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Worldviews and Culture: Worldview and Worldviews It is also an error to oversimplify the notion of worldview. The word can be and is used to refer to more than one level of presuppositional commitment. From one perspective, then, there is only one worldview in the Bible, one which believes in God as the creator, man as His image, the covenant as the defining relationship between God and man as well as man and man, and looks to Jesus' cross and resurrection as the basis of salvation and future judgment as the final solution to the problems of the world. But within the lives of Biblical writers and the experience of God's people, there are significant changes that may legitimately be called worldview changes. Daniel, again, is a good example. No doubt, Daniel was challenged by various aspects of Babylonian culture and found his views influenced in some way by the world around him. However, it is not the cultural aspects of Daniel's views that are brought to our attention in the book of Daniel. What we read about is a man, a prophet, who was confronted with revelation from God that was unpleasant in the extreme. God was going to bring Israel back to the Promised Land, as He had promised, but she would never again be an independent nation. The times of the Gentiles had come. That was so unexpected that it changed Daniel's worldview — using the word more broadly, rather than limiting it to the highest and most comprehensive beliefs. Daniel saw things about Israel's future that troubled him and made him feel physically sick, he was so unprepared for them (Dan. 7:15, 28; 8:27; 10:2-3, 8, 15-17; 12:8). Daniel did not suffer a worldview crisis because of the king of Babylon, the magicians, the soothsayers, or the wisdom and culture of Babylon. The God of the Bible shook him up. God is a God who changes our view of things. He is always leading His people to greater revelation of Himself, and in the process, He is not always careful to conform to our views. Our worldview, in other words, is usually too neat and narrow to encompass the real reality of things. So, God comes along and surprises us, as He did Habakkuk and Jonah, for example. They were offended that God had the audacity to do things so utterly contrary to their sense of what was right and good. But God did it anyway. Worldview is complicated in other ways, too. There is a sense, for example, in which the Pharisees may be said to share the same worldview with Jesus. They believe in one God the Creator of heaven and earth. They hoped for the Messiah to save God's people, if not the world. They defined right and wrong by the law of God — sort of. They believed that history would end with God coming in judgment and that there would be an eternal heaven and hell. At this level, their view of the world seems to be essentially the same as that of Jesus and His disciples, but Jesus denounced them in language that suggests they held an entirely different view of the world than He did (especially, Matthew 23). His parables challenge their interpretation of history and the their hopes for the people of God. Jesus even claimed that they did not know God, that they and He did not believe in the same God (Jn. 8:19, 23-24, 27, 37-59). These are differences so fundamental that we have to say that the Pharisees and Jesus had different worldviews.
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