Read Online Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept by James W. Sire - Free Book Online Page B

believe about prayer does not always represent what we show we believe by how, where and when we pray. Our worldview is also under the pressure of workability . Sometimes what we commit ourselves to just won’t work. We then adjust our belief accordingly. Furthermore, our worldview is under the pressure of new information, new facts and new ways of looking at the facts. In short, we change our mind, usually about small matters rather than big ones, but still enough that our worldview itself may be changed at least a little even at its roots. How we understand God as good, for example, is constantly under pressure from continued study of the Bible, from input from those more learned and wise than ourselves, and also from experience. And the presence of evil is always a challenge to our grasp of “the really real.”
    Nonetheless, it is extremely helpful to have a thumbnail sketch of the major worldviews present today, especially those that impinge on our lives through the conversations we have with others, the literature we read, and the movies and TV programs that we watch. Every editorial, even every news story, is written from a point of view, one that tries to be objective or that is openly ideological. Every movie and TV drama conveys a take on life, some more obviously than others, but none with no worldview implications at all. Most sitcoms, for example, depict twisted and perverted lives and values as if they were not only normal but right. The biblical God rarely appears even as a backdrop. Knowing what these alternative worldviews may be helps us view movies and shows more wisely.
    Every worldview described in The Universe Next Door is alive and well and living somewhere in the world. It is in fact what makes our world pluralistic. When deism began to be culturally significant, Christian theism did not disappear; when naturalism became dominant, both deism and Christianity remained; when nihilism dawned in the late nineteenth century, naturalism, deism and Christianity were still present; and so forth. In fact, naturalism remains today as the dominant worldview in Europe and on university campuses in North America, while a vague, unsophisticated deism dominates the broader North American world. Most people in America believe in God, but it makes little difference in their life; he exists as someone or some force to get the world going and to give it order, but he can be largely ignored in daily life.
    The fifth edition of The Universe Next Door outlines and analyzes the worldview of Islam. Here that worldview is placed last, not because it is new in history, but because it has emerged as a major player in the Western world. Moreover, by the end of the twentieth century, it had become obvious that the Islamic worldview is so radically different from others in the West that it has been difficult to comprehend, even though in its many versions it is so clearly and globally displayed in current events.
    Islam’s view of the “really real,” for example, is of prime importance. God as solely One or God as Trinity; Jesus as human prophet or Jesus as the divine-human prophet and savior; God as loving sinners or God as loving only the righteous; God as forgiving us through the sacrifice of his Son or God as being merciful without a redemptive action; human destiny as inexorable fate or as involving some human choice; the Qur’an as God’s very words in Arabic or the Bible as God’s Word through the instrument of various languages. These are not trivial differences, and their implications for individuals and culture in general are profound. We even need to understand various Islamic traditions whose views are different enough to have caused violent controversy in the past and are the background for violent controversy today.
    Worldviews in an Academic Setting
    Early in my academic life, worldview analysis opened up for me through English literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I could read it, but I