Introduction—Life visions |
What might be the world view of the CEO whose priority at work lies with the forces of the market and the interests of shareholders? He will justify retrenching large numbers of workers with dependent families on the grounds of profit and efficiency and he rests easy with his decisions. When a scientist works in her laboratory carrying out tests and experiments she does so with a belief that the universe is orderly and consistently follows set patterns of cause and effect. In fact, she could not carry out the experiments without such a belief. The way she understands where that order comes from may well be different to the person sitting at the desk next to her. Behind her actions and her planning and testing lies a belief that the world is made a certain way and not another. A father praying at the bedside of his sick daughter; a woman who decides to leave her marriage soon after it becomes difficult with little regret over her decision; a couple who leave a comfortable existence in the West to work as doctors in the slums of Bangladesh; a man who spends his life’s energy acquiring larger houses, cars and boats; a lawyer who defends known criminals; and a family who together attend an anti-war demonstration all behave in ways that reflect some aspect of their world view. Somewhere as the backdrop to the way we live, lies our understanding of reality—our world view. James Olthuis says a person’s world view describes not just the way things are, but the way they ought to be. In this way, world view acts as both a vision of life and a vision for life.5 It serves as a way of processing the world as we encounter it and gives us a picture of truth, answering the biggest questions in life and pointing to some sort of salvation.6 It might be helpful to think of world view as the story that we live by,7 with the story providing a kind of ultimate interpretation of reality.8 So for Christians, the grand story of the Bible—of Creation, the Fall of humanity, redemption through Jesus Christ and the world headed towards New Creation— provides the framework within which people can live their life with meaning and purpose. Of course not everyone accepts that particular story but nonetheless we all have a degree of faith or commitment to one story or another. The atheistic scientist relies on her faith in the story of science to explain all of life and the nature of the universe. The Buddhist monk holds to a story that explains existence and the trajectory each person is on. Some people might hold to a
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