Worldview
Worldview refers to a set of suggestions and proposals that a person holds and deeply influences the life of people with similar believes.
- The followers of Christian religion commonly regard their religion as a collection of ideas that may change their life and follow Christianity as a guideline to interact with society. Followers hardly comprehend their religion as a whole conceptual framework.
- Following are the few examples of worldview narrated by different authors.
- According to James Sire, the concept of worldview is just a conventional set of suppositions that one may hold of this world and its origin .
- Phillips and Brown narrate that worldview cab be best defined as interpretation and elucidation of the world, and its impact on the lives of its inhabitants .
- Middleton and Walsh define worldview entails basic concepts and models of this world which may prove to helpful as a guideline to its adherents .
- James Orr, a renowned church historian, states that worldview embraces the wide scale knowledge of the world and, help the mind to connect and integrate different answers into a unified whole set of ideas. It helps the mind to conclude answers to the important questions as the purpose, beginning and ultimate destination of the world .
Workplace considerations are very much dependent on an individual’s worldview. Broad worldview means likely to be considered of making logical and open minded decisions while relying on the professional information. A person with a narrow set of beliefs about the worldview is likely to get affected by the same beliefs in such a manner that people around him start feeling the discomfort. A workplace in business is required to be operated with a set of policies and rules including some guidelines that are to be followed by all of the people working in that organization. Any exception made to the rules and policies lead to discrimination in the workplace that is considered ethically and morally wrong. The morality of a person shapes his tendency to honestly work in the organization. This paper is based on discussing world view of my own and the Christian worldview that shapes the way people behave at their workplace. Following is a detailed analysis of my personality and worldviews including Christian worldview:-
My personal worldview comprises of a unique set of ideas about the cardinal facets of reality that may deeply influence my overall understanding, perceiving and doing. My views majorly consist of believes about the environment, knowledge and its sources, believes about the origin and functioning of the universe and all the heavenly bodies in it, about the behavior and intellect of the inhabitants, God existence and his complete control over every object, man and motive behind his creation and the value and importance level of things around.
My worldview deliberately shapes my perspectives and influences that way I see and feel about the universe. It profoundly has a deep impact my decision making power and judgment ability.
Being a Christian my worldview is biblical therefore I have decided to reflect it by the help of an explanatory paragraph from bible, the Preface to the Gospel agreeing to John the Apostle:
- At the beginning of the time, there was Logos, and Logos was with the God.
- Through himself, everything was made and without him nothing would have been made. In he was the life, and the life was light for men. The same light shined in darkness, but darkness had not understood that.
- A man came who was sent from the God. His name was John. He came to witness and to testify the light, so that with him all men would believe. He was not light; he came as a witness to light. The light that gave light to man was coming to the world.
- The Logos were made flesh and made the dwelling among man. We saw his glory of the One and only, who came from the eternal God, full of truth and grace.
- John testified concerning him. From his grace, we have all got many blessings. For the rule was given through the Moses whereas truth and grace came through Jesus Christ. No one had ever seen God.
I reckon to take a thorough look around yourself, and you will find chaos and instability everywhere. Our government is facing great difficulties and financial and economic condition is going through a turmoil. People are widely unemployed, and it has been increasing day by day and future is completely indeterminate. There may be lot for us to face in the future and this will continue till the day of end and we all are well aware of this fact. This world will now see stability when Almighty will come and as per the theory of entropy nature will move from the state of stability to state of complete instability. Scientist may deduce from this that which of the events is going to take place first. I personally believe that we are heading towards chaos at a high speed. There can be no particular order without any destruction or chaos or vice versa. The degree of chaos or it relativity in both cases world is going face tough time ahead in time.
I believe that a provisional standards for evil and good can be proven for an individual. Good is that is desired, and evil is considered as the thing that is undesired. The particular choices are established on the persons’ experience along with consequences. Like science, the adoptions are smeared as long as the outcome seems constant, when varying consequences are acknowledged, the arrangement must be replaced or refined with structural model. For a collection of persons, there would be many substantial problems with the preliminary agreement. If all of them agreed with a preliminary definition along with a process for variations, maybe a feasible system could succeed.
