Working Out Worldviews

An apt example presents itself about the workings-out of “worldviews.”  On Patheos (August 17, 2022) Peter Demos uses the concept of worldviews in “Is Progressive Christianity Counterfeit Gospel?”

Almost from the outset, Demos’ piece features convenient maneuverings, such as, “Some people say that Progressive Christianity is the expression of how Christians should adapt or conform to our culture regarding popular social issues.”  Much more problematic than the vague “some people” is the incredibly tone-deaf use of the word "conform."  One has to wonder how often "progressives” in that batch of “some people” ever use the word “conform,” in any context.

It is no real surprise that Demos’ references to a proper worldview are accompanied by insistence that any opposing worldview share at least a similar architecture, if not content.  That, unfortunately, is how worldviews work.  Granting oneself a god’s-eye view of existence is scarcely conducive to consideration of whether one’s opponents are correct in refraining from taking such a posture.  In the present case this betrays itself in Demos’ conjured pronouncement about what constitutes a “flaw” in Progressive Christianity: “In my efforts to better understand this movement, I’ve discovered a major flaw — I can’t find a clear definition of it. Without a doctrinal statement, it’s difficult to understand how one can choose to be a Progressive Christian.”

Of course, a believer who is going to demand a “doctrinal statement” can be expected to demand also a hard-edged notion of authoritative Scripture, and Demos does not disappoint, offering up a marvelous tautology: “If the Bible is true, we either accept the entire Bible, or we accept none of it.”  (His choice of Scripture quotations in the piece, unfortunately, deprives us of explicit knowledge of what he thinks of the Deutero-Canon.)

Witnessing, as we must, the rolling progression of presumptions that characterizes Demos’ embrace of a worldview (as in anyone’s embrace of a worldview) leads us to see how he must conflate the incomparable, searing message of the Gospels with the creaking, overburdened, fought-over-through-bloody-centuries hulk called “Christianity.”  (Although the term “Christianity” is perennially used by this or that denomination as though their form of it was obvious to any possessor of sweet reason.)

Or as Demos puts it, “The hubris to think that Christianity needs to progress or adjust is a classic example of the dangers of pride. To say that we know more than God the Father, Christ the Son and the Holy Spirit should raise a red flag to those who are following any revised form of Christianity.”  Demos states that he is not sure what the doctrinally-hazy Progressive Christians are addressing individually (“This begs the question, what exactly is Progressive Christianity improving?”) and so his contention that “Christianity” does not need to “progress or adjust” places him in the position of equating the entirety of a belief system with the deity in which it believes.  I would suggest that Demos needs to look to his own “hubris” (as well as to the question of who is actually “begging the question,” as it is properly understood.)

What is really troubling about Demos’ embrace of a worldview is his confession (certainly his to possess and to believe) of his spiritual progress: “It wasn’t until I was 42 years old that I truly embraced Jesus in a personal way and was saved.”  Of course, we can only analyze such a statement on how the words themselves seem to resonate with us personally, but for myself I could not utter such a statement without connecting it to the question of values—that I had come to recognize what mattered, and what did not.  All of the necessary elements of a worldview, then, would follow as a matter of course.  To define, embrace, and vocalize a worldview stemming from the conversion process would be to inject only potentials for error and for distraction.  Are worldviews really necessary?  As Demos himself says, “No path leads to true happiness and everlasting life except for Jesus alone (John 14:6) . . . .”  (He follows that with more Scripture, blunting the point if you ask me.)

A worldview, for us, isn’t a real thing.  A worldview is a god’s-eye view.  In their darker applications, worldviews are used to justify all sorts of great horrors, all the greater when done in the name of the Savior who asks us to ask ourselves if his eyes do not look at us through the eyes of the suffering.  That is as close to a god’s-eye view that we ought ever to come.

To have a worldview is to have to justify that worldview, and to pretend otherwise must lead inevitably to double-speak.  In following up his conversion story, Demos writes, “Prior to that, I misused the Bible to justify my worldview, instead of using the Bible to guide my worldview.”  Neither Demos’ conversion nor his life as touched by Jesus is our business, but it is manifest nonsense to speak of anything as “guiding” a worldview—unless that “guide” be the worldview itself, with everything else flowing from there.

The Bible, as Demos describes it, must of necessity be a worldview—the lens through which all else is analyzed (or held to be so.)  Or—to reject a “worldview”—the teachings of Jesus, to the extent to which we can grasp them, can constitute our guide, and the incomprehensible world (and all its problems) and the unprovable Bible (and all its problems) can be seen by us in Jesus’ light, as Jesus would will.  I recommend the latter option.