth, it is a public truth. And it really matters whether you are in line with truth or whether your beliefs conflict with truth. Because ideas do have consequences. If you don't wanna believe me, you don't wanna believe Chesterton, believe the great philosophical work Alice in Wonderland. Who's she talking to here? The Cheshire Cat? Yeah, the Cheshire Cat. Here's what Cheshire Cat, Alice said, began rather timidly. Would you tell me please, which way I ought to go from here? That depends A good deal on where you want to get to, said the cat. Well, I don't care where, said Alice. Then it doesn't matter which way you go. That's really profound, isn't it? And then Alice goes, well, just as long as I get somewhere. And the cat says, you're sure to do that as long as you walk far enough. Now, I used to live in Tennessee, and there was this old dude at my church, and anytime someone would say something somewhat obvious, he'd be like, yeah, man, it ain't rocket surgery. And just going to let some. Some of you will get that later. Just this kind of falls into the it ain't rocket surgery category. Like, look, if you don't care where you're going, it doesn't matter what road you go down. If you don't care about the consequences, it doesn't matter which ideas you embrace as being true. But just be sure to know this, that the road you start walking down does have a destination. The ideas that you embrace will have consequences. The story you assume to be true about life in the world has an ending, and it frames reality. That's why worldviews matter. One great illustration or one great image of a worldview is a pair of glasses. How many of you guys have glasses on? How many of you guys have contacts in. I have contacts in. Here's the thing about glasses and contacts. We don't spend very much time looking at them, right? Unless we're shopping for them. What we do is we spend a whole lot of time looking what through them. That's what a worldview is. Your worldview is the set of belief glasses that you have. The set of lenses. If you have blue glasses on, the world looks blue. If you have red glasses on, the world looks. If you have Buddhist glasses on, the world looks Buddhist. If you have atheist glasses on, the world looks. Atheists. But it's not even just like shaded glasses or shaded lenses. The worldview is more like a prescription. Have you ever taken your prescription glasses off and put somebody else's on? Or some of you that don't have any glasses, you're like, here, I'm gonna try my friend's glasses, right? Suddenly, what the. The point of glasses, the point of these prescription lenses is so that you can see the world. But suddenly the thing that's supposed to make you see the world is actually preventing you from seeing the world. Does that make sense? That's the same way with a worldview. If a worldview is true, it's the right prescription for. For reality. You'll be able to look through your worldview and make sense of the world. However, if your worldview is the wrong prescription, if it doesn't align with reality, then actually looking through it will prevent you from seeing this now, seeing reality as it is. Can I give you just a couple examples of how we see this collision of worldviews? Not just like me and that eighth lady in the airplane, right? I mean, it was fascinating, right? I used the word God. She used the word God. We weren't talking about the same guy. I used right and wrong. She used right and wrong. We were talking about completely different concepts. Have you ever been in a conversation with someone where you're using the same words but you mean different things? You're using the same vocabulary, but you're clearly not using the same dictionary? Right. That's the power of worldview. That's the power of having a completely different lens of reality on. Right? I'll give you another example, because this has way more implications on a cultural level than a personal level. Let me take one controversial issue. Abortion. There's an entire group of people that look at the act of abortion and they call it life saving health care for women. There's another side that looks at the exact same thing. We're not talking about a different procedure, we're not talking about a different medical thing. We're talking about the same exact stuff, the same exact procedure, and the other side calls it the innocent taking of human life. How is it possible that we could be looking at the same exact thing? One side calls it health care, the other side calls it murder. That is an unbelievable difference, isn't it? We're not looking at. Listen, evolutionists and creationists don't look at different rocks. They look at the same rocks, but they're looking at the same rocks through different what lenses. We're talking about abortion. Both looking at the same procedure, but looking at it through different lenses. Just this past week, there was a welcome news. There was welcome news. The welcome news was it seems that the number of young people in particular that are identifying as someone who was born in the wrong body, that number is going down. In other words, we've kind of come out of this last 10 years or so with more and more and more and more young people believing something terrible about themselves, that they were born into the wrong bodies, that they weren't really male or female, they were non binary or transgender or one of the other dozens or so different designations that we came up with for identity. The healthcare industry really pushed this whole Transgender confusion really pushed it, not even so much on students. The education system did that. But the ones who pushed it the most on parents were the doctors. It was an incredible thing. I have kids. I just can't imagine a doctor looking at me and saying to me what so many doctors said to so many parents over the last 10 years. Would you rather have a live son or a dead trans daughter? Now, thankfully, that spell that was cast over our culture, particularly young people, seems to be breaking up. But let's talk about that. Because young people were socially transitioned, young people were given puberty blockers, young people were given hormones, cross sex hormones, and even to the extent where some, even in