We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5)
Truth matters. What we believe is true will always determine our actions. A child who believes a monster lives under her bed will never touch the floor when the lights turn off. That same girl will grow up and realize the silliness of thinking a monster lived under her cluttered bed (obviously, it’s in the closet).
Equally true is this: where you go for truth matters. While truth is absolute, determining whether or not something is true is far less exact. That’s because how we view the world, our worldview, is based on 5 broad categories:
- Scripture
- Reason
- Tradition
- Experience
- Emotion
Most readers read that last one, emotion, and cringe. In a culture ruled by emotionalism, which has wormed its way into so much of how the church conducts itself, we’re tempted to reject anything emotion-based. But this is very much a “baby and the bathwater” situation. Emotion, like every other category above, has value in how we handle truth, as long as it’s kept in its proper place. Below, I’ll briefly explain each category, highlighting where we see each used positively and negatively in Scripture, then discuss how these affect our worldview.
Scripture
Scripture, the Bible, God’s Word. We have many names for it, but this is the book we all know and (hopefully) love. Today, it’s how God chooses to reveal Himself in a special, unique way that the rest of creation never could. It’s the tool He puts into the hands of men and women to proclaim the gospel and grow His people in spiritual maturity.
Simply put, it is the source of truth we need more than anything else. We don’t just need it for salvation, but understanding the entire span of our lives and the world we live in. For Christians who are filled with the Holy Spirit, this is our means of living faithfully for God in every single area of our existence.
Scripture as a positive
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16-17)
Scripture contains what we need. It instructs in good, points out wrong, reorients when we’re in error, and lays out what we need for spiritual growth. When this is primary in our lives, it allows us to do everything God calls us to do.
Scripture as a negative
There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. (2 Peter 3:16b)
The Bible’s mere presence isn’t enough. We see throughout the Bible, and even in our modern world, that there are plenty of people who will use these life-giving words to serve themselves. They twist, corrupt, and manipulate what God has said to serve something they value more than God. And when we don’t put Scripture where it belongs, we will always do the same thing by making something an authority over what God has said.
Reason
This is how we think logically about something. It’s how we evaluate everything we encounter and determine whether it makes sense or is nonsensical. Reason is why we say “Hmm, that doesn’t seem right” to various truth claims.
Reason as a positive
And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them [in Thessalonica] from the Scriptures, 3 explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ.” …
11 Now these Jews [in Berea] were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. (Acts 17:2-3, 11)
When Paul went to Thessalonica, he used the Bible to reason with the Jewish teachers and worshippers about how Jesus was the Messiah promised in the Old Testament. He didn’t just whip out a proof text and say “See, this verse says it!” He made God’s word his authority, but used logic to explain why these Old Testament prophecies could only point to Jesus. But they weren’t interested because, despite what God’s word revealed and how reason proved it, they cared about something even more, thus chasing Paul away.
Conversely, the Jews in Berea not only valued God’s word, but weren’t going to be taken in by this guy just because he sounded convincing. They are commended for using their reason to search through Scripture to see if Paul’s claims lined up with what the Bible said. Their reason would never extend farther than the Bible, but rather they used reason to “see if these things [that Paul said about Jesus being the Messiah] were so.”
Reason as a negative
See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. (Colossians 2:8)
When reason elevates itself over Scripture, we will be taken captive by things that sound convincing, reasonable, and even scientific, but are ultimately worthless. Worse, as we’ll discuss in the next section, we will even make the Bible subservient to reason, only allowing the Bible to say things that we deem reasonable, rational, or logical.
Tradition
Tradition is a broad category that encompasses the beliefs of people from our past and present. On one hand, tradition is why we say “It’s what we’ve always done.” It’s also why we say “That’s just what we do here.”
We see tradition in various church denominations, with Baptist pastors typically wearing a suit or semi-formal attire, while Presbyterian ministers may wear a Geneva gown. Neither of these are commanded in Scripture, yet they reflect patterns, habits, and even expectations that people have developed and maintained across the generations.
We see tradition at the family level, with some families passing down unique Christmas traditions through the generations, while others start entirely new traditions (or do not celebrate Christmas at all).
