Everyone has a worldview, a belief system about the nature of the world, where it is going, and their place in it. A worldview is not what we see in the world but how we see the world; it is the way we interpret everything around us. A worldview is the pair of glasses through which one looks.
Some think carefully through their worldviews. Others fall into and float along with the streams of cultural thought. Nevertheless, whether carefully considered or not, we all have fundamental ways in which we see ourselves in relationship to everything and everyone around us.
Our worldview is not an abstract system of thought, simply a world of ideas disconnected from daily living. The way we see the world is determinative for the way we live. Actions, attitudes, thoughts, affections, and pursuits are all determined by our worldview.
In Western Culture, especially in America, the predominant cultural worldview can be broadly categorized as secularism. There are several forms of secularism, but they all share the same principled approach to life. The fundamental principle of secularism is the division between “nature” and “grace,” which works itself out in the belief that church and state, religion and politics, must remain separate. You have a public life that should be religion-neutral, and you have a private life in which you can believe anything you want as long as it doesn’t bleed over into your public life.
Secularism has spawned what we might call hedonistic nihilism. Nihilism is literally “nothing-ism.” We are chance accidents of an evolutionary process and, therefore, have no meaning, no purpose. When you have no meaning in life, you might as well grab all the gusto you can. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die and return to the nothingness from which we somehow originated.
This view of the world and our place in it has negatively impacted our society. As the black hole of nihilism consumes the last vestiges of our Christian heritage, lawlessness, sexual deviancy, and insanity become the norms. What you believe has consequences, even if you haven’t carefully considered what you believe and why.
When Paul writes his letter to the Colossian church, he is concerned about their worldview. Jews, whether within the church or outside the church, are challenging them on their relatively new faith. That Paul is dealing with Jewish opposition is evident from his direct references to wisdom (“Wisdom” created the world; Prov 8; see 1:9, 28; 2:3; 3:16; 4:5), circumcision (2:11-13; 3:11), food laws, Sabbath observance (2:16, 21), and his talk about creation couple with Temple allusions. The Jews who oppose the church have a different worldview; they have a different way of seeing the nature of the world, where it is headed, how we arrive there, and, therefore, how to live in the present. What is so daunting about the Jewish challenge is that they have divine revelation as their support.
The Jews rightly believed that one God created the world and chose a people for himself (monotheism, creation, and election, to borrow from N. T. Wright). These three pillars were the foundations of their worldview. The world was created to move from glory to glory with man in the lead until it reached its final state of glory, its fullness, its maturity. The Jewish opposition believed that this would be done through the way the Law structured the world with its Jew-Gentile division along with the Temple in Jerusalem. At the end of history, the Jews would be on the top of the heap, ruling the world.
The Jewish worldview isn’t wholly wrong. One God created the world and has chosen a people for himself. Paul tells the Colossians that this God has revealed himself in the Person of Jesus. He is the God who has created and re-created the world. His chosen people are all those who have pledged their allegiance to Jesus as Lord.
Reality is revealed in Jesus. He is the truth to which we must conform our lives.
Since Jesus is the revelation of the one God who created all things and defines his people, if he says that the old definitions created by the Law are obsolete, then they are obsolete and must be jettisoned. As the Wisdom of God (Col 2:3), he has created and arranged the world under his lordship and defines the purpose of the entire created order. The world moves to maturity in Christ Jesus. The Law was only one stage of glory that was always meant to give way to another stage of glory. The Law was a shadow of things to come, a pale, fading glory that would give way to the substance of Christ Jesus (Col 2:17; see also 2 Cor 3:7ff.). The only way each person reaches the glory, maturity, for which he was created and from which he fell short because of sin (Rom 3:23), is to be united to Christ Jesus and his mission for the world.
Though we may not be tempted with a standing Temple or Jewish customs, many philosophies out there tempt us, giving us alternative views of reality. Whether we are dealing with the woke mobs or compromised Christian churches (sometimes, sadly, the same thing), false religions or secularism, people are always vying for our loyalty to the way they view the world, where it is headed, how we get there, and how we live our lives in light of this. For this reason, loving God with all our minds will mean getting our worldviews in proper shape so that we can discern between good and evil, right and wrong, and not be seduced by arguments that pull on our heartstrings but have their origins in hell.
We need to have the correct views of the nature of the world, where it is heading, and how we get there so that we will know our place in it. We see in Colossians that Christ, his work, and his rule over everything shapes everything about the world and, therefore, our worldview.
