The Value of Worldviews

The notion of “roused, readied, reaped,” like any other notion, can be valid only insofar as it serves as a guide, not a worldview.  Worldviews are the property of gods.  It also must be kept in mind that the very phenomenon of notions becoming worldviews held by people is constantly attended by another human phenomenon: the tendency to settle on what are effectively (though non-explicitly) worldviews.  This all has its origin in the idea of “meaning.”  We search for “meaning,” and we will argue sometimes about whether the notion of “meaning” is a good thing.  Ultimately, such arguments will dissolve over the definition of “meaning”—whether “meaning” is logical or visceral—and we can end up fussing over whether meaning can be found in (for example) adopting orphaned animals or not.

But when “meaning” is examined in terms of worldviews the argument can become more pointed—though any process of examination seems to presume that worldviews in question will be explicitly stated.  Of course, therein lies a great potential for self-delusion.  To hold a “Christian” worldview, for example, effectively necessitates the conceptualization and description of a “non-Christian” worldview, and no one need be told how problematic it is to verbalize the position of one’s opponent.

When worldviews are described (as often seems to be the point) in terms of morality, the phenomena mentioned above become even more problematic.  To hold and espouse a worldview that contains ostensibly a moral code is invariably to describe a collection of thoughts and behaviors that the worldview-practitioner has to rally himself or herself to enact.  To do the opposite of fulfilling this or that moral worldview is generally taken to be simply immoral—and to think or act immorally is considered indistinguishable from behaving simply out of impulse or instinct.  The upshot, then, of much of the discussion about moral worldviews is to consider holders of this-or-that worldview as against holders of none—were it conceivable that such a person (at least a competent adult person) might exist.

Then (retreating of necessity from that last inconceivable notion) the holder of this or that worldview is seen as against people who hold (more or less) on to (more or less) different worldviews—people who might be more or less concerned about having a worldview in the first place.  I trust I have described my contention about the complicated nature of worldviews, though I am compelled to add an additional contention about worldviews: that self-same desire to describe responsibly the problems of conceptualizing or holding to any worldview ought (if that desire be focused concertedly) to lead to consideration whether the value of a worldview might not consist ultimately in its dissolution.

I am drawn here to consideration of Jesus’ despairing cry on the cross.  Innumerable “explanations” have been given by commentators.  The simplest explanation has been given the shortest shrift.  Perhaps Jesus was supposed to feel that way.  Perhaps we are all—ultimately—supposed to feel that way.  It might well be contended that all finite beings are to be understood—virtually by definition—as deprived of the ability to understand their existence.  Much more so are we to be understood as deprived of the ability to possess a defensible worldview.

If worldviews are to understood—as I contend—to be the province of gods (that is, of course, properly the province of the true deity, though surrounded in our conceptions by innumerable counterfeits), then possession of a worldview ought always to be discarded in favor of an outlook that tends toward the dissolution of worldviews.  The “immoral” or “ungodly” among us perform impressively in constructing schemes of meaning—or in emitting more-or-less convincing protests about there being no ultimate meaning.  The countering temptation might be to stand all the more determinedly on some contention about there being a defensible and meaningful worldview consistent with proper teachings about the deity.

This last temptation is described in all its baser aspects—indeed being a “temptation” as properly understood—in the teachings of Jesus.  We do not understand this world, and we do not understand the next.  Our worldview—as Jesus will account it—resides in what we value, and our life’s purpose consists in discovering and curating what we value.  The adoption of some explicit worldview actively opposes our proper appreciation of value, as surely as some statement of faith about Creation opposes true responsibility on the part of a scientist.

This, then, is where I imagine “roused, readied, reaped” to lead.  We are born into a flow of time and space, and we are shaped by our experiences within the realm of the environment that consists of us and all we are affected by.  So much for “roused” and “readied.”  To be “reaped” would be—since no one can describe it in the present tense—to be cast into the larger realm which in its expanses is the province only of God.  Presuming to drag some construct of “meaning” into this final consummation would be nothing but a deficit on our part.  We can present God with what we value—and we can conceptualize the hope that we lay up for ourselves things of value—because to possess a value ascribed to something is possible without contending about its ultimate value to God.  To possess a worldview, in contrast, is to tell God what he values.