"He married my daughter"

OK, you may ask, "are you talking about your son-in-law or the pastor who conducted the wedding?" Good question, with only that information you are left to determine the point of the statement from your predisposed notion of who I might be talking about. This orientation to make sense of something a certain way is called your worldview.

To see more clearly you need more information. This is called "context". Within what larger frame of reference did I make this statement? What was the major point I wish you to know?

I could give you his name, but if you didn't know from his name whether he was my son-in-law or the one who conducted the wedding, you would still have to infer from your orientation which person I was talking about.

I could give you information about the person in addition to his name. But again, if the information did not explicitly reference this person in a way that provided you understanding without the need for your orientation to be active, then your worldview is still instrumental in knowing the truth with certainty who I was talking about.

Such it is with reading the Bible. The Bible tells stories about God's story. Often it is not obvious who the characters are, especially in Jesus' parables. Our core assumptions (worldview) about God, the world and ourselves tend to affect how we discern truth from the story.

See, the point of this blog is that its not God's truth that is ambiguous or transitory from situation to situation and person to person, its the flawed orientations or worldviews from which we try to discern truth that causes us to disagree in dogmatism or assume truth is relative.

Which worldview is best?

There is so much going on these days about competing worldviews. I have published a few blogs on this like my grandson's experience at The Summit. Christian apologists have made it their career to discuss and publish perspectives on worldview and these approaches take several different forms, but mainly stay on theological and philosophical tracks, such as origin of the Universe, is there a God, purpose of life, etc.

I too think worldview is very important because it is simply the orientations we have that cause us to think, feel, and act in the way we do. Most people want to do what is right, but how do we determine what right is? However, I have taken a more fundamental approach. I have explored core assumptions that people have from which all of their sense-making is derived. Core beliefs are more fundamental than practice oriented beliefs, such as culture, and the system of beliefs that explain the material and invisible world. In fact, I believe worldview is so fundamental that there are only two, one from the carnal mind and one from the Kingdom mind. The carnal mind is the core assumption that my happiness is the result of successfully exchanging with the world around me, the norm of reciprocity. The result is an obsession with justice, reward systems and punishment. The Kingdom mind is the core assumption that God has given me unmerited favor and that I must simply receive what he has done in faith. My motivation is to receive and reflect, not pursue and produce. Its His glory that matters, not outcomes of my actions. The result is a life of thanksgiving. The focus is on the reward giver, his nature and his purposes.

Let's illustrate how this works.

When you hear the word "LAW", what do you think, feel, and do? Does "law" mean to you a rule to control your actions by declaring offense when you violate its conditions?  Or does "law" mean to you a ruler to inform you that your actions are off target and that outcomes of these actions will not be the best for you. The carnal mind automatically orients our thoughts and feelings to the former. Thus, law is a form of bondage since reward and punishment are related to what we do. The later orientation is the kingdom mind. Law is given to us by God to show us first that exchange is not His plan but more importantly how the Kingdom works so we can experience the privileges and provisions of The Heavenlies.

The Gospels are full of stories Jesus tells to explain The Kingdom. Some are difficult to grasp, but mainly they are difficult when we see them through the lenses of exchange (carnal mind). Here's one of the tough ones. Peter asks Jesus about how many times he should forgive his brother's offenses against him. The Jewish law claimed we must forgive offenses made against us 3 times. Peter offers more than twice as much, SEVEN. Peter's view of the law as a rule is the context for his question. Peter is trying to gain favor with Jesus (context of this passage) so he presents a better exchange, Jesus responds with a story in which He starts by saying, "The Kingdom of Heaven can be compared to a king.." Then the story goes like this:

As the king was settling accounts with his servants, one was brought to him that had a debt that was impossible to pay. The master was going to sell him and his family into slavery to settle the debt but the servant pleaded for mercy and patience. the servant swore to ultimately pay back the king but the debt was too big to ever be repaid. Out of his heart for the servant, the king forgave the debt and sent him on his way a free man. The free servant immediately went to one who owed him a much smaller debt and demanded payment. When the debtor of this servant could not pay the debt, the servant had the one indebted to him cast into prison. When the king heard of this, he summoned the servant to him, scolded him because of the servant's response to the king's forgiveness, and delivered him to prison until he could pay his debt in full (which was never).

Jesus concludes the story with these words, "So my Heavenly Father will do to everyone of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart."

If we approach understanding this story about the Kingdom with a carnal worldview (exchange), we will conclude that God demands us to forgive according to His expectations (the law) or he punish us. After all, that is justice. If we approach this story with a Kingdom mind, we will hear God's heart for us. The law of forgiveness is like a ruler that informs us that since we have been forgiven much, we have God's provision to forgive others, which is btw, a much smaller debt. The point is NOT - if we disobey God, He will cast us away. But rather if we live outside His design, we will forever be in bondage to exchange. How we grasp God depends on which one of the two worldviews we hold.