Evil and Good are just points of view according to most of the philosophers. Nothing is good or evil in the true sense it is the perception of people in which they see an event. For instance, a good professional business man considers another professional business man as good people whereas a thief or corrupt person thinks that same people are good as them. Comically speaking, there is no possibility of existence of good and bad at all and understanding of good and evil is mere a perception of people about the reality. That same concept can be linked with Bible in the context that the ultimate nature of people is not stated to be good or bad in absolute sense. Morality is totally dependent on the perception of people and it varies from person to person. This variation can be of little or minor nature where people share religious believes whereas a large difference comes in among people with contrary spiritual believes. Considering the example that if everyone starts to think that murder is wrong then there should not be any person murdering others which is not happening in this world. Similarly, if everyone start to think that murder is right then there will be bloodshed everywhere throughout the world, and, as result, humans would have become extinct long ago. The world is a combination of contrary beliefs that balance out each other in order to keep the world balanced in terms of morality.
There are some commonalities when talking about worldviews. These commonalities are mentioned below:-
1. Each worldview has an eventual reference point.
2. In this world where the rule of non-contradiction is collective, two opposing statements can’t both be true.
3. To reason, every individual presupposes some things to be right without any absolute proof.
4. Only one worldview mirrors the reality. Like a simple key for complex lock, one worldview fits the world lock.
The basics that build up an individual’s worldview can be divided into five main categories.
1. THEOLOGY – Theology means the belief that a person has about the existence of God. This also includes the relationship of God with the nature and the nature of God. Theology addresses the understanding of God and the way of understanding Him and His attributes.
2. METAPHYSICS – Metaphysics is all about the nature of the true and ultimate reality. It also discusses the relationship of God with the universe. Metaphysics also puts light on the existence of the universe as independent entity and possibility of its dependence on God. The creation of the universe is also covered under Metaphysics. The spiritual part of the universe is not covered in under metaphysics.
3. EPISTEMOLOGY – Epistemology is about the knowledge of the possibility and existence of the world. It focuses on the senses of human and emphasizes that the senses and feeling of humans can be artificial rather than real. The reasoning of human and its relationship with the universe is also covered under Epistemology.
4. ETHICS – Ethics is the domain that covers rules and laws related to everyone. Ethics tells about what is considered by majority of the people as good and bad. The moral laws are discussed in ethics in which it is deliberated that whether these laws are created by a super being i.e. God, or these are created by humans. Ethics also put light on the possibility of an external absolute being responsible for the creation of the world, and setting rules for the overall conduct of smooth functions of the universe.
5. ANTHROPOLOGY – Anthropology refers to the idea of discussing the nature of humans as pawns controlled by external forces. The status of man as materialistic only is also discussed in this domain.
The above-mentioned set of domains that discuss the worldview of various experts of the philosophy determine a person’s inclination towards having inclined viewpoint towards a specific ideology. A person can be defined in a true sense by defining his set of beliefs in the above-mentioned domains. After defining my set of worldviews and the main five domains about worldviews, this paper further discusses the Christian worldview.
The Christian worldview
Following is the general Christian Worldview that is commonly shared by all the Christians:-
1. God is the Creator. He created the universe in exactly six days from nothing.
2. The universe isn’t self-existent, eternal, and self-explanatory.
3. There is a distinction of Creator and creature. Humans are created in the image of the God. Fate of every man depends on their relationship with God.
4. God is unfailing. God is source of all the truth, ethics, and knowledge. God is himself aware of all the things, personal, knowable, holy, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent.
5. God is Independent Lord of everything that is in existence and can ever exist in the future or existed in the past. He solely owns everything in the universe and even outside the universe if there is any. He sustains everything. He has control over everything. He is the sole decision maker of the fate of each creature.
There are several problems that we as humans face including chaos, war, corruption, robbery, disasters etc. The source of the problems are most of the times indicated as the devil in Christian set of beliefs; however, there exists conflicts in Christian community about the solution to these problems. There are several scholars who suggest leaving things to the fate whereas contrary to those there are several other scholars who propose attempt of taking corrective and preventive actions to resolve problems and avoid them respectively. A simple solution that is acceptable to common sense is that an individual must strive to solve the problems faced by him or the people around him but leave the results of his efforts to the fate and avoid relying on his efforts and expecting results accordingly.
References
Orr, J., Mullican, J., & Smith, B. E. (1997). Four Little Turkeys. Mississippi: Carson-Dellosa Publishing Company, Incorporated.
Phillips, W. G., & Brown, D. W. (1996). Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview. New York: Sheffield Publishing Company.
Sire, J. W. (2004). Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept. Wheaton: InterVarsity Press.
Walsh, B. J., & Middleton, J. R. (1984). The Transforming Vision: Shaping a Christian World View. Wheaton: InterVarsity Press.
