The Limits of Worldview and the Importance of Cultural Integration

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The opinions reflected in this OpEd are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of staff, faculty and students of The King's College.

“Worldview” is a term used to describe the fundamental set of philosophical beliefs that influence the way people interpret the world and behave within it. The metaphor of glasses is usually used to describe “worldview.” Like a pair of glasses, it is the prism through which an individual views the world and filters reality. I’m acutely familiar with this idea and analogy as both were cornerstones of my early education and foundational reference points within the community of discourse I grew up in.

I was homeschooled and went through a number of academic programs that centered around conservative, Christian values and a classical education model such as Classical Conversations and The Potter’s School. At the pedagogical center of these institutions, as well as the broader Christian, homeschool landscape, was the central objective of developing a Christian worldview.

Under this model, the world was fundamentally composed of competing ideas. This approach extended well beyond the academic, it was an encompassing strategy of cultural engagement. Any art, literature, philosophy or person outside of that which curated a Christian worldview was to be dissected in terms of what it argued for and the threats it posed; to unmask the malevolent skeleton that lurked behind the artful facade. As the prominent Christian organization Focus on the Family cautioned: “Here is the big problem. Nonbiblical worldview ideas don’t just sit in a book somewhere waiting for people to examine them. They bombard us constantly from television, film, music, newspapers, magazines, books and academia.”

I can appreciate the intention behind this model: to develop young Christians well versed in apologetics and cultural criticism, to reject a lukewarm faith that went no further than a vague salvific assurance, to forge a new orthodoxy and a clear Christian mission. However, with the benefit of reflection, I’ve come to feel that this educational model and method of cultural engagment is at best insufficient and at worst detrimental. As a pedagogical tool, the worldview model tends to frame culture in terms of opposition.

In the 2016 film Arrival, Amy Adams plays Louise Banks, an American linguist trying to communicate with aliens who have mysteriously landed on earth. There is a moment about halfway through the movie that instantly stuck in my head: Louise learns that some of the other countries' linguists are trying to communicate with the aliens through games rather than translation. This horrifies her, but the Colonel standing across from her doesn’t understand why and asks what she’s concerned about. She replies, “Let's say that I taught them Chess instead of English. Every conversation would be a game. Every idea expressed through opposition, victory, defeat. You see the problem? If all I ever gave you was a hammer.”

“Everything’s a nail,” the Colonel interjects with sudden realization.

This exchange illustrates the fundamental issue with the worldview paradigm: It’s a hammer. When we analyze art or culture only in terms of worldview we miss their very essence. Art is not the domain of the rational but the experienced; cultural engagement should be about connection, not argumentation. Good art does not strive to argue, it strives to translate human experience, to capture a particular story, evoke a certain emotion. Likewise, people are not defined only by their core beliefs. Every human being is an embodied story, a world of experiences and emotions. Thus the everyday rituals we partake in, the park we walk through, our favorite food, our first heartbreak, our dreams and fears—all of these things characterize what it is like to be human and have no necessary connection to our worldview. In his book Desiring the Kingdom, Christian Philosopher James K.A. Smith notes the limitations of seeing the world as constituted primarily of competing ideas or beliefs. He suggests an alternative model of the human being, in which we are trained by our routines and rituals, and inspired by aesthetic and embodied experiences towards a particular conscious and subconscious vision of the good life. This portrait, as he describes it, is a “much more holistic (and less dualistic) picture of human persons as essentially embodied.” Thus for Smith the proper strategy for Christian cultivation is not an aggressive apologetical approach or an ultimate triumph in the so-called “culture war,” but creation and participation in ritual and liturgy.

In this sense, he flips the worldview paradigm on its head suggesting that “a Christian worldview emerges from the nexus of Christian worship practices.” Smith ultimately still argues for a sort of secular vs. sacred divide that I think is unhelpful, but I agree with his diagnosis if not his prescription. Worldview leads us into a trap where we end up arguing with things that are objects of being. No one would question the foolishness of trying to attack the worldview of a cup of coffee: It is immediately clear to us that it must be engaged on an experiential level.

Now unlike coffee, most works of art or literature do have elements that can be traced back to some worldview, there is both an intellectual and experiential component to culture. Yet we must be diligent in acknowledging the objective as well as the subjective. I think one reason that Christianity’s public image has suffered over the last two decades is this tendency of some to respond to people's experiences with argument.

I want to make it clear that I am not critiquing Christianity itself: I think authentic Christianity explicitly calls for deeper cultural engagement. Jesus instructed his followers to “love your neighbor as yourself,” (Mark 12:31) and said “follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” (Matthew 4:19).

Yes, he also argued with the Pharisees over doctrine, but I find it difficult to believe that the one who openly associated with tax collectors and prostitutes would endorse a hyper dualistic method of trying to separate culture into the realms of clean and unclean. Jesus did not attempt to build cultural barriers: he shattered them. I do not even believe that the worldview issue is one peculiar to Christianity or Conservatism. While the language of worldview itself is an invention of the Christian Right, the tendency to engage with people and culture through a clean vs. unclean binary seems to be a growing issue on all ends of the political and religious spectrum.

Seeing people as ideas allows us to safely categorize them as threatening or other, but when we see the individual in their holistic complexity we cannot easily dismiss the value and beauty of lived experience carried within them. The imago dei is revealed.

I have been talking about worldview culture and education rather interchangeably as they generally share the same outlook, but I want to briefly focus on an issue unique to the educational side. Within worldview education, when students are taught something that has been categorized as “un-Christian, ” they are always presented it through the filter of Christian apologetics. For instance, we would never read the Quran and draw our own conclusions about it or read an Islamic scholar's exposition of the text; usually the primary source would not be offered at all. Instead, we would read a Christian scholar’s summary of what Islam was, why it was bad, and how Christianity was better.

My point here has nothing to do with a comparison between Christendom and Islam. Rather, I think that the best way to learn something is from the people who believe it, who care about it being presented in its best light. If we learn how to defend against something before getting acquainted with the thing itself, we will spend our lives wrestling with straw-men. More importantly, we will fail to truly understand each other, and I think that the aim of education should be towards understanding rather than conquest.

I think understanding is also the basis for the healthiest form of cultural engagement. When we encounter art or philosophy that challenges us, the best response is not to attack it or isolate it, but seek to understand and experience it as its creator or community intended. Now I am not saying that we should embrace everything equally, I still believe there is value in discernment and critical analysis; I don’t think there is anything necessarily wrong with parents wanting to shelter their kids from profane content while they are young. Yet critical analysis should always follow honest engagement, our posture should lean towards connection rather than isolation. The aim should be to move beyond worldview and into the world.