The key worldview question: What do you see?

I wrote in WORLD magazine’s Sept. 6 issue that the core of Christian education was learning to see. Some readers have asked if that’s a question not just for students, but also for everyone—and it sure is. Articles about how to develop a Christian worldview sometimes include lists of certain propositions concerning politics and economics. If you answer “correctly” you have one, and if you’re wrong on those, you don’t.

That’s superficial and sometimes downright wrong. A biblical worldview is largely a question of seeing what some do not. Some 3,400 years ago, for example, Moses saw “him who is invisible” and “by faith left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king” (Hebrews 11:27, ESV). Some 2,700 years ago, when Assyrians besieged Jerusalem. King Hezekiah told his people, “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or dismayed before the king of Assyria and all the horde that is with him, for there are more with us than with him” (2 Chronicles 32:7, ESV).

What do you see? That was also a crucial question 2,000 years ago, as recorded in Chapter 7 of the book of Acts: “[Stephen], full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, ‘Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.’” But others could not see: “They cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him. Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him.”

Question No. 1 of the Heidelberg Catechism asks, “What is your only comfort in life and death?” What we answer depends on what we see. The great Heidelberg answer is, “That I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from all the power of the devil … by his Holy Spirit he also assures me of eternal life and makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live for him.”

Say that to a rude secularist and he’ll call a psychiatrist. Say that to one trying to be polite and he may respond, “I’m glad you have an imaginary friend.” Applying the vision of Moses, Hezekiah, and Stephen in our daily lives is both comforting and troubling. In the land of the one-eyed, the two-eyed have to put up with scorn from some and anger from others.