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3.0 God, Reality, and Humans
WvS Theory and Theology

Worldview Systems (WvS) Theory, if it is to have any value for ministry or missions, must demonstrate its theological relevance.  As simply a humanistic sociological theory it will fall short.  WvS must correlate with the revelation of God and find its functionality in His work and mission.  It will be the purpose of the next few sections to explore the expression of WvS ideas in the Scriptures, the underlying principles of these expressions, and the application in ministry of these principles.

3.1 God as the Source and Substance of Reality

Science has, in a way, returned to religion.  Science has done so because its observations have humbled it.  Once science thought it would alone reveal the true nature of the universe and uncover the solutions to the great human problems of our time.  At an ever accelerating rate, technology has opened new doors of awareness and possibility.  However, once the doors were opened, science found no neat answers within: only vast chambers of more questions.  Now, portions of the scientific community are coming to faith to find answers to complex and profound questions.

While faith welcomes the reconciliation with its old competitor, it has not anticipated science's curiosity.  Not long into the reunion, difficult and troubling questions are posed by the prodigal:  What is the nature of the universe?  Why are we here?  Who is our Creator and what is he like?  They bring volumes of information and questions the faithful have never considered and they will not accept clichés as answers.     

Their information makes faith uncomfortable.  Their view of the universe places God too far out of reach.  How can we understand a being that creates and maintains on levels infinitely large and infinitely small simultaneously?  As the borders of our astronomical awareness have been enlarged to include billions of galaxies by modern astronomy, new questions pop into our heads:  If we are the center of God's attention, why is all this other stuff required?  At the same time, we are discovering a world far below the level of microscopy with sub-atomic particles and sub-sub-atomic participles.  Matter can be divided down to a level where tiny particles, called virtual particles, only sort of exist some of the time.¹  If the universe was built for humans like a gerbil's aquarium, why should matter exist in smaller divisions than molecules or atoms?   How can truth exist if reality and possibility have no division? If God is like this -- this new scientifically revealed God -- the more we discover about him, the greater the volume of unanswered questions will be.

Like David, in the face of such complexity we cannot help but ask God, "What is man, that you consider him [or] the son of man that you care for him?"²  Yet, the same God who "stretches out the heavens"³ also "knit [us] together in [our] mother's womb."⁴  Although God knows the massive machinery of the cosmos, he is also "familiar with all [our individual] ways."⁵  While God is beyond human comprehension, he is amazingly close in proximity: "he is not far from from each one of us, 'For in him we live and move and have our being.'"⁶  In fact, the Creator is also Immanuel - "God with us."⁷

At the dawn of our history, the Creator simply spoke.  The force of his Word was the energy for the genesis of all things -- including life.  Einstein proved that energy and matter are two forms of one substance,⁸ but it was God who long before demonstrated the principle, creating matter from the power of his will alone.  This same energy -- the Word -- became a man who was the "Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace."⁹  The connection between man and God is so intimate in Christ that God can live in us and we can live in him.¹⁰  Now, humans are the building that holds the infinitely gigantic Lord of Heaven and Earth.¹¹

Indwelling and yet expansive, God is so pervasive he is literally everywhere.¹²  Such a concept leads to the conclusion: God is reality.  Two things should immediately qualify this statement.  First, it should be understood that reality is only one expression of God, not his entirety.  Just as John 1 says, "the Word was God," the Word is only part of whole picture of God as much as Son, Spirit, and Father are only partial pictures of God's entirety.  Therefore, it is correct to say "the Word was God" but not "God was the Word".  The Word is derived from God much the same way that reality is derived from God, but not all of God himself.  This concept -- that God is the source and substance of reality, but that reality is not the sole substance of God -- means that omnipresence is true but pantheism is not.

Second, it should be noted that the "reality" we experience is not always God or God derived.  Human perception muddies the picture.  Also, free will and sin have lead to an "alternate reality" which God allows to exist outside of his reality for a time until Judgment.¹³  This "alternate reality" is false and leads to decay and destruction, opposite to God's will and true reality which are creation and life.¹⁴  At some point in the past there was only one reality and at some point in the future there will only be one again.  Therefore, there is only one true reality because there is only one enduring reality: the alternate will eventually be discontinued.  Living within the reality of God, or by his Word and revelation, then is existence within true reality.

