The Necessity of a Biblical Worldview

By Dr. Levi Secord

Perhaps the biggest Achilles heel of evangelicalism is the lack of a robust biblical worldview. This is true for many Christians, from the pulpit to the pews, and it isn’t a new problem. Francis Schaeffer’s words ring true: “The basic problem of the Christians in this country in the last eighty years or so . . . is that they have seen things in bits and pieces instead of totals.”1 Christians are not good at looking at the big picture with a biblical worldview. Schaeffer documented his observation in 1981, which has only worsened since then.

Those cracking the whips of the chariot of secularism have ravaged our country, and part of their success is that they did see the big picture. Secularism claims lordship over all of life and disciples the next generation in its dogmas through public education. Our inability to think with a broader scope has allowed secularists to outmaneuver us again and again. Christians spend so much time putting out fires that we never get around to playing offense.

Nancy Pearcey identifies the problem as the Secular/Sacred Divide.2 What is this divide? It is the tactic secularists use to exile religion, especially Christianity, to the private realm of life. Secularists assert there are secular and sacred areas of life. The sacred area where religion is allowed (for now) is the private realm. The public realm is to be free from religion. Christians have unwittingly adopted this dichotomy. For many believers, the faith has shrunk to only private spiritual disciplines. The problem is that such a miniature religion is not found in Scripture. All of the world is under the lordship of Christ (Col. 1:15-20).

We need to reclaim a robust biblical worldview to free us from these secular chains. Christians must examine every facet of life through the lens of Christ’s lordship because He currently rules over everything (Eph. 1:21-22).

As secularism decays and spins out of control, there has been a renewed interest in the biblical worldview. People are searching for a comprehensive way of life, but the problem is that many sub-Christian ideas have infiltrated the faith. The biblical worldview does not merely talk about all spheres of life; it defines all of life. Plenty of Christians talk about the world but sound eerily like the world. Christians must think, speak, and act distinctively as Christians throughout all of life.

Examples of Incomplete Worldview Thinking

We reap what we sow. A biblical worldview that gets many things correct but still sows the seeds of progressivism will eventually lead to a weak and heretical form of Christianity. This drift has happened many times throughout church history. How many more denominations, schools, churches, and families must we lose?

Consider three examples of how Christians think in bits and pieces, producing a sub-Christian understanding of life and paving the way to unbelief. First, consider the question of the relationship between religion and the state. As a Baptist, I wholly oppose a state-sponsored church, but I also oppose the idea of a secular state. Separation of church and state must not result in the separation of God and state.

For those who reject God, the state becomes the highest authority in life. It becomes a person’s de facto god. There will always be a god of any system. As we survey the threat of an ever-growing state, which in many quarters is becoming more and more hostile to Christianity, the church has a choice to make. Will it lean into the Christian tradition that has given the blessings of human rights, limited government, and the rule of law, or will it reinforce the lie that the state is its own authority?

The Bible declares the state does not own everything (Matt. 22:21), it is under God’s authority as His servant (Rom. 13:4), and Christ is the head of all authority and the King of kings (Matt. 28:18, Rev. 19:16). In short, God has established the state and maintains the authority to tell it how to function. Moreover, He has spoken and preserved this instruction to men in Scripture. These ideas have transformed Christendom for the better for centuries. For the church to say it has nothing to say to the state is to ignore Scripture and our history.

Second, consider how quickly woke ideas like social justice infiltrated the church. In its right desire for justice, the church embraced the unjust worldview of critical theory. Some went as far as to affirm that critical theory could be used as an “analytical tool.” The problem is that critical theory as an analytical tool is a worldview openly hostile to Christianity. All of a sudden, in the name of “justice,” many of our sermons parroted the talking points you’d find in a God-hating, woke university classroom. Why? Because Christian leaders were thinking in bits and pieces instead of totals. A rival belief system will always get something right, but that doesn’t mean we should embrace it. Rather, Christians are called to take every thought captive and to annihilate every system that raises itself in opposition to Christ (2 Cor. 10:5).

Third, Christians have ignored education for too long, and the last several years have pulled back the veil, exposing public education as anything but neutral. Unbelievers recognize the importance of education by which current and future generations of children are evangelized and enlisted in their godless religion. For too long, Christians have bought into the lie that education can be done with neutrality and without reference to God. But education is discipleship. To be a disciple is to be a student. Any education rooted in indifference toward or denial of God is not neutral. All wisdom and knowledge begin with the fear of the Lord (Prov. 1:7). Apart from Him, we get to a place where we can’t define what a woman is, and we begin to think that mathematics is inherently racist. Secularists took the schools because they thought in totals. Evangelicals retreated from the ministry of education because they were thinking in bits and pieces.

Conclusion

Francis Schaeffer’s work has shaped me in many ways. I have learned much from reading his books, and among the most important things is that ideas have consequences. I was amazed to read his predictions from 40-50 years ago. These predictions were surely shocking for his time, and many in his day likely thought he was merely a Chicken Little. But now here we are. His predictions were not only correct, but he may have underestimated the severity of our problems. How did Schaeffer know things like the worship of homosexuality was coming? He understood that ideas have consequences, and he understood the ideas of his opponents.

Schaeffer didn’t think in bits and pieces, but he saw the whole picture. He filtered the world through the biblical worldview. We desperately need more men like Schaeffer. Many of the fiercest disagreements within the church today rage between those who insist on a comprehensive biblical worldview and those who prefer to think in bits and pieces.

In our decaying society, we must recover a robust biblical worldview that seeks to submit to Christ alone in every area of life, not a fake biblical worldview, which is nothing more than a halfway house for the latest progressive doctrine. This is a tall task, but it is imperative for Christians as we reach out to this dying world. We must build families, churches, schools, and institutions upon the biblical truth of reality. Christians must declare Christ in all of life. We must no longer be satisfied with seeing life in bits and pieces but with the fullness of the biblical worldview. We must see the world as God sees it, the world as it really is—where Christ is enthroned as King of kings and Lord of lords, and everything else in its rightful place—under His feet.

Dr. Levi Secord is the founding pastor of Christ Bible Church. Levi graduated with an M.Div and a Doctorate of Educational Ministry from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Levi has numerous publications with the Front Porch Republic, the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, Christ Over All, and WORLD Opinions. He contributed the chapter “Bits and Pieces of Our Wasteland” in Failed Church: Restoring a Vision for Ecclesial Victory and a chapter in the upcoming book Virtuous Liberty. He also hosts a podcast, the Worldview Minute, which aims at building a complete Christian worldview. Levi and his wife Emily have four children: Gideon, Joshua, Daniel, and Tess.

ENDNOTES

1. Francis A. Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto (Westchester, IL: Crossway, 1981), 17.

2. Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity, Study Guide, ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005).