Critical Thinkng for Leaders

Getting Started

This week’s devotion begins with reading a short summarized section of co-authors Steve Wilkens and Mark Sanford's book, entitled  Hidden Worldviews (2009, pp. 209-218):  In the reading below, the authors articulated four pillars for which a Christian worldview can be founded. The Bible is the first, as it serves as the foundation for the faith. Second is reason because God gifted us with minds to use for understanding and sharing. Third is experience. This pillar gives validity to the individual as their life aligns with God’s Word. Finally, the fourth pillar is tradition. This gives us comfort that we are both connected to our past as humans and hope for our race in the future.

“Evaluation of our deepest convictions and the stories that shape our beliefs is of critical importance. Such an examination is not possible without a set of tools that allows us to be intentional about this process. Since worldview examination is an ongoing project, you will also need some of these evaluative instruments:

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Scripture

The first and primary criterion of truth is Scripture. It is the foundation of a Christian worldview. The Bible’s narrative about God’s involvement with his world provides trustworthy and foundational truths about human nature, about God’s nature and about God’s activity in our lives (both the present life and the afterlife). At the focal point of God’s engagement with his creation, we find Jesus, God in full humanity, whose life, teachings, death and resurrection illuminate our understanding of God and ourselves. While the Bible proclaims that God is the author of all truth, that he has revealed his truth and that his truth is knowable, it makes no claim to provide exhaustive truth. It will not tell you tomorrow’s high and low temperatures, how to pick a lock on a bank vault or how to surgically repair a torn rotator cuff. Moreover, even its information on spiritual matters is incomplete. Details about the afterlife are certainly sketchy, and Scripture itself tells us that most of Jesus’ activity and teaching is not contained within its pages (John 21:25). Nevertheless, a Christian worldview asserts that Scripture provides true and sufficient knowledge of God, his creation, our nature and purpose, and how we enter into and grow in our relationship to God. In short, Scripture is the first place we look and the final court of appeal in shaping a Christian worldview.

Reason

While Scripture provides unerring and sufficient truth in what it intends to teach, developing a Christian worldview requires use of our rational faculties as well. Though we could add to the list, we will mention three central functions of reason in constructing and evaluating worldviews. First, as we have said above, the Bible is silent on many matters. Its silence seems to indicate that it does not intend to operate as a textbook on organic gardening, art, physics, medieval European history and a host of other subjects. If a well-rounded Christian worldview needs to bring all reality under its scrutiny (and it does), our rational capacities must be employed to gather and analyze this information. Scripture certainly provides direction about how we should arrange and prioritize our information about such topics, but the information itself must come from other sources. A second legitimate role for reason is the interpretation of Scripture. While the Bible is God’s infallible Word, this Word must be read or heard. On the most basic level, reason must be operative for reading and hearing (if hearing means an understanding of what audible sounds signify) to occur. Reading and understanding do not take place without rationality. In addition, when we read and hear, we also interpret, which is a function of reason. We can’t get around that. Thus, reason, the second criterion of truth, is necessary to help us properly interpret the Bible’s message. Not all interpretations of Scripture, or any other source of information for that matter, are equal. Some are better than others. Without getting into a full-fledged discussion of what distinguishes good interpretive principles from less adequate ones, it seems safe to say that our principles of interpretation must have consistency and must be congruent with the whole of Scripture. Consistency and congruency are two characteristics of rational thought. Thus, developing a rational means for interpreting Scripture is one of many necessary roles the mind fulfills in worldview development. The final function of reason…allows us to organize and synthesize ideas into a coherent worldview. As part of this process, reason provides a way to understand how Christianity stands in relationship to worldviews that challenge and compete with the Christian perspective. No responsible Christian argues that reason should be trusted as an infallible authority. Likewise, no responsible Christian argues that reason can be bypassed completely. Between these two extremes, Christians embrace a broad spectrum of positions on the proper role of reason within the life of faith. As a result, while the basic features of Christian worldviews may remain the same, the details of rationality’s place within a Christian worldview have been contested for as long as Christianity has existed. The same is true for the relative role of our next two authorities—experience and tradition. All Christians rely on them, even if this reliance is not recognized or acknowledged, but in different ways and to different degrees.

Experience

The third criterion for sorting truth from error is experience. This term requires careful definition because experience is often equated with individual feelings. Many rely on such individual feelings as the primary criterion for determining whether something is true ‘for me.’ Because of the subjectivism implied in this, many Christians go to the opposite extreme and refuse to view experience as authoritative at all. Our definition of experience is not subjectivistic. Instead, an idea passes the test of experience if its claims are consistent with facts, observations and actual life events. Thus, experience isn’t pitted against Scripture or reason; the three are complementary. Life experience is one laboratory in which we test our understanding of Scripture and the conclusions we draw from reason. In other words, we are confident that the Bible’s truth is consistent with activities that result in the well-being of ourselves and others…it is impossible for a person to actually live as if no moral truth exists (moral relativism).

Tradition

The final criterion… is tradition. Our use of tradition refers to the church’s interpretation and application of Scripture to a variety of situations and issues over its two-thousand-year history. Tradition reminds us that our generation does not have a corner on truth. Instead, it tells us that we are connected with a "great cloud of witnesses" (Hebrews 12:1) whose collective wisdom can help us understand better how to navigate the Christian life. Even more than that, it expresses our confidence that, despite human limitations and sinfulness, the Holy Spirit works within God’s people to preserve truth. Tradition also helps us understand the means by which God’s people have deepened and maintained their relationship with God. One such vehicle for transformation has been participation in authentic Christian community. From day one in the church, Christians were urged to meet regularly with one another for the purpose of spurring spiritual growth, speaking the truth in love, encouraging one another, confessing sins to each other, and holding each other accountable. Christian community can be used by God to challenge us to take a deeper look at our convictional beliefs, especially when we can draw on the resources of Christians who are mature in their thinking and living of Scripture to a variety of situations and issues over its two-thousand-year history.

A Christian worldview should remind us of our multifaceted dependence on God’s goodness, which should foster humility within us. Thus, humility is an important indicator of whether we are progressing toward conformity with God’s story. (Also,) it is all too common to find Christians who possess the intellectual beliefs that should lead to lives marked by these attributes, but these operate only on the level of what we have called confessional beliefs. They know the right answers. They just don’t live as if they do. These confessional beliefs never become true convictions that correspond to actions and attitudes such as gratitude, humility, and love. The focal point of a Christian worldview is not to develop abundant intellect (although the rewards of this should not be understated) but to live an abundant life. In the end, then, the effort invested in a worldview is aimed at experiencing the abundance God intends for each and every aspect of our lives.”

Background Information

Write a one-half to one-page reflection paper (Word document) reflecting on the sentence from the above reading: “The focal point of a Christian worldview is not to develop abundant intellect (although the rewards of this should not be understated) but to live an abundant life.” Do you believe you live an abundant life? If so, how would you describe that? If not, what would living an abundant life look like for you?