The idea that God is the source and substance of reality uniquely qualifies God to understand all things as they actually are.  For God there is no searching or question, no perspective, just certainty.  Therefore, God knows the world and the human situation for what it actually is.  The term "worldview" is inappropriate in the case of God because it invites one to equate God's thinking system with human worldviews.  God does not "view" the world in the sense that he must use limited senses to form a model of the cosmos.  Instead, God simply is absolute reality and his thinking system is absolute truth. 

3.2 Humans as Imperfect Perceivers

Humans, as products of the reality of God and as created beings, do not intrinsically "know" the cosmos.¹⁵  Instead, they must collect information about their world through the means of instinct, sensation, and imagination.  In addition to these means, humans possess a memory for recording information.  They also have a mind, which could be defined as a field for processing information stored by the memory, gathered by the senses, preprogrammed in the instincts, and conceptualized in the imagination.  In the mind, humans can use combinations of all these factors to develop thought structures, of which worldview is one, and behaviors.

Instinct refers to preprogrammed information passed on from generation to generation through mostly biological means.  Humans, although they are not as programmed as some creatures like insects (which exhibit mostly instinctual behaviors), do have many behaviors and thought patterns that are "hard-wired" from birth.¹⁶  For example: the "rooting reflex" that causes babies to open their mouths when their cheek is touched is an instinctual behavior¹⁷ -- something God hard-wired into the baby worldview (WvS-I) to facilitate feeding.  Current medical research is revealing that this type of "hard-wiring" may even mean that humans come into the world preprogrammed for belief in God.¹⁸

The five senses are the source of sensation.  We learn a great deal about the world from electrical signals sent from sense organs to our brain, where they are processed.  The condition of our sensory organs and our brain directly effects our perception of the world.  For example: slight distortions in eye shape cause images to be out of focus.  If a child is born this such a distortion, he/she must be taught that images are not in actuality blurry.  If the problem can be corrected at some later point, he/she may view the world as if it is totally new and alien compared to the world they knew before.

It is also apparent that our sense have limitations that allow us only to perceive a portion of reality.  For example: elephants are known to communicate with subsonic grunts and growls.  These sounds are so low in frequency that they are below the threshold of the human ear.  Biologists studying these sounds are required to use special sound altering devices to bring these sounds into the threshold of human hearing.  Many aspects of scientific research have been recently advanced by technology that adjust natural phenomenon to be perceived by humans.  Radio signals are part of the electromagnetic spectrum just as is visible light.  However, human eyes cannot see radio waves.  Using a combination of advanced electronic receiving equipment and computer imaging, astronomers can now see radio signals emitted by far away stars. Although such advances are being made, this enforces the idea that human sensation is limited in accuracy and sensitivity.

Human beings have a unique ability to think of possibilities that are not yet reality.  This is called imagination.  Literally defined, this is the human ability to picture in the mind what may or may not be real.  Although the products of our imagination may not have any real substance, they are related to the perception of reality in that they are based on real concepts.  For example: it was imagination that first conceived of human flight.  However, the dream of human flight was based on the real observation of animal flight.  After a long period of building and testing imagined devices for flight, mankind was successful in building a flying machine -- thus imagination perceived the reality of animal flight, imagined the possibility of human flight, conceptualized the apparatus of human flight and produced the real product of the first manned flight.

Imagination allows predictive thinking as well.  For example: a batter will duck if a ball comes too close.  He does this because he predicts that if the ball strikes him it will cause pain (a likely proposition).  Although he has no real evidence that a ball might hit him or that it will hurt (such evidence can only be after the fact), he can use his senses in combination with his imagination to estimate to trajectory of a ball.  Also, he imagines that since being struck with the ball hurt before it will hurt every time.  This power of predictive thinking in imagination has real implications about our ability to theorize scientifically.  Quantum physics, quantum electrodynamics, and quantum chromodynamics -- three of the most advanced fields of science -- have as much to do with imaginative ability as they do with mathematical ability (which is also part of the realm of imagination since numbers are representative symbols of reality).

