1 Corinthians 1:18-25

No one can see the world the way it is. There is too much going on for us to take in everything. So, we interpret the world through mental models. We understand the world through our own culture. Let’s take an example.

What would you say the sin is in the story of the prodigal son? The sin depends on your culture.

  • Americans focus on either the wild living or that he wasted his money.

  • Other cultures believe the sin was leaving his family. That’s your safety net, and you never know when you’ll need it.

  • Still others say the sin was that the strangers in the foreign land didn’t give the son any food.

Which one is right? Well, they all are. But your focus comes from what you believe is true about the world. Americans focus on money while other cultures focus on other things.

The same is true in the church. Christians filter the Bible through what they believe to be true about the world. Do we understand the gospel through a biblical worldview or through an American one? I believe we do so, myself included, through an American concept of Christianity.

The most popular mode is something called Moral Therapeutic Deism, coined by Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton, the authors of Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. Moral Therapeutic Deism has five core beliefs:

  1. God created the world and watches over it.

  2. God wants us to be good and nice.

  3. God wants us to be happy and feel good about ourselves.

  4. God isn’t involved in my life unless I have a problem.

  5. Good people go to heaven when they die.

Each of these has a sliver of truth, but they are twisted away from what the Bible says. In response, the Christian worldview might say:

  1. God doesn’t just watch over the world he created. Rather, he is in and responsible for everything.

  2. God wants us to hold each other accountable to holy living.

  3. God wants us to be faithful, not happy.

  4. God wants us to seek his will and his support in all things.

  5. Only bad people go to heaven when they die.

If you’re curious about how these things match up with God’s word, listen to the sermon.