Monday, November 19, 2012

Worldview and politics

I've been reading a lot of post election blogs and articles on why the Republicans lost the Presidency. One recurring theme is "the Republicans need to get away from social issues like abortion and gay marriage because we can't change people's minds on this and all it does is shove people away from the Republican camp." While that is to an extent true, no meaningful change can be made to politics without changing the culture and ultimately the worldview of those in the culture. Rotten worldview leads to rotten culture which leads to rotten politics. So what's a worldview? It is the lens through which we view the world, what happens in the world, and most importantly of all how to fix what is wrong with the world. Everyone has one whether they think so or not. Marxism, Fascism, Naturalism, Statism, Socialism, Communism and all other -isms will all come up with somewhat similar responses to the following questions: 1-Who am I? 2-Why am I here? 3-What is wrong with the world? 4-How do we fix what is wrong with the world? Even differing religions will come up with differing responses to these questions. Then there are the liberal Christians vs the traditional Christians-again the answers are going to differ but that is because the liberal Christians have tried to combine some of the -isms above with Christianity with disastrous results. So the answers to these questions will obviously form the basis for our culture and from there our politics. The wrong answers lead to the wrong solutions. Like it or not, politics does have a moral basis and if the wrong morality wins the day, well we're going to get bad results in politics.

2 comments:

John Silvius said...

Thank you for your concise and accurate assessment of the importance of identifying how our worldview affects political involvement, and the importance of striving for consistency and integrity as belief is translated into decisions and actions. Your comments in this blog entry remind me of your comment in response to my Oikonomia blog, Jan, 2010 in which you expressed a similar concern as relates to environmental stewardship/creation care. The importance of faith and knowledge of God's truth as a foundation for life, family, and society are underscored by today's tragic shooting in Connecticut. May God continue to use your testimony and ministry.

jib said...

Thanks for you kind comments.