Although the capabilities of human perception are so advanced in comparison to other life forms, they do not even approach the ability of God to simply know reality.  The more we learn about the physical world, the more we see that at best our abilities of perception allow us to see a minute portion of reality.  This posses no problem to our existence as long as our problems and their answers lay within the realm of our perception.  If the acquisition of food is our problem, it requires only the ability to locate that food, obtain it, and stuff it into our mouths -- abilities well within the perceptual capability of most humans.  However, if problems exceed the scope of the human perception, we are required to either some how find a source to supplement our perception or use our imagination to formulate concepts and strategies (worldviews) to deal with unknown or invisible realities.

3.3 Revelation as Divine Worldview

God does not leave us alone with our perceptions to muddle through life dangerously and with little success.  Instead, he reveals reality to us in indirect and direct ways.  The created world itself is, in a sense, one aspect of God's revelation because it illustrates in concrete clarity fundament principles about the Creator and creature relationship.¹⁹  Logically, a better understanding of the creation yields a better understanding of the Creator.  However, the creation, like all forms of revelation, is still subject to the limitations of human perception. 

God also chooses more direct roots of revelation, such as prophecy and scripture.²⁰  The Word, which is the creative force of the universe and the incarnated God in Jesus Christ in John 1, is also the guidepost of human endeavor²¹ and a portion of true reality itself.²²  These messages from God define who the human "self" is, who "other" is and the interaction between the two.  They uncover the mechanics of the world, reveal the nature and work of the spiritual realm, and create new products of human behavior and culture.  Because the direct revelation of God has this capability it could be considered a worldview of its own (see Defining Worldview).

The "Divine Worldview" (WvS-D) is God's supplement, enhancement, and corrective for human perception.  Adam was created as an adult.  However, without prior life experience, Adam had no memory and no understanding of his new world.  God had to deliver to Adam, either automatically during Adam's creation, or over the period of his first few days on Earth, the essential information necessary for his survival.  This WvS-D download included such essentials as language, self-care, and perceptions about "self," "other," and "world."  A portion of this initial WvS-D is recorded in Genesis 1:28-29.  Here God defines Adam's place in the newly created world and his mode of sustenance.  His first command to Adam is the biological objective of the human race: "be fruitful and multiply."   Also in this first worldview, God defines man's task of working the garden,²³ his first moral boundaries in the prohibition of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as food, and his relationship to Eve, the first "other," with whom he would become one flesh.²⁴

It is possible to conclude, in the very early days of creation, that mankind had no other worldview than WvS-D.  First, he had no history or memory or life experience from which to develop a worldview, so any worldview must necessarily be provided by the Creator -- the only one in at that time with history, memory, or life experience.  Adam also has no existence problem as of yet, considering his location in Paradise and the care of God over his situation.  Since existential problems are the genesis of human worldviews, there was no motive for humanity to develop a worldview of its own.

Later in human history, however, there were human worldviews in existence.  WvS-D did not disappear.  Rather, it was given in different forms: covenant, Law, oracle, Christ, gospel, epistle, etc.  These revelations where intended to make up gaps where human perception did or would fall short.  WvS-D was given again and again as a corrective to balance human dysfunction and misperception.  This role of WvS-D will be discussed in greater detail in section 4.3, Divine Balance and Stabilization.

3.4 The Origin of Human Worldviews

The naked first man and his wife were born into the only true Utopia.  The singular factor that made this possible was their total dependence on WvS-D.  Human failure (generated by human WvS) has since been proven to be the bane of Utopia, and it became so in the case of the first people as well.

