The Explanation: Before (3)

¹Before the universe began to be,
and all that it consists of and contains,
the Word already was.

-          John 1.1

Follow the instruction
“Grandad! Genius”

Thus Reagan announced to the family my successful completion of the assembly of her new toy kitchen, a task which was not without its challenges.

I learned long ago, when our own children were small, that assembling children’s toys – especially things like toy kitchens – requires careful attention to the instructions. Though you had the best tools and oh so many good ideas and opinionated advisors, you could not assemble one of those beasts correctly without the instructions.

But this particular case seemed determined to thwart me nonetheless. For, as I was finishing the project, I simply could not make the oven door close in a way that “made sense” with the rest of the project. It had to be slammed and held shut, and even then a gap between the door and the cabinet remained, shouting out, “Failure!”, for all to see.

It was one glaring “silly thing” in this kitchen toy worldview that simply “didn’t fit” the way I thought it should.

I consulted the instructions again. I’d done everything just as the instructions said. Reagan and I pondered the matter aloud, and though she seemed content to leave well enough alone, I couldn’t get past that imperfection.

Then I found it, right there in the instructions. Some of the pieces in this toy kitchen had come preassembled, with parts already connected (this, I suppose, was meant to encourage me). In this case, the oven door already had its hinges in place. All I had to do was screw it into the cabinet.

But here was the problem. Some evil (or probably just careless) person at the toy factory had put the hinges on backwards, contrary to both the drawing and the instructions, and plunged the whole project into the domain of silliness.

Only by looking carefully at the drawing and re-reading the instructions was I able to discern that what I had been given as a partly-assembled oven door was not the way it was supposed to be. It had to be redeemed, so to speak – retooled and refashioned in order to fit in with the rest of the whole.

Which I promptly did, to Reagan’s complete delight: “Grandad! Genius!”

Worldviews and words
Worldviews are made up of ideas which become projects, lifestyles, programs, businesses, and, well, everything else to which human beings put their hands. The ideas that drive our worldviews are derived from observations, experiences, and learning, which we acquire from and communicate to one another in words.

All worldviews are word-dependent, because words are all we have with which to sort through and explain the world to ourselves and others. The better, clearer, and more reliable the words we use in explaining our worldview, the more confidence we can have in it.

But let those words be wrong, or wrongly understood or wrongly applied, and silliness is the result – oven doors that just don’t fit like you know they should.

A sound worldview requires sound words, soundly applied. And sound words require sound sources – reliable authorities – if they are to be trusted.

Words and the Christian worldview
The Christian worldview also uses words, but it does this in an analogous rather than an original way. I’ll explain that more fully a little further along. Christians don’t rely merely on their own best ideas, their own original interpretations of the world, or even the best thoughts and ideas of Christians and others who have gone before them. At the center of the Christian worldview is one Word – the first Word, and He is the all-defining Word, the eternal, sure, unchanging Word, even the very Word of God.

“..the Word already was…” The Word that existed before the world, before any inhabitants of the world or any interpreters of the world, the Word that existed before any other words – He is the eternal Word, the first Word. The Greek logos translates to “Word” but it means something like, “reason” or even “explanation.”

The world and everything in it, as well as how it’s supposed to be, comes “pre-interpreted” if not “pre-assembled.” The task falls to people like you and me to put the world together in ways that minimize the silliness. In order to accomplish this daunting task, we look to the words we have learned to help us make sense of the bits and pieces of life awaiting our assembly.

But how can we be sure that someone somewhere along the line hasn’t put the hinge on backwards in one of these ideas? So that, force and slam and swear though we may, we just can’t seem to get past the silliness of some part of our lives? We can’t make this thing – this relationship, hope, goal, plan – work the way we want it to, because someone has given us a bad word or a bad part for the toy kitchen which is our lives.

At such times, the Christian understands, we need to go back to the first Word and read Him carefully, studying all the words, diagrams, illustrations, and other insights and instructions He has provided to show and tell us the way things ought to be.

And it doesn’t require a genius to live this way.

Just someone who believes. Someone willing to look all the way back to the first Word.

Let’s try this: Talk with an unbelieving friend about his most cherished beliefs and ideas. Where did he get those ideas? How did he learn them? How can he be sure these are true ideas, and that he’s putting together a worldview that works? One that doesn’t promote or justify silliness?

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