A TWO-TIERED UNIVERSE VS. A THREE—TIERED:
Looking at our Western Worldview
by
Lynn Ridenhour
Tuesday, March 14, 2000 8:41 PM
Dare I say, our worldview determines our spirituality. To
some extent, I believe that’s true. Take, for instance, our Western
worldview. It’s "two-tiered" to the core. The Bible
worldview is "three-tiered."
Of course, such terms demand
clarification. Let’s begin clarifying by illustrating. And to illustrate the
clash between Western and Hebrew worldviews, I present the following
comparisons:
TWO-TIERED UNIVERSE
(Western Worldview) |
THREE-TIERED UNIVERSE
(Hebrew Worldview) |
| 1. Categorization, Classification, Logic:
|
| a) Life is analyzed in neat categories. |
a) Everything blurs into everything else. |
| b) Natural & supernatural dichotomy. |
b) Supernatural affects everything. |
| c) Linear logic. |
c) Contextual logic |
| 2. Person/Group:
|
| a) Majority rules in a democracy. |
a) Certain people are "born to rule." |
| b) Human-centered universe. |
b) God and tribe/family-centered universe. |
| c) Money & material possession are the measure of human value. |
c) Family relationships are the measure of
human value. |
| 3. Cause & Power:
|
| a) Incredible faith is shown in "chance."
Cause & effect relationships are key and limit what can happen. |
a)
God causes everything. |
| b) Humans are in charge of nature through science. |
b) God is in charge of everything. |
| c) Power over others achieved via business,
politics, & other organizations. |
c) Power over others structured by social patterns ordained by
God. |
| d) There are no invisible beings in the universe. |
d) The universe is full of invisible beings who are very powerful. |
| 4. Time & Event:
|
| a) Linear time is divided into neat segments.
Each event in life a new one. |
a) Cyclical of spiraling time. Very similar
events constantly recurring. |
| b) History is an attempt to record "facts"
objectively. |
b) History is an attempt to preserve significant truths in a way meaningful today
whether or not all details are objective facts. |
Enough said. You can see the obvious differences. Back to
my point—I believe our worldview shapes our spirituality. Or lack of it. To
put it bluntly, we’re missing a tier here in the West.
It’s the middle tier where goblins & ghosts and angels & demons
meet. According to C. Peter Wagner, professor of church growth at Fuller
Theological Seminary, Western Christians suffer from the affects of what he
calls the "excluded middle." His colleague, Charles Kraft, said it
well:
"…I was raised with the modern myths of white
middle-class, twentieth-century America. My education, the media, and my
social relationships all tended to reinforce these unchallenged
assumptions about reality…In my ‘enlightenment’ theological
education I was trained to control everything. Thus I was given exegetical
tools with which to manage the Bible, theological tools with which to
manage my sermons, psychological and sociological tools with which to
manage people and business tools with which to manage this application of
the scientific method to the professional clergy." (Christianity
With Power, p.39.)
A rather poignant summary, I would say, for a seminary
professor. Spoken, I believe, with true candor and a sense of humility which
seems to say—somewhere we’ve missed the boat. No, not many goblins
seen in the above worldview, yet so Western-like. So unlike, I might add, the
rest of the world. The worldview of most non-Westerners is three-tiered.
We’re in the minority. There are over three billion people in the
world yet to believe in Jesus Christ. An overwhelming majority of them still
live in a three-tiered universe. The middle zone is very real to them.
THREE-TIERED UNIVERSE:
What is it? What is the middle zone? The top
tier is high religion based on cosmic personalities or forces. It is very
distant. The bottom tier is everyday life: marriages, raising children,
planting crops, rain and drought, sickness and health, and what have you. The
middle zone includes the normal way these everyday phenomena are influenced by
superhuman and supernatural forces. There is no question in their minds
[third-world inhabitants] that every day they are influenced by spirits,
demons, ancestors, goblins, ghosts, magic, fetishes, witches, mediums,
sorcerers, and any number of other powers. "…The middle zone? It is
absent [in the U.S.]. We feel that those who take it seriously are
‘superstitious,’ and that our task is to enlighten them so that they will
be more scientific and less gullible," says Wagner (The Third Wave of
the Holy Spirit, p.30).
I find it interesting, early Christians validated
Christianity, not by rational argument, not by debate, but by the middle zone.
Again, I can say it no better than Professor Wagner:
"…My heart is for world evangelism. This is why
I am so concerned that the message we preach in the world is one which
makes sense to the worldview of the peoples to whom we preach. Checking
back into the New Testament, I find the worldview of the people in those
days, both Jews and Greeks, was much more akin to the worldview of the
Third World than to our Western secularized way of understanding
reality…
…The people of the Roman Empire were not secular
humanists. They knew about miracles and took them for granted. ‘Not
to believe in them would have made you seem more than odd, simply
irrational, as it would have seemed irrational seriously to suppose that
babies are brought by storks,’ MacMullen says. They expected the gods
they believed in to perform miracles, and they did. They healed people,
pronounced oracles, made it rain, helped them win wars, and cursed their
enemies.
Early Christian missionaries and preachers would not
have questioned the miraculous power of pagan gods in the slightest. Their
point was that this is the power of the kingdom of darkness, directly
caused by demons which the Romans gullibly had been calling ‘gods,’
Furthermore, the end result of that power was to bring evil and suffering
in the present life, and worst of all, eternal death.
The Christian God, Father of Jesus Christ, was
presented first and foremost as a God who works miracles. His power was
declared to be greater than the power of the pagan gods. It was a power
for good, not evil, and it promised eternal life…In the early centuries
very few pagans were converted because of Christian doctrine or because of
logical presentations of truth. Christianity swept through the Roman
Empire because the people could see with their own eyes that Jesus did
miracles greater than gods they had known of.
Christian preachers in those days were so sure of the
power of God that they did not hesitate to engage in power encounters.
They would challenge in public the power of pagan gods with the power of
Jesus…For instance, the author of the apocryphal Acts of Peter provoked
a spiritual ‘shootout’ in the very forum of the capital…All this
involved the manhandling of demons—humiliating them, making them howl,
beg for mercy, tell their secrets, and depart in a hurry. By the time the
Christian preachers got through, no one would want to worship such
‘nasty, lower powers…The supernatural power of God ‘driving all
competition from the field’ should be seen as the chief instrument of
conversion in those first centuries. (The Third Wave of the Holy
Spirit, p.p.78-82.)
Power encounters. Challenging pagan gods in public forums.
Spiritual shootouts. Kingdom perspectives. It all rings so unreal. Unreal or
not, the early Christians lived in the middle zone—between heaven and earth.
To call down fire was just another day. Walk on water? No big deal.
Fellowship with angels? Who doesn’t.
I suggest, saints, perhaps it’s time at the start of a
new millennium to dust off our spiritual six shooters. We’ve been
shooting blanks at the devil too long.
