WHERE ARE YOU SITTING?
THE FOUR MAJOR WORLD VIEWS:
A PARABLE:
Imagine two men sitting in two chairs and facing one another; chairs A and chair B. They represent two states of existence. Chair A is the perspective of the man living in the physical world. It is the world we see all around us, the world that can be accessed and enjoyed by the senses. It is a closed world that sees nothing beyond itself. What sustains it is human ingenuity and progress. This is the chair of the material world, the visible world. It is the world that sees only particular manifestations and fails to see the universal spiritual realities that lie behind them.
Chair B represents the perspective of the man whose perceives the reality of a spiritual or unseen realm. With this perspective this man can live in light of things that fall beyond the day to day perceptions of the senses. This is the realm of thoughts and ideas and knowledge, the world of God and angels and things that cannot be explained by scientific inquiry. This is a world that experiences miracles. It is a world of transcendent universals. It describes the man that sees things that his neighbors around him can’t.
Which chair or chairs a man sits in and how he relates to each chair determines his world view. From this four world views emerge. They are:
NATURALISTIC: This is the man who sits in chair A only and never in chair B. He has no conception of anything that cannot be accessed by his senses. All of reality consists of making the best of what he has in the here and now. There is no spiritual world, no afterlife, no intangible realities, no God. In his view nothing lies beyond the grave. Existence ends at death. Spiritual things are but myths designed to make people feel better in order to cope with the rigors of life but they are mere figments. This is the world view of the atheist, the agnostic, the liberal Christian who has denied the supernatural, the existentialist who lives for the here and now only, Enlightenment thinkers, some health and wealth preachers and Deists. This view always lives by the Epicurean philosophy of ‘eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.’ Another variant can be found in sentiments such as ‘do all you can to make this your best life because we are not convinced there is another.’
EASTERN/MYSTICAL/GNOSTIC: This view is the opposite of the first. It is the man who sits in chair B and ignores or denies the existence of chair A. This world view asserts that the material world either doesn’t exist or is merely a shadow of unseen spiritual realities. A person in this chair ever looks for universals that lay behind things sensual. As a result, such a person detaches from the world either partially or completely such as we find in monasticism or eastern meditation. Because the material world is not important, the man in chair B may also express himself not by denying the physical but abusing it. We see this response in such things as the drug culture and some cults. In each case the only thing to live for is the spiritual realm, the realm of thoughts, ideas, concepts and the like. Material things are essentially evil, thus the material world can be denied or abused. This was the chair occupied by the first heretics of the church, the Gnostics. This aberrant view rose from the ashes of Hellenistic philosophy especially that of Plato. It predictably denied the incarnation of Christ or anything in Christianity that acknowledged the physical. This view is alive and well in the world and is expressed in all forms of Pantheism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Escapism, Christian Science, the Psychedelic Drug culture, higher consciousness, channeling, and all psychology that deals with reimagining and other techniques that connect people to the spirit world.
COMPARTMENTALIZATION: This is a worldview that can be a bit tricky because the person who lives in it acknowledges both the seen and unseen realms. This man moves back and forth between chairs A and B depending time and circumstances in life. For most of his worldly existence this person sits in chair A. He believes in the spiritual world but it has no daily hold on him. Occasionally, during times of high stress or deep reflection, he will move to chair B. In times of desperation, for example, he may cry out to God or pray. In his life chairs A and B are both operative but never at the same time. Often such a person views chair B from a distance as a vague reward for his living well in chair A. The important thing to remember is that the one who lives in this worldview believes there is a spiritual world but it bears no influence on his day to day life in the physical world. All week long he may live in chair A but on Sunday he shifts to chair B. He will go to church or even try to think “spiritually” for a few hours. But when all is finished the bird flies back to its roost in chair A. This world view finds many expressions in our day. It is often called practical atheism, since the one who holds to it acts as if God did not exist though he might say otherwise. It is held by many legalistic Christians whose lives are rigidly ruled by law, many Roman Catholics, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Muslims, and many Jews. It includes all who compartmentalize their lives into the spiritual and material, and live at different times in each realm.
CONCURRENT: This is the worldview in which a man sits simultaneously in both chairs A and B. Both worlds exist in his present experience, and both are relevant to his ongoing life. What brings these worlds together is the spiritual world’s invasion into the the physical world via his faith in the incarnation of Christ. He believes God invaded the world by becoming a man and reconciling man to Himself. This man now has the conduit that brings heaven and earth together. What had formerly blocked the unseen world from the seen world was sin, but in Christ the wall of sin was torn down and he can now access both realms at the same time. (We think of the torn veil in the Temple Matthew 27:51.) This is the world view of the Christian man who lives Christianly. He is the man who lives concurrently in the total reality of the the seen and unseen realms. He is the man who lives in a full reality and thus he is the only man who truly understands all things (see 1 Cor 2:9-14).
