Thanks for reading and helping me develop family and friends. Tonight I attended the small group at Central Assembly entitled the Truth Project. The episode covered philosophy and ethics. I came away with the differentiation between formal and personal worldviews. The lecturer asserted that people do not fit “big paradigms” like Marxism, Postmodernism, or Determinism de facto; but construct a personal worldview (sub)consciously like a patchwork quilt. Many throw around big words that carry many unrecognized assumptions that they might not actually maintain were they to take ideas to their ends. An illustration of the term “Sunday-school answer” might convey what I attempt to communicate. I jotted down that people generally give these: 1) to avoid confrontation; 2) to convey the “right” answer; 3) because they genuinely believe the answers; 4) to avoid silence; 5) to avoid looking dumb, etc. etc.
What is worldview? I will use it simply as the internalized beliefs that affect and possibly determine thought, perception, and deed. They can be changed as assumptions are brought to consciousness for analysis, and after molding, “re-subconscioused.” What does Paul entail when he commands the Romans not to conform themselves to the world but to renew their minds? “Mind” in Romans 12.2 probably carries the nuance of reasoning so as to determine what is worldly and avoid conformity to it, and to test what is godly. Paul echoes the wisdom tradition: fear of God initiates and sustains wisdom. Determining God’s will of righteousness, justice, and equity develops through this “mind-renewal.”
In developing my worldview, then, I am exposing myself to the sources of my tradition: Bible, church history, theology, and reasoning. While each of those terms could be unpacked into dissertations, I intend them in simple ways. By Bible, I intend the Protestant canon; by church history, I intend to include happenings after the resurrection until now; by theology, I intend discourse initiated from Bible as defined and discourse about such discourses; by reasoning, I intend what we can derive by the methods of the sciences and the humanities.
With this positive approach, I also plan to compare and contrast my developing worldview with overtly and covertly different ways of thinking. Overtly different ways of thinking than my worldview might include atheism or Confucian social order; covert examples might be Cartesian method or capitalism. I have found that interaction with views different than mine gives me perspective, helps me understand others better, and enriches, bolsters, or challenges my own views.
