{"id":184,"date":"2005-05-08T18:44:29","date_gmt":"2005-05-09T02:44:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tgdarkly.com\/blog\/?p=167"},"modified":"2005-05-08T18:44:29","modified_gmt":"2005-05-09T02:44:29","slug":"worldview-or-relationship-or-why-am-i-a-christian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2005\/05\/08\/worldview-or-relationship-or-why-am-i-a-christian\/","title":{"rendered":"Worldview or Relationship; or, Why am I a Christian?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost<\/a> posts some interesting thoughts<\/a> about the criteria for evaluating worldviews, which provoked the flurry of comments (over 220!) that seems typical for Joe’s site. Ultimately this is all about epistemology, and I’m not quite sure about Norman Geisler’s “undeniability” criteria referenced in Joe’s post. Actually, I am fairly sure about it — it doesn’t make much sense to me, because certain things are “undeniable” only if you approach them based on assumptions that are not<\/em> undeniable. It’s that whole foundationalism \/ infinite regress<\/a> problem again.<\/p>\n

But what I really wonder is whether all this energy spent on justifying our “worldview” is misplaced. I don’t name a “worldview” as Lord. I name Jesus as Lord. Jesus didn’t commission me to argue with people about my “worldview.” He commissioned me to introduce people to him so that they could become his disciples. In other words, it’s not about the system of thought I’ve built up around the truths of Christianity. It’s about a relationship<\/em> with Christ.<\/p>\n

This isn’t to discount the importance of ideas or the need to bring Christian truth to bear in the public square. In fact, much of my working energy is devoted to those very things. But it seems to me that there’s a dangerous shift afoot. Not long ago, Evangelicals had to be coaxed into the public square. Now, we’re there with a vengance — sometimes literally with a vengance. It seems we’re sometimes more interested in making arguments about politics and policy than in bringing people to the savior.<\/p>\n

The utlimate justification for our “worldview” isn’t “undeniability” or any other epistemic criteria. It’s Christ. Some things we “know” only because we’ve been called into a relationship with Christ. If our principal focus is “worldviews” rather than Christ, we will miss the boat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost posts some interesting thoughts about the criteria for evaluating worldviews, which provoked the flurry of comments (over 220!) that seems typical for Joe’s site. Ultimately this is all about epistemology, and I’m not quite sure about Norman Geisler’s “undeniability” criteria referenced in Joe’s post. Actually, I am fairly sure about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-epistemology","category-spirituality"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-2Y","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}