This is also illustrated by the servant in the story. He made sense of the king's action with a carnal worldview. His actions show that he thought he could maybe appease the king if he could repay him some of what he owed and so he treated others for his own purposes of exchange. This action stood in stark contrast to the absence of thanksgiving. Implied in Jesus's story is that the provision of Grace is a thankful heart, ready to forgive offenses others have made against us. In fact, Jesus' lesson on forgiveness is that the law of forgiveness is not a quantity of times to forgive others but a heart that sees actions of others as no offense at all, given the Grace we have received from THE KING. The Kingdom bias is the source of all things, not the outcome of things.

Does it really matter?

These are not questions you probably think about on a daily basis. They are not what you ask your friends about in social settings. They may be questions you have never even thought about. So when I set them in front of you for consideration, your tendency maybe to think, "I really don't care." You may conclude it doesn't really matter.

 You may think they are really deep and require too much thought. You most likely have not considered the implications for you of how you answer these questions. However, these may be questions that matter the most to you across your life.

Let's take a minute and explore these questions and why you answers should matter to you.

If you have decided that you will use your experiences to conclude what is true, then you are likely to answer the first question "yes." This means that what you believe about people in general and yourself in particular is a result of how you have observed other people and how they have made you feel about yourself. A good example is your self esteem, which is your belief of your own value or importance. If you have been successful in acquiring material wealth and power and people have told you how good you are, then you probably believe you are pretty important. Of course, the opposite would be true if you had been mainly a failure and not received well by other people. This is just one of many, many beliefs you have that come from how you have observed the world around you and how those experiences have made you feel. You have beliefs about the origin of the universe, about God, about authority, about family, about education and on and on based on what you personally have experienced. The obvious and ultimate conclusion you must reach if you answer the first question yes is that there is no absolute truth. Since truth is determined from our experience, we each have our own version of what is true, what is right and what is wrong.

If you answer the second question yes, then you have decided that there are absolute truths that exist before and beyond your personal experience. In this case you will work to gain more and more knowledge so you can find what is true. Once you have truth, you then perceive and interpret situations in life through the lenses of what is true. Back to example of self esteem. If you answer the second question positively, then you believe that you am important or not regardless of what your experience may suggest. That is, if you believe you are important because God says so, then when you fail and others reject you, it does not affect your self esteem. Similarly with the other areas you have beliefs. If you stand on what you believe and try to understand what just happened through the lenses of your beliefs, you will think, feel, and act differently than if you answered the first question positively.

If the first question is where you stand, then you have resolved the question  "how do I determine truth?" If you answered the second question positively, you have answered the question "is there absolute truth?" but you must resolve the question "how do i know what is true?' This requires faith. In other words, what you settle on as absolute truth will be a result of believing something that you cannot prove.

Many believe that if they take the position that truth is relative to what they believe through experience then they do not need faith. The truth is that answering the first question yes and the second no is having faith in the fact that truth is relative and based on perspective.

Now, if you answer both questions "yes" or both questions "no", you are basically confused and not sure what you believe. These questions are mutually exclusive and demand that you decide. Not making the effort to resolve this is believing you can just float around independent of the effects of truth in your journey and destination. It is kinda like the common statement, "if you don;t know where you are going, then any path will get you there."

    

How do you see the King?

Here's a story that contains a truth that the story teller wishes for you to know.

Once there was a king who owned much land. One day he needed some men to work his land. So he sends his foreman out at 6am in the morning and hires some workers promising a full day’s pay. These workers gladly agreed and worked the full day producing 12 hours of harvest. The king wanted more so he sends out his foreman at 12 noon and hired additional workers. These workers gladly worked producing what they could in 6 hours. Wishing to have more, the landowner again sends his foreman out at 3pm to get workers. More people are hired and gladly work til 6 producing what they can in 3 hours. <move video from speaker to pic below and continue saying> Now when all the workers returned to the King, he pays each worker a full day’s wage. The workers who had worked 12 hours became disgruntled with their reward and left dissatisfied with the King for he had paid the workers who worked only 6 and 3 hours the same as they had received. The King asked, ‘why are you upset with me, cannot the King choose and reward His workers as He pleases?

This is a simple story but provides some really good insights into your worldview, that is, how you make sense of situations. Take a few minutes to explore what truth this story wishes to tells us.

First, which statement below best represents what you believe to be the point of the story.

A. There are many ways to view the fairness of rewards.

B.  Working harder does not produce greater reward.

C.  The King is generous and can reward as he chooses.

D.  Rewarding everyone equally is the best way to keep the most people happy.

While the story is clearly about rewarding people for work, if your answer is A, B or D then you are understanding this story as a lesson about principles of reward systems. Each of these points about rewards could be concluded from this story, but is the story teller trying to tell you the truth about reward systems or truth about the reward giver? If so, what is it that the story teller wants you to know? The King, the one who owns the land, can reward as he chooses and that he is a generous King. This is a story the story teller wishes to use to explain his/her view on the truth about a particular King. Seeing truth in story from the story teller’s worldview is not always easy. 

Furthermore, is the idea that the King wanted "more" have to do with more work or the willingness to have more workers willing to join him in his kingdom? If we have a different worldview from the story teller, then we understand truth about the motives of the king differently from what the story teller wishes for us to know.

Makes me ponder how people determine what is true. How do they work through the myriad of biases, some of which they do not even know they have, to settle on what is right and true?