Discerning Worldview: The Challenge for a Changing World

How do we know someone’s worldview? Why should we?

For that matter, how do we know our own worldview, if worldview is largely what we do and say when we are not thinking about it? Even as I write this article, I am wondering how my worldview affects what I say.

An Approach to Discerning
The safeguard to avoid having my personal worldview drive this article is to use God’s Word. Everything else, including my worldview, is often shaped unknowingly by experiences and culture. It is God’s Word that helps us sift through our preexisting worldviews and to rightly evaluate, or discern, them. His Word is “living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword…able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12, NASB[1]).

We begin with God’s Word to discern worldviews of people, organizations, books, film, music, ideas?anything created by people who are formed by their own pasts, cultural pressures, and what they choose to see and hear.

For a solid look at the why and how to discern worldviews, we find help in Philippians 1:9-11. These verses contain one of the few instances of the word “discern” or “discernment” in the New Testament.

Philippians 1:9 gives us the first starting points: “And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment.”

Love
The purpose for discerning is to grow our love, a love God’s way that seeks the best for others. We frame our discernment of worldviews with love to help it “abound still more and more.” Too often in our world we study and evaluate a person to win an argument, belittle someone, or highlight what is wrong. Love takes us a different way.

Love compels us to know and evaluate a person’s worldview for the purpose of loving better. Perhaps our study of a person’s worldview helps find a bridge to share Christ, perhaps it helps us to teach a student better, or perhaps it helps us care for them more fully as we understand them better. Sometimes studying a person’s worldview will help us protect our family or students, another outflowing of love.

What drives you to know your students better? Love for each? Or other reasons? Think about each student and examine your motivation to know them.

As you discern, you use a person’s words and actions to know their motivation. Do they show love? Or pride, arrogance, or winning? Love is a good criterion to use as we discern.

Knowledge
The next step for discerning is to gather knowledge: “real knowledge” with a purpose; knowledge about God, about people, about individuals; knowledge from His Word and knowledge from life.

To know someone’s worldview, we constantly ask questions, watch behaviors and word choices, look at past writing and reports. We gather information from a range of sources and weigh that information best we can for truth. And we teach our students to do this.

We make learning about others a part of our lives. We know students better through practices like student-of-the-week or stories they write. We ask others about students and consider the source thoughtfully. In other areas, we read an online post and research the writer’s background. Or we ask Google to find reviews of a product or book. We gather knowledge. Especially from trusted sources and people.

But we don’t stop with knowledge. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 8:1, “Knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies.”

Discern.
Love. Knowledge. Then we discern. “Discern” can be translated as “insight” or “perception.” Discernment uses what we know, guided by the Holy Spirit, to make a decision or judgment about what is behind what we have seen and heard and to decide what to use or dismiss.

Hebrews 5:14 says, “But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.” Discernment takes practice, which takes time. We can help students practice by using stories or situations so they can consider and discuss what is good and evil, what is useful or empty. Build lesson plans that include practice with you and each other to discern worldviews and decide which can be trusted or used with caution.

Discernment’s work is to make a decision. What is the worldview of the person? Are they coming from a view of the world that includes God? Can they be trusted? How far and for what? What is good?  We are called to “examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). This is discernment. There is nothing better to give our students in today’s world than to learn to discern.

What criteria will you use to discern, to judge? What should your students use? Consider using the values of TeachBeyond to begin evaluating a worldview. Does it have:

• Humility, a distinction of Jesus?
• Excellence, being careful and choosing the best available?
• Love, shown from the person, God’s way?
• Partnership, sharing and caring about the greater community instead of self?

Discerning a worldview is not just for judging good or bad. It is about shaping a life rightly lived with God. Discernment now needs to be used, as Paul continues in Philippians 1:10-11, “So that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ; having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.”

Approve
We now “approve” or “affirm” the best of what we have discerned with our words and by using the excellent parts in our lives. This process of discernment helps shape our own and our students’ worldviews and changes us from the inside out.

Finding and using the best of a worldview is a great way to build bridges with others. In Acts 17 Paul discerns the worldview of the Athenians and affirms their seeking of an “unknown God.” He uses this in a positive way to tell them the Good News. We can use the same practice as we study our own students and find bridges into their lives.

No one has a perfect worldview. We discern to know what we can use and not use, what we can trust and for what purposes, how to help others, how to love better.

Fruit
As we approve the excellent, we are shaped to “be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ” (Philippians 1:10). Discerning the worldviews of others helps students learn for themselves what to use or not use in order to remain pure (another translation of “sincere”), and to avoid what will cause them and others to stumble so they can be “blameless.”

The end of the process is being “filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ.” The process of discerning worldview, and teaching our students how to do it, allows the Holy Spirit to more fully grow them and bless them with the fruit of righteousness through Jesus.

Learning to discern what is behind our own words and actions and those of others is central to living a life with God and loving well. Discerning all things is not a side note. How can we model discernment before our students? How can we practice discernment of worldviews in our classes every day and throughout the day? Through God’s grace, by His Word.

Joe Neff
Joe serves as TeachBeyond’s Senior Ambassador for Transformational Education, looking at what God is doing in the world and how we fit, especially working with others. Previously, he served at a school in Southeast Asia and then for six years as Global Director of Educational Services with TeachBeyond. Before that, Joe led three Christian schools in America.