DOES THE BIBLE TEACH THAT THE BELIEVER LIVES IN THE FULL REALITY OF BOTH THE SEEN AND UNSEEN WORLDS?
Let’s look at the life of Jacob in Genesis 32. Let’s read….
“Jacob also went on his way, and the angels of God met him. When Jacob saw them, he said, ‘This is the camp of God!’ So he named that place Mahanaim …. After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, ‘Let me go, for it is daybreak.’ But Jacob replied, ‘I will not let you go unless you bless me.’ The man asked him, ‘What is your name?’ ‘Jacob,’ he answered. Then the man said, ‘Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.’ Jacob said, ‘Please tell me your name.’ But he replied, ‘Why do you ask my name?’ Then he blessed him there. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, ‘It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared’” (vs 1-2; 32-30).
Jacob is a frightened man who is returning back home after years of sojourn. He has been a deceiver to this point and through deceit has gained quite a fortune for himself. His jilted brother, Esau, awaits him at the border. Jacob is beginning to realize that his worldly life (chair A) has gotten him in a real fix. He believes in the worldly principle of ‘what goes around comes around,’ so he fights back with a worldly scheme of trying to placate Esau. But as he is about to re-enter the land of his forebears and face his foe, God breaks into his life and tears apart the veil of the spiritual world. Left all alone, Jacob finds himself wrestling all night with an unexpected visitor. Jacob at once realizes this is God, for after the fight is over he names the place, Peniel, meaning the ‘face of God.’ He is now a converted man and God changes his name to Israel, meaning Prince with God. From time forward Jacob is a man who will dwell in both chairs A and B, in the seen and the unseen realms. He will never again be the same. He has become a truly saved man experiencing a full reality.
A similar story is chronicled in 2 Kings chapter 6 verses 13-18. The heathen king of Syria wants to capture Elisha, the man of God, in Dothan. Elisha has messed up the heathen king’s plans due to his prophetic abilities. As the king comes to surround Dothan, Elisha’s servant sees the massive army and greatly fears. He tells Elisha who prays to have the servant’s eyes open. And when the Lord opens the servant’s eyes he sees a great myriad of horses and chariots of angels. The reality of chair B is now been opened to sensual man. Elisha prays again and the Syrians are routed. Once again we see the natural realm and spiritual realm existing side by side in the experience of the man of God. He is a man living in concurrent realities.
We find this same truth that a believer lives and moves in two concurrent realities in the New Testament as well. Paul, for example, in teaching the Corinthians about very natural things, makes reference to angels in 1 Cor 4:9 and 11:10 without batting an eye. In Ephesians 6:12 Paul warns Christians that though the apparent foes of the church are things seen, the real foe is the unseen realm of “principalities, powers and the rulers of the darkness of this age.” The Christian lives and fights in both the seen and the unseen realms. And in 13:2 of Hebrews the author notes that even a very earthly event of entertaining strangers can actually be a heavenly invasion into one’s physical life. We find another wonderful story of the concurrent realities of the seen and unseen realms in the story of Christ’s transfiguration, found in Matthew 17:1-9. Here the conjunction of the physical and spiritual realms are seen in a stunning way. Jesus who is walking in a real physical place climbs a mountain and meets two men, Moses and Elijah, who exist in the spiritual realm. While conversing together, the form of Jesus suddenly changes. He now appears as a man living in the spiritual realm wearing a bright, shining robe. The curtain that had blocked the spiritual world from the physical is at once removed and the glory of Christ, which has existed all along, suddenly comes into view. There is no suspension of time during this dazzling transfiguration. Neither does anyone travel into another spatial reality. What is happening is the curtain separating two concurrent realms has been lifted. The apostles witness the whole scene. They have seen both the seen and unseen realms and are rather confused about it. Peter even writes about it years later (2 Peter 1:16-17). Again we see that both the physical and spiritual realms exist concurrently. And only the Christian, the one who has had his eyes opened by God, can see and live in them both.
So what is your worldview, Christian? Do you live and move and have your being in both the physical and spiritual worlds at the same time? As you walk in this basement world of taste and touch and stuff, do you not often perceive a heavenly reality intervening? Are your eyes keen to see invisible things as you walk in the realm of the visible? Do you live in both chairs A and B at the same time? If you do then you are living as a healthy Christian and this perspective will change everything about how you live your life.
·