their teens, underwent permanent surgery which mutilated their otherwise healthy bodies, One side looked at this set of therapies and called it life affirming care or gender affirming care. The other side looks at these same exact treatments and calls it mutilations. How is it possible to live in a world where two sides look at the same exact thing and come up with such dramatic and radically different conclusions? You know what the answer is? Worldview. It's whatever lens you're looking through. A worldview is the framework of basic beliefs that we have, whether we know it or not. That's a key line. If you went up to the average person on the street and you were like, hey, dude, what's your worldview? People would look at you oddly and walk away. But they have a worldview. The reason that they have a worldview is because a worldview is a framework of basic beliefs, and we all have these basic beliefs. We may not have thought about these basic beliefs, but we assume all kinds of things about life and the world and these beliefs. This framework shapes our view, both of them, the world and for the world. I'll come back to the oven for in just a second, but let's talk about the basic beliefs. What is it that makes a worldview? There's all kinds of these big questions that humans ask. I went through a whole bunch of them. You know, where did I come from? And why am I here? Philosophers call these the ultimate questions or the moral questions. Leo Tolstoy, the great Russian novelist, he actually came up with a list of. Of seven big questions. And he said, if I can't find answers to these seven questions, I'm going to kill myself. So guess what he did. No, he didn't kill himself. He became a Christian. You pessimist. I think you can sum up. I think you can sum up these big questions in five categories. Questions about, first of all, origin. The question of origin is very simple. Where did everything come from? Probably the most common way that people ask this question is simply this. Is there a God? That's a question. That's an origin question, isn't it? Is there a God? You know, Genesis 1:1 says in the beginning, God. Evolutionary theories, naturalistic evolutionary theory says in the beginning, matter or bang, right? So in other words, what was in the beginning? Where did everything come from? Here's another one. Questions about identity. There are certain questions at certain times in history that rise to the top of a culture and become really, really important. If you lived in a part of the world where there was a natural disaster, if you lived, for example, in a part of the world where there was war, like, for example, if you lived in the Middle east, you know, outside of Israel, there in October 7th and in the year since, the most important question that probably would rise to the top is, why does God let bad things happen? Or why does God let this evil happen to us in our culture? In the last 10 years, there has not been a more important question than the question of identity. What does it mean to be human? Who am I? Is being human something fixed? Did God make us in his image, or do we make God in our image? What does it mean to be human? Tomorrow in my breakout, I'm going to spend an entire session just talking about this one question, because it's the most significant question of our cultural moment. You want to think well about AI, you need to know what it means to be human. You want to wrestle with this ever growing acronym of lgbtq, I A plus, whatever the plus means. These are all questions about identity. You want to know what it means to design beautiful, wonderful clothes to the glory of God? You're going to have to start with, what does it mean to be human? Years ago, I spoke at this conference for young adults, and I kind of went on this kind of tear near the end of my talk. And I hadn't really planned to say all these things, but I was just kind of trying to call these young Christians to live lives of faithfulness to God. And I'm like, if God. If you're gonna be a doctor, we need Christian doctors. And if you're gonna be a lawyer, we need Christian lawyers. And if you're gonna be a mom and dad, we need Christian moms and dads. And if you're gonna be a fashion designer, we need Christian fashion designing. And I had never thought that thought before. I'd never said it before, so I hadn't really thought much about it. But after I was done, two girls were coming up to me. One girl was grabbing her friend, clearly against her will. And I'm bringing her up, right up to me. And she's like, thank you. And I was like, you're welcome. Why? And she said, because you said, we need Christian fashion designers. And I panicked because I had never thought that thought before, and I certainly had never thought it before I said it. So here's what you do when you're put on the spot like this as a speaker. I was like, yeah, why don't you tell me why you think we need Christian fashion designers? And she said, well, this is my friend, and she is kind of climbing the corporate ladder in New York City. She's in fashion, and she's really good, and people are noticing how good she is. And I tell her all the time how important her job is. I said, why is her job important? She said, because she's the one who's teaching our culture what beautiful is. See, that's a question of identity, isn't it? There's also questions about meaning. What's the meaning of life? What's my purpose? Is there a meaning? I mean, you heard the great philosophers and the great scientists that I quoted earlier. It's been a very dominant position in philosophy and in the sciences to say that there is no ultimate meaning, that meaning has to be made. There's also questions of morality, what's right and wrong. Who decides what's right and wrong? Does the government decide? I tell you what, that is an enormous question right now. On a political level, if you're interested in politics, do our rights come from God, or do our rights come from the state who makes the rules? Here's another way to ask this question. In all worldviews, if you want to know what a worldview thinks about an awful lot, you just say, what do they think is wrong with the world? Every worldview thinks something's gone wrong, right? A