It was not far into human history that mankind was presented with its first existential problem, and thus the first opportunity to create a human WvS.  This problem was posed by an outside source who asked the question, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden?"²⁵  In a propaganda campaign against the character of God, the serpent made the Creator seem unduly harsh and then provided the first statement outside of the reality of WvS-D: "you will not surely die!"²⁶  He continued, "for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."²⁷  Suddenly man was faced with a problem: if the serpent was right, God was withholding pertinent, even vital information.  The fact that Creator now seemed so harsh and seemed to be withholding something beneficial was troubling.  Essentially man's existential problem became, "can God be trusted?"  It was well within human ability at this point to remain in WvS-D and allow God, at their next meeting, to explain himself and tell the truth about what the serpent said.

This situation was the first dependence crisis.  Essentially, all existential problems create a dependence crisis.  Reduced to their fundamental level, every existential problem asks the society or individual, "who will you depend upon?"  Eve and Adam were positioned to make a decision concerning this very issue.  Unfortunately, they chose to eat of the tree of "the knowledge of good and evil" in hopes of escaping their dependence on WvS-D, in which they had lost faith.  They had in fact taken upon themselves the right to define reality -- a position for which they were under-qualified.  Disastrous results would follow, not only in the curses and separation from God but also in the generations to come (including their own murderous son) whose hearts conceived "only evil all the time."²⁸

It is questionable whether or not the fruit itself changed man's ability for perceiving reality, to which good and evil belong.  His previous moral structure was sufficient in God's eyes -- and who better to define reality, and therefore morality, than God himself.  However, in the transition that occurred when man ate of the fruit, the first humans realized they were naked -- an idea not introduced in WvS-D.  In fact, the earlier creation record curiously records this as not a part of the first worldview (WvS-D): the man his wife were naked and not ashamed.²⁹  If the fruit had truly enhanced man's perception, why then did he make a step in the wrong direction?  Anthropology tells us that modesty is culturally defined -- a purely human institution.  How else can a woman be comfortable without a shirt in portions of Africa, but naked when dressed the same in North America?  The weakness of this human institution is revealed by double standards like a woman's comfort in a bikini, but her shame if she wore underwear that provides equal or better coverage in public.  It was especially illogical for the first man and woman.  If the moral power of modesty is the prevention of lust, who was being protected by this new moral?  There was no other man to lust after Eve and no other woman to lust after Adam.

Nakedness and modesty have remained components of human WvS, perhaps as a divine reminder to their origin.  The first people, now burdened by several new existence problems, some of which came as a direct result of their action and some as a result of the following curses, had already made the choice to leave WvS-D behind.  Now their problems, combined with the self-dependency they chose in the first dependence crisis, would be the synthesis for the first human WvS.  While little is said of Adam and and Eve after this episode, we can assume from the generations that followed them that the resulting worldview was of the WvS-F type.³⁰

The account of the fall of mankind illustrates the following pattern of developmental conditions required for the synthesis of human worldviews: (1) the emergence of an existential problem which, in the individual or society's opinion, the current worldview cannot remedy; (2) self-dependence resulting from a decision during a dependence crisis; (3) a new strategy to answer the existential problem.  Should one of these factors be missing or not occur, it is doubtful that a new human WvS will result.

For an example of a situation in which a new human WvS did not occur although two conditions were present, we could look to Abram (Abraham).  Abram, was raised in WvS-F society,³¹ which was steeped in idolatry:³²  a WvS-F dysfunction.  When God called Abram to leave his kinship group and his homeland and its idolatry, he was presenting Abram with a dependence crisis which would require him to consider WvS-D.  The mere fact hat God spoke to Abram created the existential problem: "if this God speaks to me and mine do not, which it the real God with real power?"  Abram's choice would bring his WvS-F into WvS-D moderation.  He was still in WvS-F, evidenced by his interests in God's promise to make him a great nation, but he was dependent on God who balanced out the socio-centric dysfunction of idolatry.³³

Although a existential problem too great for WvS-F alone had emerged and he was plunged into a dependence crisis, the missing developmental condition for a new human worldview was a decision for self-dependence in the dependence crisis.  Since Abram chose to depend on God, he ended up with a WvS-D moderated WvS, rather than a new human WvS.  The new strategy component was also present -- he left his homeland -- but it also was a direct result of WvS-D moderation.

