Michael Metzger is one of the best-kept secrets in the Body of Christ today and I’m thrilled to introduce him to you. My perspectives about the gospel and culture have been deeply influenced through my interactions with him. Once a month, for two years, Mike took the early Saturday morning flight from Washington to Atlanta to dialogue with our community of friends. We enjoyed daylong conversations about such topics as church history, modernity, the gospel, cultural renewal, evangelism, social issues, art, city renewal, the church, the kingdom and many more. Every topic we raised prompted a thoughtful response. More often than not, he responded with a provocative question (in the spirit of Socrates), challenging us to think for ourselves. Often, we’d leave with more questions than answers but an enthusiastic sense that the curtain was being pulled back for us to see more of the fullness of God and His desires for our world.

I had no idea at the time how much these conversations would shape my life. As I reflect on the work I’m doing today through Fermi Project it is easy to trace the origins back to those Saturday discussions. They were the beginning of me seeing all of life through a new lens. Not only do I have a greater appreciation for the gospel story, but I am continually challenged by the breadth and depth of the biblical perspective.

Recently, Mike and I sat down to explore, for this Short, a few of the topics we have discussed at length. Don’t just gloss over what you read, but take the time to soak in the depth of his answers and the way he sees the world. Mike has the ability to see the gospel story threaded through every aspect of the human experience. This perspective will enrich your own life and lead to valuable discussions for your community.

Gabe: Let’s start from the beginning with this idea of “worldview”. You have a unique way of describing what a worldview is and where we actually find that showing up in our own lives and in the lives of others. Could you share that with us?

Mike: I’ve often said that a worldview functions like a pair of glasses. The best glasses are the ones you’re largely unaware of. For example, I’ve been wearing reading glasses for 7 or 8 years even though I’ve enjoyed excellent vision all of my life – especially at a distance. When I turned 47, my wife Kathy noticed I was rubbing my eyes in the morning while reading the paper. She said, “Why don’t you buy some reading glasses?” What – and spend hundreds of dollars? “You knucklehead, they cost about ten bucks!” I’ve purchased several pairs since then but I’ve never become comfortable with something being draped across my nose and perched in front of my eyes. You see, the best reading glasses or the best contacts are the ones you’re simply not aware of. A worldview is simply something you’re not aware of, it’s simply a set of assumptions. But it is the lens through which you see the world.

Here’s another way to think of worldview: When I was a little kid, I snuck into my parents’ bedroom one afternoon (as though it was off limits!) and looked in dad’s closet. I noticed the shoes were neatly lined up, all the shirts were coded by color, and all of the jackets and what have you were grouped together. My dad never sat me down as a young boy and said, “Ve are German and everything vill run on time and you vill line up your clothes very neatly by sizes and colors.” It was just a basic assumption that this was the way a closet ought to be.

So, that’s what we mean by worldview. I want to note here that very few people outside Christian circles talk about or use the word “worldview.” So we have to be careful about group speak or ghetto language. We also need to exercise caution when we refer to people changing their worldviews. People often talk about shifting paradigms. This language comes from Thomas Kuhn’s book The Structures of Scientific Revolutions. We get giddy about going off on a weekend conference and coming back and proclaiming that we made 6 paradigm shifts. We fail to recognize that Kuhn said very few people make paradigm shifts, since they include repudiation, repentance and a change of assumptions.

Kuhn was right – a worldview is tough to see, tough to acknowledge and tough to change. It’s like describing air to a bird and water to a fish. It’s all we know and we assume it’s all that’s ever been. In fact, the only time a fish becomes aware of water is when you take the fish out of the water. Is that fun for a fish? Not in my experience when fishing. It feels like death. This is why most of us are reluctant to make paradigm shifts. It feels as though we’re dying. Or our sacred ideas are dying. For example, one very deep, deep assumption in Protestant Christianity is the Enlightenment’s idea of human, scientific rationality – that the core of our being is our cranium. The Hebrew mind, on the other hand, believed we think with our bodies and know by doing. If Protestants embraced the Hebrew model, most of our preaching, Bible studies and educational theory would be thrown out. That would imperil the careers of publishing houses and other related industries. Better to keep the machine running. I know I run the risk of redundancy when I say this is why worldview or paradigms are so hard to change. But they are! They might throw you out of work.

Another way to understand worldview is to picture it as your diet. Technically, a diet is anything you eat; so you don’t “go on a diet”. You either have a good, better or bad diet. In the same way, you don’t “go find a worldview” or “get a worldview.” In fact, it’s really hard even to “cultivate a worldview.” It can be done, but worldview is simply the way you see the world without thinking much about it. It’s been shaped by school, friends, geography, ethnicity, background, gender… a zillion things of which we’re lucky if we get our minds around ten of them, or maybe even 100 of them. It’s like a diet, since most of us are largely unaware of the nutritional value of whatever we stuff in our face. In the same way, we’re largely unaware of the right and wrong of what we stuff in our eyes and ears. Like a diet, we mostly know we enjoy it. In the same way, worldview is what you’ve developed a taste for. It’s your diet – the good, the bad and the ugly.

Gabe: So, is there a “Christian worldview”?

Mike: No, there isn’t a Christian worldview. As a big fan of C. S. Lewis I’m reminded of his notion that “Christian” is not an adjective. So, there really isn’t a Christian worldview. The problem is, when you put that sort of a label on something you can’t critique it. It becomes a “no-fly zone” that can’t be critiqued (because it’s “Christian”).

There can be what we call “biblically-faithful worldviews” that try to conform to what the scriptures say. The problem is that every epoch in history gets it right in some areas and doesn’t get it right in others. For instance, there were those who believed they had a pretty cultivated worldview on what constitutes a human being and they left black people out of it. And they would’ve been mortified if someone had told them this simply wasn’t “Christian.” They just could not imagine at the time that they were wrong.

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