lot of times, most worldviews, especially those worldviews that become totalitarian and take over an entire region, like, for example, like Marxism, what they'll say is, what's wrong with the world is that group of people over there. And so the answer is to get rid of those people. Christianity says something very, very different than that. And then questions about destiny. Destiny like what happens when I die? Where is history going? You know, the 20th century was a century in which there was an awful lot of people who had utopian visions of the world. They thought that their economics or their eugenics or some other way they were going to be able to orchestrate the human condition. And destiny was a perfect world. How did that work out in the 20th century? Not so great, right? But that's one of the ways that. That's one of the deep questions that we ask as human beings, either as individuals or as groups of people. Where is history headed? What happens after I die? Now, listen, if you went up to the average person on the street and you said, hey, what's your worldview again? They would look at you weird and run away. But if you actually got into a conversation and you said, hey, what do you think makes us different than the animals? Or if you said, what's right and wrong? You say, what's the big problem in the world that needs to be solved? People have thoughts about this. They may not have thought deeply about it. They may not have actually studied various answers, but everyone has answers to these questions. And these aren't just kind of unrelated questions. How we answer them provides us a framework and helps us understand who we are and how we fit. By the way, is that cool or what? Did you like that? That is. Hey, listen, you better like that. That was three hours of my life. I will never get back figuring out how all that worked. Right? All right, let's go back to our definition. So the first part of our definition is that framework of basic beliefs. How we answer one of those questions is going to impact how we answer other questions and so on. But this vision of life is the world also shapes our view of the world and for the world. Let's talk about that for just a second. Of the world. It's our interpretation of the world, our explanation of the world, and our view for the world is how we live. One of my mentors who I learned about worldview from used to say this, and it just rings so true. Ready? You may not live what you profess, but you will live what you really believe. You may not live what you profess, but you will live what you really believe. That's the fore part. So the kind of world you think you live in, the kind of reality you think exists, will determine the kind of life that you have. This is why worldview is not just this philosophical category. Nancy Pearcey puts it this way. She said a worldview is not the same thing as a formal philosophy. Otherwise it would only be for professional philosophers. Every person, even ordinary people, she says, has a set of convictions about how reality functions and how they should live. The view of the world, how reality functions and how they should live the view for the world. One way to understand how a worldview shapes and influences you is with a triangle. At the basis of who we are is our worldview. And from our worldview come our values. What we think is real shapes what we think is important. And from our values come our actions. We do the things that are important to us, and they're important to us based on how we understand life in the world. Let me just walk through a couple of big punch lines here for you. Then why does all this matter? Worldview matters because, number one, everyone has one. And a worldview is essential because if you want to know, why is it that I live the way that I do? Why is it that I love the things that I love? Why is it that I value the things that I value? The answer lies in your worldview. If you want to know, what is it that that person loves? What is it that drives that person to behave that way? How is it possible that I can see this issue this way and they can see this issue that way? And. And who's right? Who's actually right? All that is the stuff of worldview. G.K. chesterton, again, he says this, but there are some people nevertheless, and I'm one of them, who think that the most practical and important thing about a man is still his view of the universe. We think that for a landlady considering a lodger, it's important to know his income, but still more important to know his philosophy. We think that for a general about to fight an enemy, it's important to know the enemy's numbers, but still more important to know the enemy's philosophy. We think the question is not whether the theory of the cosmos or worldview affects matters, but whether in the long run, anything else affects them. Now, just because people have a worldview does not mean that people think worldviewishly. You like that word? Made that one up. Okay. But most people do not think worldviewishly. Years ago, I got an email from my boss at the time, and he said, hey, John, we've been invited to go run a conference down in New Zealand. How would you like to go to New Zealand to speak? And I wrote my boss back and I was like, you know, doc, wow, let me pray about it. Yes, I knew immediately. I knew immediately that it was God's will for me to go because it was New Zealand. Okay, Some speaking invites are more obviously God's will than others. And this one God just spoke immediately. It was amazing. Now, I was really looking forward to the trip, but What I was not looking forward to was how long the flight is. It's a 12 hour flight once you get to LA and at the time I was living in Tennessee so I had to get all the way to LA and then 12 hours nonstop from LA to Auckland. And I know kind of, I don't know if you flown recently, but they're making the seating areas and planes smaller and smaller and smaller, which is unfortunate because I'm getting bigger and bigger and bigger. It was not that funny. But I got to the airport in LA early and I was able to request and get an exit row seat for 12 hours. Do you know about exit row seats? Some of you are too young to know about it, but us old fat