Biblical Worldview and Comparative Worldview Instruction at Home

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In this episode, Elizabeth Urbanowicz provides tips and insight in how to best incorporate both biblical worldview and comparative worldview instruction at home. If you're a parent looking for ways to bring this teaching into your every day life, you won't want to miss this episode.

Transcript

Note: The following is an auto-transcript of the podcast recording.

Hello friends, and welcome to another episode of the Foundation Worldview Podcast where we seek to answer your questions so that you can equip the children God has placed in your care to carefully evaluate every idea they encounter and understand the truth of the biblical worldview. I'm your host, Elizabeth Urbanowicz, and I'm thrilled that you've joined me for another episode today. Today's question asks, "any recommendations or best practices in how to incorporate both biblical worldview and comparative worldview instruction at home?" Now, this is a question that I absolutely love because this type of instruction is one of the main things that we seek to do here at Foundation Worldview.

The first recommendation that I have is making sure that we are laying the foundation for a biblical worldview. That it's foundational that our children understand what a biblical worldview is. And now when we're talking about a biblical worldview, we're not talking merely about reading scripture or having verses in scripture memorized.

Both of those things are so vital in our lives and in the lives of our children. We need to be diving into God's word. We need to be memorizing scripture. But when I'm talking about a biblical worldview, what I'm referencing is understanding how the Bible as a whole answers questions, big important life questions that any worldview has to answer. So big questions that any worldview has to answer are questions like, what is truth? Who is God? What should I worship? How did life begin? What does it mean to be human? How can I tell right from wrong? Questions like that. And so we need to make sure that we are laying the biblical foundation for the answers to those questions. And so the way that we do this is by actually searching the scriptures and taking a topic like truth and saying, okay, what does scripture say in its entirety about truth?

And when we really dive down deep into the concept of truth in scripture, we see that the foundation of truth is God himself, because scripture as a whole presents God as being the source of truth. In the Psalms, it says that the sum of God's word is truth. In the prophets, it says, you know that God speaks the truth. He declares what is right. In the gospels, it says that Jesus is the truth that he came to testify to the truth. So all throughout scripture, we see the concept of truth anchored in God, that God is the source of all truth. So we need to ask our kids these questions and then take them through the entirety of scripture, looking at how does the Bible as a whole answer this question? And then something that I really love to do that a lot of people I think skip over in Worldview instruction, is actually having our kids explore what answers to this question do we find in the world around us?

So actually looking, when we look at the concept of truth, even just outside of what we're told in the Bible, what do we find? Do we find that truth exists? Do we find that truth does not exist? Do we find that truth remains the same? Do we find that truth changes from person to person to person? And just looking at examples in our world around us and asking our kids, okay, so one truth that I think we would all agree on is the truth of gravity. You know that even if somebody doesn't know exactly what gravity is, what causes gravity, they can't label it gravity. Everybody pretty much has an understanding that if you hold an object up in the air, it falls to the ground. Same with a person. If you hold a person up in the air, they will fall to the ground.

So we can see from this that yeah, truth does exist. It's not like it's something that we've just made up. And then think through, are those truths true for everybody? Or do they change from person to person to person? If I go to another continent, if the people on that continent don't believe in gravity, is gravity's suddenly going to disappear and everybody's going to be floating up in the air? No. Gravity doesn't depend on my thoughts, my feelings, or my beliefs about it. Gravity exists outside of my personal thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. So then saying, okay, so we find that the truth is true for everyone, and then saying, okay, is that what we find in scripture? Well, in scripture we see that God is the source of truth, that God has revealed truth to humans. So in scripture, we're seeing, yeah, truth exists.

And are we seeing in scripture that the truth is true for everyone, or that it changes from person to person? Oh, well, we're seeing that the truth is true for everyone. Jesus isn't the truth. For some people, he's the truth for all people. God's words aren't true. For some people, they're true for all people. So isn't that interesting? What we found in the world around us kind of lines up with what we saw in the Bible. And then the next thing that we want to do is directly instruct our children in what other worldviews teach on this topic. And we want them to know, okay, how do other people think, feel and believe about this topic? Now, a great way to do that is to go on YouTube and find clips of people from different worldviews explaining their beliefs about different things. That way you're hearing it straight from the horse's mouth.

We can also do research into books written by people of different worldviews. If you're looking for an easy reference guide for what other worldviews believe, summit Ministries has a book called Understanding The Times that it's a very thick book. I think it's about probably like six or 700 pages long, but it's a of what different worldviews believe about different big questions in life. And then we want to summarize those beliefs for our children so that our children just understand very basic idea. If you're looking at the world from a naturalistic perspective, from a belief that only the physical is real, what do you believe about this topic? If you're looking at this question from a post-modern view, what are you going to believe about this topic? If you're looking at this topic from an Islamic point of view, what are you going to believe about this topic so that our children just understand very basically what different worldviews believe.

