This includes me. These days, I’m going more by the 80-20 rule: 80% of what I’m saying is right (including this interview) and 20% of it is not. The problem is I don’t know what part constitutes that 20% at this moment. It would take an uncomfortable experience with someone actually pressing me into my assumptions that would cause me to say, “Ah, I never thought about that.” Again, being exposed to our worldviews requires removal of our spectacles and stumbling around. Who enjoys that?

We all live and have our being inside a set of unspoken assumptions. For example, I’ll often ask a religious group, “Quote for me John 3:13.” Usually, the silence is deafening. Then I’ll say, “You know, that’s interesting. Where in the Bible did God say, “Nail John 3:16. Don’t sweat 3:13.” He doesn’t. We simply assume John 3:16 is paramount. I call it the Evangelical Empire State Building. It blots out the sun for many blocks in every direction. Within our worldviews, certain verses mean more than others. This is not entirely bad. Nor do the differences indicate a deficiency in anyone. It just simply means we read Scripture with a set of eyeglasses. The best eyeglasses are the most comfortable ones – the ones we’re unaware of. That’s worldview.

And worldview precedes even the Bible.

One of the more striking examples of worldview shaping data can be seen in the work of the late Harvard scientist Stephen Jay Gould. He was a good friend of Carl Sagan and others in that ilk and they all started with one basic assumption or worldview. It said, “There is no God – now let’s go do science!” But what Gould was never willing to concede is that his view, just like a Christian’s, begins with a faith assumption. It may be right, it may be wrong, but you can’t prove or disprove the existence of God one way or another. You can’t scientifically or theologically prove there is a God and you can’t prove there isn’t. It’s a faith assumption. That’s what we mean by worldview. These assumptions lurk deep down in the water.

Gabe: In today’s culture, is it safe to assume that worldviews might be largely shaped by postmodernism versus modernism? How much do the values of the wider culture around us shape our worldview?

Mike: It is difficult to become self-aware. I’m not a skeptic, but there are very few Christians that I meet who say, “I’m willing to be pulled from my warm body of familiar water and wiggle on the end of a line in a thoroughly different environment.” It feels like abandonment of God and disloyalty to the gospel. Yet without this kind of occasional introspection, it’s exceedingly hard to discover how much I’ve been shaped by New York, Madison Avenue, L.A., Seattle, or Berkeley. And it’s an especially hard task for Christians. We get what I call the “God Glaze.” Once I embrace Christ and meet God, then I tend to simply assume that what I hold to is biblically based. “I’m faithful to the scriptures.” Of course, we mean well, but the fact is, most Christians I meet can’t quote John 3:13. We assume it’s a largely inconsequential verse. Even I can’t recite it at the moment! So we have a myriad of influences shaping our assumptions, along with the sense of responsibility that we’re to be faithful to God.

In a strange sort of way, some of my friends who have not embraced Jesus are more open to having assumptions challenged. They don’t suffer the “God Glaze” yet and do not feel the weight of truth. It’s ironic. We ought to feel the weight of truth and glory and that should make us more pliable, not more rigid.

Another way to think about our assumptions is to imagine a Christian from the 4th century joining our dialogue today. They might hear the language we use and the way we describe Christianity and ask, “What are you talking about?” And you’d say, “We’re talking about Christianity. What are you talking about?” And they’d say, “That’s not the Christianity I understand.”

We are shaped by far more than the Bible, our friends, God, and our church – even though these are pretty significant. The piety that is not particularly healthy among some evangelicals is this assumption that they are unscathed by culture when, in fact, it’s ubiquitous. We are all shaped by culture.

Gabe: Does our culture even shape our understanding of the gospel?

Mike: Absolutely. We often talk about the Gospel as being made up of four chapters that you’d find in a story. These four chapters are found in the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed, the Heidelberg Catechism, all the way up to the 16th, 17th centuries. Basically, chapter one is the Creation, chapter two is the Fall, chapter three is Redemption, and chapter four is Restoration, the consummation of history.

Now, if we take a look at history, what we call ‘evangelical’ is fairly recent on the map. We all agree that “evangelical” means “good news.” And of course, the good news goes back all the way through the scriptures. When Luther and his group started to bring about reform, they called themselves Evangelicals. But then after the Diet of Speyer they were called Reformers. So the word went out of use with the exception of a few of the English Puritans. The term “evangelical” came back into use when the original reformed groups were in dire need of reform. Now a new brand of ‘evangelicals’ comes into existence. This included Finney and the Second Great Awakenings. Evangelicals were what I call “turbo-chargers.” They forced more air and life into the existing engine blocks of Methodism, Baptists, Congregationalists and the like.

This is our “brand” of evangelicals, if you like. We got going in the early and mid-1800s and focused more on the inner life, giving it more juice. Just like a turbo-charger. Revving the engine block meant thinking less about creation and culture. In fact, since we assumed evangelicals understood the four-chapter gospel, evangelicals focused on the two chapters of sin and redemption. “Come forward,” “Walk with Jesus,” “Share your faith with other people,” and “Pray to receive Christ” became the common language of these new evangelicals. I say we developed an unhistorical and unbiblical two-chapter gospel – or what Nancy Pearcy calls the truncated gospel. The creation and final restoration, which included redeeming the entire world, fell by the wayside. Dallas Willard calls these truncated messages – whatever their shape – gospels of sin-management. This message will indeed get you to heaven, and they have actually spawned a few of the great religious revivals. But the problem with a turbo-charger is that it’s not an engine. It doesn’t provide horsepower, it amps up the existing power. And that would eventually spell trouble.

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