Tradition also extends to entire cultures. There are things that are typical of being an American or Brazilian that will seem strange to those in India or Russia. It’s even true of different areas of the same country. For example, I have a friend who grew up in New York and can come across as very (and refreshingly) abrupt when compared to the “Iowa nice” of my upbringing.
You’ll also see it in hobbies, political parties, job sectors, age groups, fandoms, and more. Whenever two or more people interact long enough, they’ll naturally create patterns. And as new people join them, those patterns are passed on as traditions. Words, habits, mannerisms, and so many things we think are part of the universal human experience are often just part of the varied traditions we’ve inherited.
Tradition as a positive
And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:6-9)
When God gave the law to Israel, He commanded that it become embedded in their family life. Parents were to make the ways of God a normal part of their children’s lives, teaching them and then sending those grown children out to marry and teach their own children the same things. God’s law wasn’t just an academic understanding, but something where parents would say “This is what our family believes. This is what our family does.”
Tradition as a negative
And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written,
“‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me;
7 in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’
8 You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”
9 And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! (Mark 7:9)
Does it get more clear than this? The Pharisees criticize Jesus and His disciples for not observing their man-made traditions about washings that have become religious law. Jesus turns right back around and reveals that the Pharisees have used their traditions to twist and distort God’s word, even using it to justify not caring for their elderly parents.
Experience
Experience is more than just what we’ve lived through. We’re talking about the impact those events have left on us. It shapes what we expect to happen in the future based on what’s happened in the past. Experiences are also things we seek to confirm whether something is still true.
For example, someone may absolutely refuse to own a particular brand of vehicle after a bad experience. This refusal has nothing to do with a detailed understanding of mechanics that has informed them that a brand is consistently unreliable (that’s using reason), nor whether the manufacturer still makes problematic vehicles. They refuse primarily because they so strongly associate a negative experience with the brand itself. Their past experience has shaped their present belief.
More seriously, we see it in why some people say they do or don’t believe in God. One person may have prayed for God to deliver them from a circumstance, and because that circumstance improved. Someone in that same circumstance may have prayed with the same earnestness, but their circumstance went worsened. proving that there’s no such thing as a good God. In both cases, these people may believe something about God’s goodness, or even His existence, based on their experience.
Experience also helps us understand why people return to addictions. Someone may have discovered that alcohol brings temporary “relief” when they’re lonely, hurting, or otherwise feel incapable of coping with life. In time, they learn to associate alcohol with escaping from pain. So in the future, when they start feeling something they don’t want to deal with, they rely on what their experience has taught them: alcohol is their savior from suffering.
But experience also validates truth. What’s the value of telling a child or spouse “I love you” every day? The regular reminder helps bring a truth to mind. It reinforces something they know is true. It’s a comfort when there’s doubt. And when those words stop because we’re no longer around the person, whether through the death of a spouse or the marriage of a child, it can hurt because that repeated experience regularly confirmed that something was real.
In this way, experience both teaches us about the past and reinforces what we believe in the present.
Experience as a positive
And Joshua said to them, “Pass on before the ark of the Lord your God into the midst of the Jordan, and take up each of you a stone upon his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the people of Israel, 6 that this may be a sign among you. When your children ask in time to come, ‘What do those stones mean to you?’ 7 then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it passed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. So these stones shall be to the people of Israel a memorial forever.” (Joshua 4:5-7)
God regularly tells Israel to establish physical reminders of their past. But God knows how He designed us, and He also knows how forgetful we are in our sinful weakness. God wants them to see the pattern of who He’s proven Himself to be so that their present circumstances won’t overshadow the steady patterns of the past. Likewise, if someone ever wonders whether all this stuff they’re doing is worth it, they can look to those same stones and remember who He is, what He’s done, and what He always will do.
Experience as a negative
Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. 9 But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more? 10 You observe days and months and seasons and years! 11 I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain. (Galatians 4:8-10)
Like the drunkard returning to a poison that promises to be their savior, Paul is dealing with people whose past life experiences have created something alluring in their present. They know biblically, logically, and through the Christian culture around them, that adding Jewish lawkeeping to the Christian faith would be like returning to their pagan roots. It would be finding comfort and salvation in rules, not Christ. But there was something appealing about the rituals of Judaism that likely took them back to their former lives of worshipping the pagan gods.
