"the Supremacy of Christ"

What is this "worldviews" course I'm teaching all about anyway? What I think I'm meant to do in the course is to walk my seniors through the various filters through which other people see the world.

By and large my kids have grown up in Christian families that have been doing humanitarian work or outreach in the name of Christ. They've often lived in small "bubbles" of like-minded folk and indeed BFA serves as such a sphere of protectedness yet our purpose is to launch our graduates prepared to survive in, thrive in and take on a much wider world of ideas and experiences (not that they haven't had numerous, varied and incredible experiences already - not just the North American collegiate and cultural kinds of experiences). In doing so, it will be best to know how others perceive the world, make decisions and evaluate worth. That's where "Worldviews" comes in.

We examine a host of major worldviews. "Biblical Christian Theism" is our anchor (and in which everything matters because God matters). From there we travel through Deism (distant impersonal watchmaker God who doesn't really matter), Naturalism/Atheism (no God, only matter matters), Nihilism (nothing matters), Existentialism - both atheistic and Christian (only willful action matters), Postmodernism (only I matter), Eastern religions (only the "force" matters Luke), and New Age (what matters is that the force is all about me). We see how worldviews answer the great questions of purpose, existence, truth, morality, history, life and death, etc. We ask how one lives by such sets of presuppositions and what really a "good life" is.

In the process of this I try to examine each worldview with the kids as respectfully as possible with the intent of saying, "Reasonable, normal people - people that you will meet, share a coffee or a class or a room with, be under the teaching of - live by the presuppositions of these worldviews. Let's understand them, engage with them, and know our own worldview practically and well."

In exploring these in this manner, I've learned much. I've seen the "reasonableness" inherent in many other ways of viewing things and have grown in my own faith. Just the other morning I had one of those strange "Is God actually talking to me experiences". In classes we'd been examining Hinduism in great detail and I'd listened to a few gurus online and attempted to get what they were telling. I could see some eerie parallels with Christian faith goals and practices. In my morning devotions God seemed to be saying, if not audibly then firmly and deliberately still, "the Supremacy of Christ", "the Supremacy of Christ", "the Supremacy of Christ"! WOW! what a train of thought and beauty came to mind as Christ spoke out clearly to all the philosophies we've looked at. It was just one of those incredible "spiritual" moments that would blow the doors off of any hollow, counterfeit spirituality experience offered by other traditions and certainly gave lie to the notion that God is either not there or not interested.

Boy, was class fun that day or what! We went to Ephesians 1 where Paul is praying for the "enlightenment" of the "eyes of the heart" (Eastern religions are a quest for enlightenment and many speak of the "third eye" each of us has) of the believers at Ephesus so that they might know "the hope to which he [Christ] has called [them], the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe." - resurrection power as you read on. Talk about enlightenment, talk about a faith, and a worldview which speaks to every need ("God placed all things under his feet..." v.22) and desire of humanity (finding life, not death - read on to chapter 2), talk about the things that matter! Why do we matter?, why does life matter?, why does the world matter?, because Christ is supreme. Anything, any philosophy, any worldview that denies His supremacy hollows out the things that do matter.