Foundations for a Christian Worldview: The Times (4)

Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: I am the LORD your God. According to the doings of the land of Egypt, where you dwelt, you shall not do; and according to the doings of the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you, you shall not do; nor shall you walk in their ordinances. You shall observe My judgments and keep My ordinances, to walk in them: I amthe LORD your God. You shall therefore keep My statutes and My judgments, which if a man does, he shall live by them: I am the LORD.’” Leviticus 18.1-5

Conflict of worldviews
Right away in the books of Moses, we realize that the people God has chosen for Himself – a holy people before Him, in all the blessings of His covenant – do not pursue their calling and mission in a vacuum. They live in the midst of many different peoples, whose ways and doings and laws differ in many ways from those God intended for His people.

It would not do for God’s people to be ignorant of this. They enjoyed a special status with Him, as His chosen and covenanted people; and they were called to a special mission issuing from that status – to show the wisdom, goodness, beauty, and glory of God to the world. They would only be able to fulfill their purpose, and to point the rest of the world to God’s original intentions, by hewing to God’s plan, framework, and Law.

They lived and worked and exercised dominion in the world, but they must be careful not to be of it.

This meant they must have some working knowledge of worldviews different from their own. Otherwise, it would be very easy to drift from the secure framework of the vision, disciplines, and outcomes God was shaping them for, into a worldview framework that was antithetical to God’s purposes and contrary to His glory.

Israel throughout the Old Testament experienced a conflict of worldviews, a continuous clash between what God and His people believed and sought, and what the surrounding pagan nations hoped to realize. And that conflict began in the first five books of the Bible, the books of Moses.

Emergence of conflict
We can see this conflict emerging early on. Cain was banished from his parents to a land where he and his descendants pursued a way of life that in many ways mocked and defied what God intended. Their other descendants ultimately became so abominable to God, that He destroyed them all in a great flood.

Not long after that, people decided they knew better than God where they should live, what they should do, and how they should realize the goal of being like God. In the plain of Shinar, they resolved not to fill the earth, but to hang together under an authoritarian elite, and concentrate on working their way to the heavens. God put an end to that rebellion as well.

But the conflict returned again and again. We see it in the immorality of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. We discover it dangerously at work in the generations of Egyptians, who forgot about how God had used His people to save them, and decided instead to subjugate, enslave, and control the population of Israel for their own purposes.

We see it also in the religion, morality, and political lives of the nations that stood between the people of God and the land of promise. The Law of God sets the stage for a struggle to supplant those people and their worldviews, and to allow the worldview encoded in the Law of God to take root on earth as it is in heaven.

Two worldview extremes
Our text highlights the extremes of the unbelieving worldviews in the midst of which God’s people were being established to realize their calling and fulfill their mission.

Egypt was a large, authoritarian empire, a theocracy with Pharaoh as either god-on-earth or the closest thing to deity people could imagine. The religious bureaucracy served his will. The laws of the land existed at his pleasure and according to his interpretation. And the people were subject to whatever projects, wars, or whims the Pharaoh considered to be in his – and thus the nation’s – best interest.

The countries of the Canaanites, on the other hand, were tribal oligarchies. They could trace the origins of their countries back to the days following the tower of Babel, and each nation guarded its homeland, culture, and ways assiduously. Violence, plunder, and civil war were not uncommon among them. A popular polytheism characterized the peoples of Canaan, and shrines, sacred centers, and idols proliferated throughout their lands. Pagan religion sanctioned such abominations as harlotry, child sacrifice, and ethnic cleansing.

Not everything about these cultures was unusable. God commanded His people to plunder the Egyptians, and He gave the farms and cities of the Canaanites to His people. But their “doings” and ways – how these people thought, lived, and related to one another in their daily lives – were not agreeable to God. In His Law, God spelled out the requirements of love, both toward Him and toward their neighbors, that He expected His people to follow. By keeping Him central in their hearts and minds, and by learning, obeying, and teaching His statutes and judgments, they would create a society and culture characterized by righteousness, justice, beauty, goodness, and love. The worldview revealed in God’s Law – beginning with the vision of God and His works – would allow the people to realize their full potential as His image-bearers and holy nation. They must cling to Him and His Law, be aware of any incursions from or compromises with the surrounding nations, and teach the worldview of God to the generations. Only thus would they realize the precious and very great promises of His covenant.

The Law of God outlines a worldview that can allow the chosen, redeemed, called, and sent people of God to be a light in the darkness and a power for beauty, goodness, and truth in the world. We are unwise to ignore or minimize this Law. Let us, rather, as God commanded His people of old, hide it in our hearts, and devote ourselves, in all our ways, to following Him Who, by keeping this Law perfectly, has opened the way of life to all who believe in Him (1 Jn. 2.1-6).

For reflection
1. What are some characteristics of contemporary worldviews that God finds objectionable?

2. What are the best ways for Christians to keep from coming under the influence of these worldviews?

3. Why should we look to the Law of God as a foundation for developing a Christian worldview?

Next steps – Transformation: How can Christians help one another keep from compromising with unbelieving worldviews? Discuss this question with some Christian friends.

T. M. Moore

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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission.