Theologian and philosopher Richard J. Mouw recounts once seeing a car with a Playboy bunny sticker on the rear window and a statue of the Virgin Mary on the front dashboard. He initially assumed that there was a reasonable explanation to the apparent contradiction: a Catholic wife and a brazen spouse, perhaps? Only later did he realize that the dichotomy might not have had a rational explanation. The car’s owner may have neglected, as many do, to critically examine his worldview.
A worldview, as the name implies, is simply the way in which one person views the world. It generally encompasses five main areas: theology (beliefs about God), anthropology (beliefs about man), epistemology (beliefs about acquiring knowledge), metaphysics (beliefs about the nature of reality), and ethics (beliefs about morality).
Everyone has a worldview: We all have beliefs about God, man, knowledge, reality, and morality. However, some worldviews fail to make sense of central aspects of truth. And yet, it’s important to have a worldview that can stand up to scrutiny. From philosopher Ronald H. Nash’s book Life’s Ultimate Questions, here are four tests to verify the validity of a worldview.
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