What Lens Are You Looking Through?
It feels like everyone is sort of on edge right now. The presidential election is 6 days away. The east coast was recently rocked with hurricanes back to back. The busyness of the holidays is starting to ramp up. And on top of that, we’re all struggling with our own “normal” stuff like work, relationships, health, and figuring out how to be a decent human.
Lately, I look at my life and the world around me, and it seems like everything is in a bit of chaos. When this happens, and I feel this sense of overwhelm, I have to ask myself… how am I looking at my life and the world around me?
We are all looking at the world through some kind of lens. We all have some kind of understanding or belief of how God interacts with the world (or if he interacts with the world at all). And this matters!
Because how we perceive God’s relationship to us and the world, affects how we view our relationship to everything else.
Some people call this a “worldview” or “different views of reality”. However you’ve heard it, it’s the sum of our beliefs or assumptions about the world around us - which influence our thoughts and actions.
There are many ways to look at this, but below is the best explanation I’ve seen about the different worldviews.
Biblical Theism: God is distinct from His creation, but connected to it. The spiritual and material realms touch each other. God is the Creator, Sustainer, and Reconciler of all things, including the material world.
Deism: God is the creator of the universe, but He is irrelevant to its daily functioning. The God of deism created the world to operate on its own, winding it up like a clock and letting it run according to natural laws.
Modern View: There is no God. Not only do the spiritual and material realms not touch, the spiritual realm does not exist. The universe is fundamentally a machine whose origins and operations are rooted in natural processes that humans can master through their own reason.
Evangelical Gnosticism: A hybrid of biblical theism with the modern worldview (mostly adapted from North American Christians). God is Lord of the spiritual realm—Sunday worship, devotions, evangelism, discipleship, etc.—but is largely irrelevant to the “physical” or “secular” realms—business, the arts, politics, science, etc.
So what is your worldview? What lens are you looking through?
Reading these, I felt convicted. I often feel like God, while He is the creator of the universe, “wound it like a clock and let it run”. It sometimes feels like life is just happening, and I need to hang on tight to the things I (seemingly) have control over.
But God is in control. God is sovereign over everything - including the things he has given me to steward well.
The truth is (in a Biblical worldview) everything on this earth belongs to God. Nothing is our own, including: us, our time, our talents, and our resources. Things get messy when we act like owners instead of stewards, and we don't hold things with open hands.
If I can bring myself back to this reality, then I can bring myself back to a place of peace and freedom - knowing that nothing is slipping through the cracks, God isn’t dropping any balls, He's actively working to restore all things, and He really does “hold it all together” - which means we don’t have to.