guys know all about it because they're God's gift to people like me. So I had a 12 hour flight and not only that, there was no one in the seat beside me. It was glorious. God clearly was confirming his will that I needed to go to New Zealand. All right, so I went down there, I had an incredible 10 days and I came back to the airport and I barely made my flight. So I did not get to the airport early. I was not able to select the seat that I wanted. So here I was on the way back, 12 hours in a middle seat in cattle class, you know what I'm saying? All the way in the back. So I'm walking on the plane and I'm just saying, God, why have you forsaken me? You know, I'm really, really irrational at this point. And I sit down next to this lady and I think to myself, man, if we're gonna be snuggled up beside each other for the next 12 hours, I should at least say hello. And so I said, hey, how are you? She said, good. I said, where are you headed? She said, I'm going to Orlando. I said, why are you going to Orlando? She said, I'm going to an Avatar conference. And I said, what's that? And we were off. It was another three hour conversation. Now the moral of the story is stop talking to strange women on airplanes. But she said, an Avatar conference is a conference where they teach you how to find your truth. I said, what do you mean your truth? She said, well, we all have the truth we need inside of us. And this is a conference that helps you clear your mind so that you can look inside and find your whole truth. And of course, you know, everyone has a worldview found out really quickly. Most people do not think worldviewishly. First thing that came to my mind is lady if the truth is inside you, have them send you an email. You can save a 12 hour flight. But I don't say the first thing that comes into my mind all the time. So we ended up having a conversation and I knew where her worldview was coming from. I knew what she really believed. I didn't know she'd actually say it, but about two and a half hours into the conversation, she said it. She said, john, you don't understand. You have all the truth you need inside you because you're God and I'm God and that flight attendant over there is God. Now, I've never been called God before. It's really awkward. What do you say? Thanks. I just kept thinking to myself, if I was God, I'd have an exit row seat right now. But see, this is the example is everybody has this frame of reference, but we don't always think worldviewishly. In other words, we don't always realize where our worldview comes from. Some of you have never taken the time to really think about it. Francis Schaeffer said, most people get their worldview like they catch a cold. They just catch it from the culture around them. We don't think worldviewishly, we don't know where our worldview comes from. We don't think worldviewishly, we don't understand the consequences or the implications of our worldview. That if I believe that, then I also believe that. And then I also believe that. Does that make sense? And by the way, we can point all of our fingers that we want at other people because it is a very human thing. In fact, I'll just give you an illustration of this. Remember the triangle? Our worldview shapes our values. Our values shape our actions. Most people actually, especially in an age of infinite distraction like ours, live upside down. In other words, we live in a certain culture where certain things, certain actions are normal and those actions turn around and reshape our values. And then those values turn around and reshape our worldview. So a lot of people actually live life upside down. A lot of Christians don't think worldviewishly about their faith. A lot of Christians are actually secularists with a twist. If you really got to the heart of what's driving their values, what they actually believe about right and wrong, about what they, what they actually believe is authoritative over their theology or their understanding of the Christian life or their understanding of worship. What you'd find is something that really isn't Christian at all. But more secular than not. There's a Scottish theologian named James Orr. He Put it so well when he said this, follow this quote. I know it's a long one, but follow this. He said, he who with his whole heart believes in Jesus as the Son of God, is committed to much else besides. He's committed to a view of God, to a view of man, to a view of sin, to a view of redemption, to a view of the purpose of God in creation and history, to a view of human destiny found only in Christianity. I run an organization called the Colson Center. It's named after a wonderful leader who passed away just over 10 years ago named Chuck Colson. And this was one of the things I learned from Chuck Colson years ago. He said, christianity is more than just how you're gonna get to heaven. Christianity is a complete vision of reality. It's a complete world and life view. And that's really what we want you to grasp, is we want you to understand that you have a worldview, but it may not be the one you want. You have a worldview, but it might not be worldviewish. You might not have made the connections that you need to connect. And it really matters, because what you believe really matters. Why, as we said earlier, ideas have consequences. But I want to add something else on the end of that. Ideas have consequences is something that was said by a guy named Richard Weaver. But I'm going to add something else that a friend of mine used to say. Ideas have consequences and bad ideas have victims. Listen, the story of history is the story, at least partially, mostly, of the victims of bad ideas. You can be the victims of your own bad ideas. You can be the victim of other people's bad ideas. Worldview matters because ideas have consequences and bad ideas have victims. I love what C.S. lewis, too. He added a little level clarity about why it's important to think about these things. C.S. lewis said this. The most dangerous ideas in a society are not the ones that are argued, but the ones that are assumed. Let me just tell you why. You need to be really clear about your worldview. If you're not, if you don't know about. You live in a culture that tells you