This church was in danger because they were looking backwards to the wrong thing. Unlike the Israelites who looked back at their weakness and saw God’s strength, these people were looking back at the “positive” parts of their past life and trying to find a way to bring it to their present.
Emotion
I can hear some of you mumbling, “Eww, gross” right now. Interestingly, the voices are all fairly deep.
Joking aside, we often make emotion the defining difference between men and women. We say women are highly emotional, while men are highly logical. The logical conclusion to this is that men are rarely, if ever, driven by emotion. But let’s think about what emotion is before assuming someone does or doesn’t struggle with it more because of their chromosomes.
Emotion, at its most basic level, is our response to internal thoughts or external circumstances. It’s why we get butterflies toward one person and feel our stomach drop in distress at seeing another. It’s an emotional response to feel calm when thinking about a hobby and stressed at the thought of a project deadline we’ll never meet. Emotions are the only reason movies have a budget for music, making people feel tense or relieved based on a few well-placed musical notes.
In this way, our emotions respond to what we believe is real.
However, for many people, emotion determines their reality. When someone speaks to us harshly, we believe they’re against us. When we feel confident, we believe we’re capable of doing a task (see any child who tries to jump off their bed without injury). When we feel appreciated by a spouse or boss, we believe we have value. When the sun is shining and life makes us happy, we can’t wait to tell people God is good. And as James 4:1-3 reveals, when we feel we need something, we believe anyone who stands in our way is an obstacle or an enemy.
In this way, emotions drive our anger, bitterness, resentment, and sense of injustice.
Thus, I don’t believe it’s accurate to say men are less emotional than women. Complaining about the government, yelling at referees, rage at losing, and yelling about inconveniences are all emotional responses. It’s saying “I’m not happy!” and then punishing the world because of it. And let us not forget that being controlled by sexual desire, one of the strongest emotions men feel, has led to immense pain for centuries. Men don’t ruin their families because they’re too logical, but because they’re controlled by intense emotionalism.
But here’s the secret for all of us: we can’t not have emotions. Properly placed, emotions are like a thermometer. A thermometer doesn’t determine the temperature, but rather reveals what it is. If we feel angry, that emotion is a warning light that we need to examine our hearts. If we feel those weird tingles when reading a Psalm, it’s because we delight in something true about God. When we hug our spouse and feel our burdens lighten, it’s a sign that we know they’re trustworthy and safe.
We don’t want to dismiss emotions, but we must never be ruled by them. They’re a good gift from God, but due to their inconsistent nature, we can’t rely on them to determine reality. Instead, as we’ll soon see, we must allow them to serve their natural purpose of confirming what we believe is true or false.
Emotion as a positive
Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation (Psalm 42:5)
Anyone who’s ever experienced depression can relate to David. But David does something unique here. He acknowledges his emotional state, but responds by refocusing his hope toward God. In doing so, he knows that setting his hope on things above will take his focus off the hopelessness of his current circumstance. He keeps emotion in its proper place, letting it respond to what he knows is true.
Emotions as a negative
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9)
Children’s movies make me laugh. “Follow my heart? The thing that frequently leads me away from God? You must be joking.” Relying on our emotions will rarely, if ever, lead us to righteousness. Our emotions are often more in tune with our sin nature than with the Holy Spirit, and it shows by all the problems we create for ourselves and others when we allow our emotions to determine reality.
We must acknowledge that the Bible does talk about the heart more robustly than Disney. The biblical “heart” is more than just emotions – it’s also our intellect and will. But, in our modern context, we are quickly led astray by the initial feelings we experience, relying on them to interpret reality and then act accordingly.
Walmart and your worldview
If Scripture, reason, tradition, experience, and emotion are inescapable aspects of everyone’s worldview, how do we use them well? How do we keep them in their proper order so that our worldview is biblical? The answer lies in authority.