The next section will explore in more detail the generation, dysfunction, and weakness of human worldviews and the role of WvS-D in moderating and stabilizing these worldviews.  Concepts, such as dependence crisis, that received only a brief introduction here will be explained in more detail.

<<Previous: Overview of the WvS Spectrum | Next: The Dynamics and Correction of Human Worldviews>>

¹Robert L. Herrmann, "How Large Is God? How Deep is Reality?", How Large Is God?, edited by John Marks Templeton (Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press, 1997), 234-249. [back to text]

²Psalm 8:4. [back to text]

³Psalm 104:2, NIV. [back to text]

⁴Psalm 139:13, NIV. [back to text]

⁵Psalm 139:3, NIV. [back to text]

⁶Acts 17:27-28, NIV. [back to text]

⁷Isaiah 7:14, Matthew 1:23. [back to text]

⁸Einstein's theory of relativity proposed that E=MC² where "E" is energy, "M" is matter, and "C" is the velocity of light.  This theory in the foundation of nuclear physics. [back to text]

⁹John 1:1-5 and Isaiah 9:6, respectively. [back to text]

¹⁰John 6:56, 15:3-11, 1 John 2:5-6. [back to text]

¹¹1 Corinthians 3:16. [back to text]

¹²Psalm 139:7-10. [back to text]

¹³Romans 1:18-20, 2 Peter 3:3-10. [back to text]

¹⁴Proverbs 11:19; Romans 6:13, 23; 8:6. [back to text]

¹⁵In Job 38-41 God's asks Job to answer several questions that require the special knowledge of the Creator.  Job acknowledges he cannot and his position relative to God and His wisdom in 42:1-6.  Some of the questions posed by God in this narrative are still far beyond the scope of modern science. [back to text]

¹⁶Peter H. Raven, George B. Johnson, Biology, 2nd edition (Boston: Times Mirror/Mosby College Publishing, 1989), 1119. [back to text]

¹⁷Robert V. Johnson, ed., Mayo Clinic Complete Book of Pregnancy & Baby's First Year (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1994), 442. [back to text]

¹⁸Herbert Benson and Marg Stark, "How Large Is Faith?", How Large Is God?, edited by John Marks Templeton (Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press, 1997),  95-111. [back to text]

¹⁹Romans 1:18-20. [back to text]

²⁰Deuteronomy 18:18; 2 Timothy 3:16. [back to text]

²¹Psalm 119:105. [back to text]

²²Psalm 119:160; John 17:17. [back to text]

²³Genesis 2:15. [back to text]

²⁴Genesis 2:24. [back to text]

²⁵Genesis 3:1. [back to text]

²⁶Genesis 3:4. [back to text]

²⁷Genesis 3:5. [back to text]

²⁸Genesis 6:5. [back to text]

²⁹Genesis 2:25. [back to text]

³⁰Genesis 4 indicates a society based on agriculture and simple crafts. Also, the references concerning Jabal and Tubal-Cain indicate that occupation was based on descent groups.  Based on these descriptions and the cultures present after Noah. there can be little doubt that the first cultures operated on WvS-F tribalism. [back to text]

³¹The language "your country, your people, and your father's household" in Gen 12:1 indicate WvS-F dominance as does the description of Terah's family in the previous genealogy. [back to text]

³²Joshua 24:2. [back to text]

³³WvS-F sees the world as mysterious and uncontrollable.  One tribal strategy to gain control is shamanism.  In this strategy a number of local spirits become spiritual "handles" that human's can use to manipulate otherwise incontrollable conditions.  Through ritual and sacrifice, the spirits are agitated or appeased in order to produce results in the real world.  The knowledge of how to perform this magic is a guarded secret generally kept by the elder "guardians" of the old ways.  This stratification of magical power allows for social control.  In the act of following God, Abram had to cast off any dependence on the local spirits, the social control of his older family members and kinsmen (which may account for God approaching Abram after his father died), and his people's understanding of how the world worked. [back to text]