A worldview is a comprehensive way of seeing and understanding the world.
We live in sentimental times – often governed by emotional reactionism. The idea of a worldview - originally the German concept of Weltanschauung – offers a more disciplined, coherent and comprehensive way of seeing and thinking about the world and our personal challenges.
That doesn’t mean to say that all worldviews are benign. Someone following a comprehensively bad worldview can be more damaging (and damaged) than an inconsistently bad reactionary.
World religions like Christianity and Islam and secular ideologies like Marxism are worldviews. In our times secular fundamentalism and ‘scientism’ have emerged as new worldviews. Scientism is an example of a gluttonous ideology that builds a thick philosophy on the back of a narrow truth.
The conservative worldview
This website - conservativehome.com – offers an evolving portrait of the conservative worldview. Within its eleven themes of ‘home & family’ to ‘security’ to ‘world’ it aims to illuminate conservative ideas such as the adult citizen, fallenness, localism and tradition.
The danger of worldview neglect
In How Now Shall We Live? Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey argued that the neglect of worldview thinking had hugely undermined the Christian witness to the world.
Religious conservatives in Britain are particularly guilty of worldview neglect. On issue after issue religious campaigners have been defeated. These defeats partly reflect the failure of the church to fashion ways of thinking that serve its long-term mission.
Arguments against abortion, for example, are commonly rooted in language that emphasises the moral autonomy and independence of the individual unborn child. Insofar as this argument encourages individualism it feeds a culture that will one day think that the legalisation of euthanasia is necessary to fulfil a 'right-to-die'.
A defence of the unborn child must, instead, be based on a broad and biblical understanding of what it means to be human. Life needs to be understood in relational terms - as a series of overlapping responsibilities to family, community and ultimately, of course, God.
Political conservatives have also been guilty of worldview neglect. Permissively liberal Tories have, for example, neglected the dependence of market institutions on strong moral values. The tendency to worship the market economy has endangered the conservative duty to protect the environment.
Hi Amy. I can email you the mp3 files. Your feed ration soduns pretty good. You might want to add some ground corn to the mix if they start to lose condition and look thin. Let their backs and the milk pail be the judge on feeding grain. Training a cow to milk takes time and kindness. Always move slow and gentle and don't loose your temper. Sometimes if they are real kicky and jumpy I tie them over in the stall from the tie rail down the side of the cow and across the rump just above the rear udder attachment and tie off to a pole. Send me an email if you want the mp3s and I can share some other tricks for training mean cows.
Posted by: Irma | July 10, 2012 at 12:09 PM