We say Scripture is our authority, but in an hour we feel like we can’t help but yell at our kids. We say we value what God’s word says, yet as we read it we’re trying to rationalize things we don’t understand or refuse to accept. We read God’s word daily, but interpret it through our political views.
The problems in our lives rarely stem from “I don’t trust the Bible,” but rather that we don’t realize just often we place other things above it and, by necessity, make God’s word submissive to other sources of truth.
To explain what I mean, think about Walmart’s corporate hierarchy.
At the top of this (simplified) hierarchy is the CEO, who sets the vision and priorities for the entire corporation. Below them is a regional manager, responsible for multiple stores. Then is the manager of a single store, a manager of a department within that store, and finally an employee working in that department.
In a well-functioning corporation, the regional manager has free reign to do a lot of things within their sphere of influence. However, they can never do anything that is in direct contradiction to the CEO. Likewise, store managers have freedom to execute their duties, but only if what they do aligns with the regional manager, who will likewise align themselves with the CEO. And this freedom continues down to the department employee who, while limited compared to the regional manager, is still able to function in a way that makes sense for where they’re at, but never at the cost of defying their higher authorities in the company.
But imagine a company where an employee decided to arrive at the corporate office and start determining a new direction for the company a few times a week. Imagine the CEO was forced to stock shelves while the company kept claiming they were calling the shots, then being required to return and deal with whatever decisions were made in their absence.
It would be utter chaos, because that’s not how authority works. The CEO will always be the one leading the company. Their job may never interact with how wide to make an aisle or what height to set a store sign at, but those beneath them will still make those decisions with respect to Walmart’s authority structure, making sure nothing they do contradicts the CEO’s leadership.
A properly ordered worldview
Whatever sits at the top of our hierarchy determines how we interpret everything else.
It’s not enough to believe the Bible is our authority if it’s not telling our other sources of truth what to do. If our emotions dictate how we treat our children, then God’s word isn’t supreme in that moment. If past church hurt makes us ignore God’s command of “not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some” (Hebrews 10:25a), then we make God’s word submit to the authority of our experiences.
Imagine if we ordered our worldviews like this:
Our worldview would still take in, process, and act on sources of truth. But when we’re mindful of how we do that, we’ll realize when we’re tempted to believe something about reality that stems from a disordered worldview.
Let’s use modern example:
Our gender is based on psychological feelings.
But we know that God didn’t design gender based on how we feel about our gender. So what’s going on when someone affirms transgenderism? Which source of truth are they putting above the Bible?
Interestingly, any of these can be put above God’s word, depending on why a person agrees with it.
- Reason: “Scientists and psychologists have proven that it’s true”
- Tradition: “Everyone knows that’s true” or “That’s what my friends, classmates, or coworkers say”
- Experience: “I knew someone who came out as their true gender and are much happier now”
- Emotion: “Who am I to stand in the way of someone’s happiness? That would be so cruel!”
Any of these statements are a valid way someone might start off when thinking about transgenderism. But when we start with one of these assumptions, what must happen? No matter what the Bible says, it cannot go against the source of truth that’s guiding us. So everything else must agree with it.
If we start with affirming transgenderism because science proves it, here’s what things end up looking like:
- Reason: Science says it’s true
- Tradition: I should only listen to people who follow modern science; those who disagree with transgenderism are likely anti-science
- Emotion: We’ve seen the devastating effects faced by transgender people who have experienced hate or discrimination, and I don’t want to make someone suffer because of their natural biology and psychology
- Experience: I’ve been made to feel bad for things that others thought weren’t “normal,” and it really hurt me
- Scripture: God can’t be against transgenderism, so the verses that talk about gender must be understood in light of God making people as they are and loving them. So I must love them like God does.
The use of Scripture seems very loving in this situation. But if we’ve ever wondered why people can look at the same Bible as we do and come to radically different conclusions, this is usually why. All of us risk interpreting the Bible through certain assumptions, which ends up restricting the Bible to only being allowed to say what our assumptions agree with.
This won’t happen every time, but the vast majority of times that the Bible isn’t our authority, it will end up falling under the authority of everything else. Why? Because God’s word is clear, either in its direct commands or consistent principles, and thus will end up conflicting with our other sources of truth. It’s only by pushing the Bible so low on our hierarchy that we can possibly make it agree with something else we want to trust over it.
