Worldview Blindness

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  In politics, I learned how important it is to regularly take the public pulse. I try to do the same in ministry by reading my mail and asking questions whenever I meet believers. This regular pulse-taking gives me a pretty good--albeit occasionally alarming--snapshot of the health of the Church. From a recent mailbag came a letter from Gail, a California woman who asked about a chiropractor who claims a gift of healing. Gail told me that all of the young moms in her Bible study group were seeing this chiropractor--supposedly a devout Christian. She massages their bodies to locate their "field of energy," and emits loud moans and guttural sounds when she (apparently) aligns their energy field with the universe's. Gail became suspicious when she visited the chiropractor herself. Without touching Gail, the chiropractor announced that she had a bone spur between the second and third vertebrae--just as Gail's doctor had diagnosed. I advised Gail to flee for her life. Sure, some people have gifts of healing and discernment. But adding up all the evidence, it's obvious this chiropractor was into New Age teachings. If any supernatural powers are involved, they're on the dark side of the ledger. An isolated case? I wish it was. It's just one example of a growing evangelical disease I call "worldview blindness." It's a direct result of people compartmentalizing their faith. And since modern society has largely repealed the law of non-contradiction, we blithely practice one thing in church and just the opposite in the chiropractor's office. The solution is to teach believers to be discerning through a systematic effort, to see Christianity as an integrated life system, an explanation for all of reality, affecting all of life. Second, we must make worldview training a priority for our kids. It's clear from my mailbag that kids are especially vulnerable to the false ideologies and "isms" of our day; they will have their faith challenged in school, on television, at the movies, by friends--just about everywhere they turn. We've got to reach them while they're young and impressionable, before the world has turned them into skeptics. Even if they attend Christian colleges, they'll encounter challenges to their faith, and eventually they'll enter the marketplace--and the risk is they will being sucked into anti-biblical belief systems. The answer: open their eyes now -- teach them what your own belief system says about all of life, and how it differs from secular belief systems. You can start your children's worldview education by reading BreakPoint to them, on the Internet, or playing our new Best-of-BreakPoint CD-ROM. When they're in high school, funnel them into classes like those taught by Worldview Academy, with summer worldview programs all over the country. Get them reading good books, like J. Budziszewski's How to Stay Christian in College, Lee Strobel's The Case for Faith, or my recent book, Answers to Your Kids' Questions. All of this presupposes, of course, that we parents have taken our worldview blinders off--that we're not suffering from the kind of schizophrenia that allows some people to read their horoscope in the Sunday paper before heading off to church. If we don't do this, it'll be just one more case of the blind leading the blind.

08/31/01