Rafting At Sea, Or Does Your Boat Have A Rudder?

Where there is no vision, the people are unrestrained, But happy is he who keeps the law. (Proverbs 29:18 NASB)

          Those who like the song "Imagine" would probably read this passage and say, "Yes, exactly, those who aren't caught up in a religious delusion are free." They make two mistakes. The first is that the freedom they're describing is like being on a raft in the middle of the ocean. There is no way to make the raft go in any direction: no sail, no rudder, no oars. The second is that their vision is lawless and that no law is needed. The song demands that you put aside religion, love of country and connection to anything that is not part of its utopian ideal.

         The reality is that we all have a worldview. We may not be able to put it into words, but we all have beliefs about the ultimate nature of reality, where we came from; what happened that causes us to not be as we suspect or believe we should be; what must be done to fix it; what happens when we die and how we can know anything.

          For most people, this world view is not consciously developed. It's learned from our experiences, and most notably from our education. The problem is that it is cobbled together. It's a Frankenstein's monster, stitched together from bits of philosophies, religions and cultures. It is a raft that doesn't hold together, but we hold on to as many bits and pieces of it as we can as we fend off the sharks of daily life. To make matters worse, the pieces of worldview that we adopt often have other pieces of that worldview attached to them. We may not even realize that one of our pieces of raft has a anchor chained to it, pulling it toward the sea floor.

         This is one of the problems we face as we seek to build community. Even among our "one anothers" the worldviews aren't always the same. When "not one anothers" are added, it becomes more complicated. This is the challenge facing us today.

Worldviews are being aggressively promoted. How do we deal with these other views? Scripture suggests that we love them but not their worldviews. We permit them to live among us, but we do not accept or obey their ways, even if it means our death, incarceration or humiliation.