But what happens if we take this same truth claim, but run it through a properly ordered worldview?
- Scripture: God’s word is clear that He made men and women distinct, and that gender is an objective reality that isn’t based on our internal perception of ourselves.
- Reason: Scientists claim that transgenderism is natural, but I also understand that scientists are human. Even people with good intentions have minds that actively suppress the truth of God. They aren’t always wrong, but I must be aware of what may be guiding their interpretation of the data they’re looking at.
- Tradition: There are conflicting voices around me, but I need to align with those who fight for biblical truth.
- Experience: I know it’s been difficult when I’ve learned that something I thought was true was actually self-deception, so I want to speak the truth about transgenderism in love.
- Emotions: I hurt for those who are blinded by the world’s philosophy.
The Bible doesn’t sit at the top of our hierarchy because it’s the best of many options. God’s word, as the recorded word of God, is the only thing that was ever meant to be our primary source of truth. Our intellect, culture, life experiences, and emotions exist as a means of living through what God’s word reveals.
Consider once again what God’s word is good for:
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16-17)
God’s word corrects errant thinking and pushes us towards truth.
We filter the things people say and do by how it aligns with God’s word; in areas it’s silent, we use Bible-informed reason to evaluate those traditions.
Whatever we experience is accepted or rejected based on how it aligns with God’s word, our Scripture-informed reason, and then our trustworthy traditions.
Finally, we have an appropriate emotional response to whatever happens, trusting that our emotions are a reliable thermometer for what’s happening in our hearts because those emotions only rely on all the truth that started with God’s word and was then filtered through the rest of our worldview.
Practically applying your worldview
With such a thorough analysis of how we determine what’s true, I don’t blame you for thinking this is unwieldy. After all, who’s going to get cut off by some jerk in traffic and pause to filter everything before deciding whether or not to honk and flip them off. This seems great in theory, but useless in practice.
Except that we already do this. We may not actively engage in the step-by-step process, but we can look at any response or belief and see, without any doubt, what we’re using as our primary source of truth.
For example, think of how we respond to a disobedient child. If we yell, we’re likely driven by our emotions (“How dare you not do what I said?!”. If we try to guilt or shame them into compliance, we might be using tradition to get them to change (“Sarah doesn’t act like that.” “Would you want daddy to see you act this way?”). And if we help them evaluate their sinful heart, explaining why their behaviors were wrong from a biblical worldview, then it’s apparent what we prioritize in that moment.
So no, rarely will we actually picture our hierarchy in the heat of a moment. But if we recognize that we aren’t prioritizing God’s word above all else, it’s our clear sign to sit down and recalibrate what we believe is true. When we evaluate anything we believe, or consider something we want to do, we can be better equipped to ask whether we’re being biblical first, or if we’re making God’s word submit to other areas that we’ve placed above it.
So use this structure to help you realize there’s a different between a worldview that uses the Bible and a biblical worldview. Assess your different beliefs, family traditions, hopes, fears, etc. Use it to determine why you spend money the way you do. Replay the last argument you had (and ask for forgiveness if necessary!).
If this makes sense to you, and you’re willing to do the hard work of applying it, it will change your life. It will rescue you from being someone whose beliefs may use the Bible, but aren’t fully surrendered to God and His word. Understanding why we do what we do, and why we believe what we believe, will allow us to make Christ-honoring decisions for the rest of our lives.
There will be times when what God says doesn’t line up with what the rest of the world says is reasonable. We will have times where our traditions are at odds with God’s commands. We’ll desire to trust in our past experiences over what God is currently saying. Men and women alike will want nothing more than to react in their emotions, doing what feels good or right even though they know what God’s word says.
In any of these situations, how will we respond? Do we submit ourselves to the authority of God, surrendering so much of ourselves for the One who is greater than us? Or must God and His word come under the authority of our wisdom, only being allowed claim the parts of our life that we allow Him to? As Christians, our desire must always be to place God’s word above all else because it is, quite plainly, God’s word.
May we always desire to model our Savior and pray, “Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”