The big picture. We ruin ourselves by neglecting it. Information is important. Facts are even more important. More important than both, however, is understanding the big picture.

Stated another way, it refers to the crucial role of understanding worldviews. Not only ought we to understand our own worldview, but the worldviews of others, too. Why? Because life is explainable when we understand that life is a battlefield of ideas/worldviews.

Worldviews collide. And there’s no shortage of evidence for how those collisions make history.

Worldview is a grid of interpretation. We all impose on reality a grid for making sense of experience. In theology/philosophy, the term is Weltanschauung. It’s one’s philosophy of life. It allows for the interpretation of ideas. It enables one to grasp the big picture.

 One’s worldview is evidenced in how we answer some fundamental questions:

*Does God exist? If so, what is his nature? That is, his attributes?

*If God does not exist, how do we explain the cosmos?

*How is non-existence a thing? That is, how can no-thing be referred to as something?

*How would non-intelligence create intelligence? That is, how does nothing give rise to something?

*How do you explain the irreducible complexity we see in life? By chance? Really?

*If God does not exist, why trust our own “knowledge”?

*If God exists, what does he require?

*What is man?

*Where does meaning come from?

*Where did man come from?

*How do we come to know things (epistemology)?

*What is ultimate reality (matter only, as naturalists claim?)?

*How are ethics and morals determined? Who determines right and wrong? Who sets the rules?

*What happens after death?

*Is it possible that God exists, and that he has spoken by way of general and special revelation?

How you answer these questions reveals your worldview. These questions are not exhaustive, but they serve as a primer, a foundation for thinking. Just knowing how we answer these questions goes a long way in determining how we think and behave.

Think with me about how worldviews are being played out in our politics, in our culture, in our wars, in our neighborhoods, in our families.

Filter them through your worldview:

*Is gender a fluid category? If so, in what worldview? (Witness the transgender movement.)

*Is it possible that God created human beings as either male or female, and pronounced it good?

*Is a baby a person inside the womb or not? If not, how does worldview play out in the remainder of said life? If it is a baby in the womb (the lengths to which some people go to deny this reality strains credulity and intellectual honesty), on what basis is the boy or girl denied human rights?

*If naturalism/atheism/secularism are true, then why complain when those worldviews produce violence and “evil” acts? Example: If there’s no God, how can anything be objectively good or evil?

*Why do some academies teach situational ethics but then demand “justice” when defrauded?

*What does it say that in many organizations we have to teach “sensitivity” and heretofore common courtesy? What worldview has been marginalized? What worldview dominates today’s discourse?

The big picture. To use a biblical analogy, we know trees by the fruit they bear.

How our representatives vote and lead; whether we remain free to worship in accordance with our constitutional rights; whether life inside the womb is viewed as a baby or detritus; whether it’s right to enforce current border laws or to sanction libertinism, etc. are all issues that are being fought over based upon the worldviews held by the combatants.

Having a worldview is inescapable for a thinking person. The question is, which one? If you want to see the results of where worldviews lead, look no further than the culture on display.