The War of the World(view)s
The Bible has much to say about God and about how we can come to know him. What is says is deeply at odds with much of the thinking in the modern world. And this fundamental difference generates differences in many other areas--differences in people's whole view of the world. Modern worldviews are at odds with the worldview put forward in the Bible. This difference in worldviews creates obstacles when modern people read and study the Bible People come to the Bible with expectations that do not fit the Bible, and this clash becomes one main reason, though not the only one, why people do not find the Bible's claims acceptable. [Vern Poythress, Inerrancy and Worldview: Answering Modern Challenges to the Bible (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2012), p. 14.]
It is incumbent upon Christians to understand what is going on when moderns, often with disdain and ridicule, reject the Bible. There is not just a clash between the reader and the text. Now the Bible is worlds apart from the modern view--or more precisely, worldviews apart. This was not always the case. Generally, when an Unbeliever approached the Bible during the first Christendom (roughly 800AD to 1700AD) he would come knowing about, if not believing in, a creator. He would also come to the Bible already believing in heaven and hell, in divine judgment, in moral guilt, sin, and punishment. Most likely he would also believe in the Christ. In other words, he would come with the general worldview of the Bible already in situ and largely intact.
No longer. Modernism and post-modernism have excised such beliefs from the modern Unbelieving mind.
The confrontation between Belief and Unbelief during the first Christendom was much more akin to that which occurred during the days of our Lord and the Jewish people. The issue was more pointedly about obedience to the commands and acceptance of the promises of Holy Scripture. Consider the case of the Rich Young Ruler. He believed, but did not have saving faith--that is, his belief had distorted the Bible's Gospel to self-righteousness as he supposedly kept the commandments. Yet he was unable to pick up his cross and follow Jesus in humble submission to God. Or take the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. The former believed many things taught in the Bible, but did not have saving faith, whereas the Tax Collector did.
But today the battlefield is different, requiring an adjustment in tactics and approach. Moderns today are, in general, profoundly ignorant of the content and teaching of the Bible. Secondly, even if they have some superficial knowledge of its contents, it resembles a foreign language to them. So, taking the Gospel to today's Modern requires Christians to learn what amounts to a foreign language (the prevailing world-view of Unbelief)--which, in turn, needs to be dismantled and the Bible's worldview contrasted with modernism--even as the contents of Scripture are presented. This involves teaching the Unbeliever in his turn a new language--the language of the worldview of the Bible, so that the Unbeliever can begin to appreciate the sense, meaning, implications and the significance of the Scripture's propositional teaching.
No comments:
Post a Comment