Now, if you're thinking Elizabeth, I have no idea how to go about summarizing that. Well, I mentioned at the beginning of this podcast that biblical and comparative worldview instruction are two of the main things that Foundation Worldview seeks to do. So we have an entire comparative worldview curriculum where we've actually boiled down the main tenets of different worldviews in our society in language that eight to 12 year olds can understand it. So just check out that curriculum. If you're thinking, I want to do this instruction, but I don't really know how, then once our children have a basic understanding of what the Bible teaches, have a basic understanding of the clues we find in the world around us and have a basic understanding of what other worldviews teach. What we then want to do is we want to have our children directly compare and contrast the different worldviews teachings with what is found in scripture to look at, okay, where are these beliefs similar?

Where are these beliefs different? And comparing and contrasting is a very powerful learning strategy that actually educational researchers have found that comparing and contrasting is such a powerful learning strategy because it requires first that someone's mind understand, what are these two different entities I am comparing? So they have to understand them, they have to understand their different parts. Then they actually have to systematically evaluate where are the similarities? And when they're finding the similarities, different connections are being made in their brain. Then they have to look at what are the differences? Where are these things contrasting? And again, these different things are really being seared in their brain. So comparing and contrasting is a powerful learning strategy. Then once our children have compared and contrasted these different views, we then want to ask them, which of you most closely aligns with what we find in the world around us?

Now, at the beginning of the podcast, I just outlined a basic biblical understanding of truth that God is the source of truth because his word is truth. He speaks the truth. He declares the truth. Jesus is the truth. He came to testify to the truth that God is the source of truth. And in that, we see that truth exists, that truth is objective. It's outside of us. It doesn't change from person to person. Well, then if we look at the post-modern view, okay, the post-modern view is that truth is subjective. That if there actually is truth with a capital T out there, humans are really incapable of knowing that truth with a capital T, all we can know is truth with a little T that's found within our society, and that comes from our own personal subjective experiences within our culture. So the postmodern view is very much that truth cannot be known.

We just know little truths here and there, but they're going to change from society to society to society, and even from person to person to person. And so then we can look at, okay, what are some of the similarities and differences? Well, Christianity believes that truth exists. Postmodernism teaches that truth could possibly exist. So there's a similarity there. Then what are some of the differences? Well, Christianity teaches that truth is objective. It doesn't change from society to society or from person to person. That's very different than what post-modernism teaches. That truth is subjective. It's going to change based on the society you live in. It might even change based on who you are. Those are huge differences. And then when we look at, what is the source of this truth? Post-modernism has no answer for truth with a capital T for the little truths.

The source of that truth is just your community and the experiences that you've had within that community. Christianity teaches that truth with a capital T stems from God himself, because God is the source of truth. He's the creator and sustainer of all reality. So once our children understand the similarities and the differences, then we want to ask them, okay, so what actually lines up with what we found in the world around us? What worldview teaches that truth does exist? Well, Christianity very clearly teaches it. Post-modernism teaches that it could exist, but it's really unknowable if it does exist. Then we also saw that truth is objective. It doesn't change from person to person to person. Truth is outside of the control of our thoughts, feelings, and desires. What Worldview teaches that Christianity teaches that postmodernism teaches just the opposite. That truth actually is really stemming from within, and it's going to change from society to society and person to person.

And then talk about, it looks like Christianity much more closely aligns with reality. Then post-modernism, and you see, when we do this, we're not merely indoctrinating our children. We're actually giving them the opportunity to carefully evaluate what they find in the world around them so that they are the ones that are discovering that the biblical worldview consistently lines up with reality. And if we can do this, our children's faith is going to be so much more firmly grounded because they're going to understand that biblical faith is not some blind, irrational into the dark. It is a trust in the God who we cannot see because everything that we can see points directly to him.

Now, again, if you're thinking, I want to do this with the kids that God has placed in my care, but you feel ill-equipped, or you're not sure exactly how to go about doing some of the things that I've mentioned, highly recommend that you hop on the Foundation Worldview website and check out our Early Childhood Worldview curriculum, which that sets the foundation for a biblical worldview for children ages four through eight. And then after that, check out our Comparative Worldview curriculum, which takes the foundation of a biblical Worldview and then compares it to other worldviews just as I modeled in this podcast. And it does that for children ages 8 through 12. So please go check those out. We'd really love to equip you to get the kids in your care to carefully evaluate all the ideas that they encounter in life and in culture and just in the world around them.

Well, that's a wrap for today's episode. As always, if you found this content beneficial, please consider liking subscribing and writing a review, and just sharing this content with those in your sphere of influence. As always, my prayer as we leave our time together is that God would richly bless you as you continue to faithfully disciple the children he's placed in your care. I'll see you next time.