OUR HEART IS OUR WORLDVIEW AND OUR WORLDVIEW IS OUR LENS

The concept of the “fear of God” can be regarded with great distaste or with delight (Isaiah 11:3). I delight in serving God, while others regard such service as bondage. Similarly, some regard suffering as a reason to disbelieve in God, while others have found in it a basis to believe. Writer Paul Copan relates the experience of Canadian Broadcasting Corp journalist, Brian Stewart and his “slow, reluctant conversion”:

·       “I’ve never reached a war zone, or famine group or crisis anywhere where some church organization was not there long before me… I’m often asked if I lost belief in God covering events like Ethiopia, then called ‘the worst hell on earth.’ Actually, like others before me, it was precisely in such hells that I rediscovered religion.” (Christian Research Journal, Vol 37/Number 04, 46-47)

The same thing pertains to the teaching of an eternal hell. While some regard this as a horrid smear on the character of God, others see it as a necessary warning and reality, depending upon their heart and worldview. The same events that turn some away from a faith in Christ, turn others in the opposite direction. In the process, some have attempted to denigrate the contributions of Christianity. Research Fellow Philip J. Sampson writes about how the same phenomenon is often interpreted in opposite ways. He cites how Western traders despised Christian missionaries for their impact on native peoples:

·       “Disappointed in not finding the field of licentiousness quite so open as formerly, they [the Western traders] will not give credit to a morality which they do not wish to practice or to a [Christian] religion which they undervalue, if not despise.” (6 Modern Myths about Christianity & Western Civilization, 111)

Consequently, this disappointment gave vent to charges that the missionaries were guilty of “cultural imperialism.” However, even Charles Darwin confessed that worthwhile fruit was born out of such “imperialism”:

·       “Human sacrifice…infanticide…bloody wars, where the conquerors spared neither women nor children—all these have been abolished…by the introduction of Christianity.” (110)

Our oppositional opinions are often the product of oppositional worldview commitments. While some have insisted that the missionaries collaborated with the colonial powers, even to the extent of establishing plantations, historian Ruth Tucker places these “observations” into an entirely different context. Tucker claims that these plantations were established as a refuge to protect against Western exploitation:

·       The missionaries insisted on treating native people as human beings who are entitled to the protection of the law, and this rubbed salt into the wound. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that colonists and traders often opposed missions.” (From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya,103)

·       Traders and colonists resisted the evangelism of native people, seeing conversion as the first step to indigenous people gaining access to the resources of Western culture and hence to the power that colonists wished to keep for themselves…Native people who wished to break free of the settler’s stranglehold and worship God were immediately persecuted by the white traders. (103-104)

Differing interests produce differing assessments. While Jesus’ miracles caused many to glorify God, it caused others to bring charges of satanic collusion against Him (Matthew 12) and to eventually kill the Prince of Peace. After Jesus raised Lazarus after four days in the grave, some joyfully believed, while others gathered together to plot His crucifixion (John 11:45-53), depending upon their orientation to the Light.

This is why we must be born from above (John 3:3-15). Otherwise, we will not step into the Light and see the things as they are. Even now, we are all surrounded by the evidence (Romans 1:18-20) but refuse to see it as it truly is.