that the truth is inside you. You live in a culture that tells you to be infinitely distracted, so that you never stop and really think hard about reality and the why. You exist in the world that you live in. But you also live in a world where there are an infinite number of people trying to convince you of what to think and how to believe. Every song, every movie, every television program, every tweet or X or post or Whatever you call it, every social media post, every meme, every sermon, every message, every video you watch on YouTube is telling you something about what to believe and how to live. But a lot of times the most insidious ideas that you come across, it's not just somebody standing up there and saying, hey, this is the idea and it's really bad. And here, that's not how it's going to come. It's going to be smuggled in. And when you have a well honed worldview, you have what Nancy Pearcey calls a baloney detector. Can you imagine what a baloney detector might be? It's a well honed worldview, gives you the ability to sniff out a bad idea when you see it. Worldview also matters because this, every. And this is a theme you'll hear come up over and over and over over the course of the next day and a half. Here, every worldview tells us a story, but not all stories are true. Every worldview gives you a story of reality. There's different ways to sum up the Christian story of reality. I like this one. The four chapters. Creation, fall, redemption, restoration. God created the world. The world broke because of sin. Jesus Christ came, God incarnate, to put the world back together. And history is headed to a new heavens, a new earth, right? Creation, fall, redemption, restoration. But if you go to the local Buddhist temple and you say, hey, what's the story of the world? They're going to have a completely different story. If you go down to the University of Washington and go in the philosophy department and find an existentialist philosopher and you say, hey, what's the story of the world? They're going to have a different story of the world. Robert Weber said, this is the most pressing spiritual issue of our time. Who gets to narrate the world? We should be intentional about what is shaping our worldview. By the way, Scripture talks all the time about your worldview. The Bible talks all the time about how you think and how you believe and how you see the world. Can I just run through a handful of scripture passages really quick that hopefully will frame this for us and then we'll be done. Here's Romans 12. Do not be conformed to this world, but be. Be what? Transformed. How does transformation happen? By wanting it more? Is that what it says? How does transformation happen? By getting really emotional during a worship music set? No, I mean, all these things are wonderful and important. Scripture is really clear. Paul says that we are transformed by the renewing of our what? Mind. So that by testing we can Discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. You know, historians and sociologists like to name different periods of history. If you've studied history, you've heard about, for example, the Revolutionary War, you've heard about the Industrial Revolution, or you've heard about the Age of Exploration. Do you know that if in 150 years, 150 years, somebody's writing about our moment in history, it already has a name? What's our age? The age that we live in right now, what has it been identified as? Does anybody know the Information Age? Why is it the Information Age? Because you encounter more information on a daily basis than any other generation that has ever lived. You encounter more information by noon than someone who lived in the 1200s or 1300s would have encountered during their entire life. And none of this information is neutral. These information contains ideas. So what do you need? Some of these ideas are true, some of these ideas are false. What do you need in order to tell the difference between what's true and what's false? What do you need to know whether something is genuine or something is a counterfeit? What do you need? Paul says you need discernment. He also said this to the Church at first Philippi. He prayed that their love would abound more and more in truth and in all discernment. Colossians 2. See to it that no one takes you captive by hollow and deceptive. What? Or by philosophy and empty. What deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, not according to Christ. So Colossians 2 says, don't be taken captive. See to it that no one takes you captive. God, give me truth. Give me discernment. Not only are we not to be taken captive, we're to take thoughts captive. 2nd Corinthians 10. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to demolish strongholds. What are the strongholds that we demolish? We destroy. What arguments? And we take thought every captive to make it obedient to Christ. Here's the math. Number one, don't be taken captive by false ideas. Number two, take every idea captive and make it obedient to Christ. And then number three, and I'll close with this. Paul says this to Timothy. The Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness, so that God may perhaps grant them repentance, leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will. Did you see all that together? Paul says, don't be taken captive by bad ideas. Paul says, take every idea captive and make it obedient to Christ. And then Paul says to Timothy, we do this so that we can be used by God to help set captives free. Amen. That's what we're about this weekend. Thanks, guys.
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You've been listening to a special episode of Breakpoint this week as John is traveling this week. We thought it was a good time to share with you this audio from his recent talk at the Stand to Reason conference. We hope that was encouraging and edifying for you. John is going to be back next week and he and I will get back to our normal routine of talking about the week's top headlines from a Christian perspective. So for the Colson center for Christian Worldview, I'm Maria Baer and on behalf of John Stonestreet, thank you so much for listening. We'll see you all back here next week. God bless.