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My journey this week takes me to a confusing and mysterious subject, exercising a World View. Wikipedia defines a Christian world view as “referring to the framework of ideas and beliefs through which a Christian individual, group or culture interprets the world and interacts with it." Our personal world view guides our values, emotions, attitudes and our ethics.
My friend, John Rush, has a vacation home on the river in Gruene. Rush sees a dichotomy of world views in his neighborhood. On one side, his neighbor loves squirrels. He feeds them and keeps predators of squirrels — primarily cats — out of his yard.
His neighbor on the other side hates squirrels because he is a bird watcher, so he uses a bb gun and traps to keep them out of his feeders. The squirrel-lover feeds them while the squirrel-hater takes caged squirrels to the river “for a swim.”
Now another squirrel story: In front of my garage, I had left an empty 8-gallon oblong metal tub. After a week of heavy rainfall, and to prevent mosquitoes from breeding, I went around the lawn, turning over various planters and vases. As I approached the metal tub, I saw two lifeless bodies of squirrels inside this watery death trap. I felt so sad that they drowned. I saw no scratch marks; I felt they did not try to escape by climbing up on each other.
All squirrel behavior is just the result of following their animal instincts no matter what humans think about them. But people are a different matter.
As a retired pastor, I have visiting rights at local nursing homes. I visit room by room and see both positive and negative world views. One room’s resident will welcome with a smile and converse about family and various other subjects without any sign of remorse or depression. Next door, the resident is bitter and full of complaints about how life is treating them. Have they made a choice about how to view the world?
On a clear night when you look up, do you see darkness, or do you see stars? What does your heart see?
“Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things that bringeth out their host by number: He calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth.” Isaiah 40:26
