Where Do You Turn For Wise Counsel?

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. (II Timothy 3:14-17) 

          Paul described two sources for Timothy to use in making wise decisions. First, people Timothy knew to be wise, and Scripture. Scripture, Paul maintained, is inspired by God and was therefore useful for generating righteousness in people’s lives. The righteousness generated by Scripture was what men of God need to accomplish every good work. 

          Do you know where your philosophical positions came from? Do you know what worldview it grew out of? Is your life based on the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; or on the gospels of the French Revolution, Marx, Hegel and Darwin; or on the gospels of Muhammed and his lieutenants; or on the gospels of Brahman and Buddha; or on the gospels of Moses? Do you know where the pieces of your philosophical Frankenstein came from? There is a very vocal segment of society that denounces “Western thought” and sings the praises of socialism, which was a philosophy developed by Marx and Hegel, both of whom were white Europeans whose philosophy was, in turn, partly developed from the philosophy of the French Revolution. They also accept evolution, which was also developed and popularized by white Europeans. They claim to like science, which was developed as an approach to reality mostly by white Europeans based on work done by earlier white Europeans, many of whom were Christians, built mostly on the foundations of Jewish and Greek philosophers, with some Muslim and Oriental observations and discoveries for flavor.

         James Sire says there are eight questions which every worldview answers:

1.      What is prime reality - the really real? To this we might answer: God, or the gods, or the material cosmos. Our answer here is the most important fundamental. It sets the boundaries for the answer that can consistently be given to the other six (sic) questions....

2.       What is the nature of external reality, that is, the world around us? Here our answers point to whether we see the world as created or autonomous, as chaotic or orderly, as matter or spirit, or whether we emphasize our subjective, personal relationship to the world over its objectivity apart from us.

3.       What is a human being? To this we might answer:  a highly complex machine, a sleeping god, a person made in the image of god, a naked ape.

4.       What happens to a person at death? Here we might replay: personal extinction, or transformation to a higher state, or reincarnation, or departure to a shadowy existence on "the other side."

5.        Why is it possible to know anything at all? Sample answers include the idea that we are made in the image of an all-knowing God or that consciousness and rationality developed under the contingencies of survival in a long process of evolution.

6.        How do we know what is right and wrong? Again, perhaps we are made in the image of a God whose character is good, or right and wrong are determined by human choice alone or what feels good, or the notions simply developed under an impetus toward cultural or physical survival.

7.       What is the meaning of human history? To this we might answer: to realize the purposes of God or the gods, to make a paradise on earth, to prepare people for life in community with a loving and holy God, and so forth.

8.       What personal, life-orienting core commitments are consistent with this worldview?

        Do you know the answers? Really?