Worldviews and the Church

Chuck Colson, founder, and Mark Early, president of Prison Fellowship Ministries, broadcast a daily BreakPoint commentary on more than 1,200 radio outlets. BreakPoint is the worldview ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries. Their mission is “to seek the transformation of believers as they apply biblical thinking to all of life, enabling them to transform their communities through the grace and truth of Jesus Christ.”

The BreakPoint website and the recently established Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview both help to carry out that mission. The BreakPoint website features Colson’s and Earley’s commentaries as well as feature articles by other established and up-and-coming writers to equip readers with a biblical perspective on a variety of issues and topics, and the Colson Center website provides a variety of resources to assist Christians and the church to understand contemporary issues from a Biblical worldview. If you are interested you can get an email subscription to the daily transcripts of BreakPoint commentaries by going to www.breakpoint.org.

The need for approaching issues in the church from a Biblical worldview has never been so poignant as it is today because of the direction in thinking that our culture has headed. Various surveys have brought matters such as the following to light:

• One survey asked people if they believe that there are moral absolutes that are unchanging or that moral truth is relative to the circumstances. By a 3-to-1 margin adults said truth is always relative to the person and their situation.
• Among teenagers, 83% said moral truth depends on the circumstances, and only 6% said moral truth is absolute.
• Another survey concluded that 44% of adults in America contend that, “the Bible, the Koran and the Book of Mormon are all different expressions of the same spiritual truths.” Just 38% of Americans reject that idea.
• Among Christian kids, 63% say that all religions pray to the same God.

How do such views show themselves in people’s behavior? People are left with philosophies such as “if it feels good, do it,” “everyone else is doing it” or “as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else, it’s permissible.” The decline of moral foundations among our young people has culminated in a one-word worldview: “whatever.”

These worldviews have begun to be combined with Biblical teaching today, even in the church. The Bible, however, can help us understand the kind of truth on which we need to stand, because this happened before. Paul wrote the letter of Colossians to a church that was letting ideas from the culture around them seep into their Christian teaching. In Colossians 1, Paul presented three foundational elements that can help hold us to a Biblical worldview:

(1) Faith. In Colossians 1:3-4 Paul says he thanks God for his readers because he has heard about their faith in Christ Jesus. Today you will hear people say something like, “Everybody needs faith” or “You gotta have faith.” It is like some kind of good luck charm, with no object to the faith. Having faith means you’re okay. Paul is not talking about such faith because faith has no intrinsic value in and of itself. Faith derives its value from the object of faith. Salvation does not come by believing in belief, or even in a set of doctrines or a creed. Salvation comes by believing in Christ. We need to help people in the church to put their complete faith for salvation and for life in Christ alone.

(2) Love. In Colossians 1:3,4, Paul also thanks God for his readers because of the love they have for all the saints. We need people in the church who are not only good people, but who genuinely love each other. Throughout history, the church has always been at its best when it demonstrated the love of Christ to each other and to the world.

(3) The Gospel. Then Paul recognizes that the Gospel brings us hope as nothing else can. Our hope is that heaven is out in front of us. We go to heaven only by believing in the Gospel, which is the message of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. The Gospel must be at the heart of the life of the church and of individual believers.

How does your church measure up in having a Biblical worldview? Does the teaching in your congregation help people hold to the truth of Scripture without mixing in ideas from our culture? Perhaps these ideas can help your church present a Biblical worldview.