A Revision on Beginnings

We didn't really begin at the beginning.  In fact, any attempt to discuss a larger story outside the milieu of first discussing a world and life view is putting the cart before the horse.  The very belief in a grand narrative is a byproduct of a specific worldview.  Ravi Zacharias, the prolific Christian apologist says, "everyone has a worldview, the question is, is it a good one or a bad one".  If everyone has one, we may want to know what the heck it is...

A worldview is the lense by which one makes sense of the world around us.  It is the framework or scaffolding for piecing together every small aspect of the human condition.  Worldviews are like the foundations of a house.  We do not necessarily see them, but the entire structure is built on preconstructed notions and ideas.  N.T. Wright writes that worldviews "have to do with the presuppositional, precognitive stage of a culture or society.  Wherever we find the ultimate concerns of human beings, we find worldviews".  So true.  They are therefore the core of our belief system.  Worldviews are intrinsically theological and can primarily be glimpsed only through human action or reaction. 

Every formal and personal worldview attempts to provide systematic answers to the great questions of life:  Is there a God and who is He?  What does it mean to be human?  What is wrong with the world?  Is there a solution to all this mess?  All worldviews provide, for better and worse, answers to these great questions. 

The worldview to which one espouses provides either the context or the deconstruction of a metanarrative.  I hold to the biblical worldview that not only believes in a grand story, but actually uses that grand story as the backdrop to communicate the basic tenets of  a systematic worldview which propogates and inculcates these precepts through both story and praxis.  Without a metanarrative, nothing makes sense. I have nothing to hang my coat upon.  My individual actions, story and fate mean little unless I find them as part and parcel of a larger story which is welcoming my existence and role in helping to bring the story to her finale.  The denouement which will bring about a new beginning.