Is there anything else?

Is there anything to add to this picture? What are some other worldviews? Are they as all-inclusive as this?

The Bible sees the history of the world in four stages—1) Creation by God, 2) Fall into sin, 3) Redemption through Christ, and 4) Final Restoration--the new heaven and new earth.

But creation-fall-redemption-restoration are not just discrete stages in time, they are also different aspects of present reality. Put another way, when we look at any object in this world, we know three things about it:

• First, it is part of God’s good creation.

• Second, it is fallen and affected by sin—distorted somehow, broken, falling short of its original purpose.

• Third, it is being, and can be, redeemed. The purpose of God is to wipe all creation clean of all the effects of sin until it is all restored to wholeness, beauty, and glory.This is the basis of the Christian worldview.

If you miss any these three perspectives, you have a distorted view of reality. For example, consider anger. Anger is inherently good. In God, who gets angry, we see anger’s original, creational purpose—as assertiveness to protect that which is good. Anger is an aspect of love. The opposite of love is not anger, but indifference. Yet sin has distorted anger and in human beings it is usually a source of great evil and is always dangerous. But the gospel of grace can redeem our anger so it becomes a source of energy for good. If, when considering anger, we leave out any of these aspects of a biblical world-view, our attitude toward anger will be out of touch with reality. We will either have too negative a view of anger (repressing and denying it) or too positive a view of anger (encouraging it as tool against ‘oppression,’ or blackmailing and exploiting others with it.)

Tim Keller