World Literature

In 1990, in our neighboring city of Anaheim, California, AIDS activists handed out condoms to eager teens in front of their high school. School officials, observing what was occurring, were only concerned that "activists stayed on the sidewalk and didn't block traffic . . . " One teenage condom recipient remarked, "They know we're going to do it anyway, so why not give us some protection?"

Josh McDowell and Bob Hostetler, in writing their new book Right From Wrong, found that casual regard for truth and falsehood and inability to identify right and wrong characterize a majority of today's young people, including those who have grown up within the Church. Statistics such as those from a 1989 Gallup poll report, "Cheating is rampant in high school and college . . . about 75 percent of high school students admit to cheating, while about 50 percent of college students do." Still, we are shocked when we also discover, as did McDowell and Hostetler, that 66 percent of "Christian" young people lie to those in authority.

Most Christian home educators find such attitudes shocking or dismaying because they so clearly violate God's law. We sometimes fail to realize that many folks now consider basing ethics and morality on God's law backwards and ignorant. We even find "Christian" churches that teach a form of self-centered, psychological morality that substitutes man's rationalizations for God's truth.

Unfortunately, many Christians have been confused by the messages of media, schools, society, and government which have overwhelmed the voice of Biblical authority. The Biblical Christian worldview which prevailed in our country two centuries ago has been discarded or perverted so drastically that few even recognize what that worldview might be.

Worldview is the Bottom Line of What and Why People Believe

A worldview should provide a coherent and consistent foundation for life. From that worldview we should be able to develop beliefs, positions, and attitudes about all areas of life.

While there are numerous contending worldviews, only one delivers a coherent, consistent, and true foundation. The Bible provides the guidelines by which Christians should form their worldview. It tells of the sanctity of life which informs our positions on abortion and euthanasia. It reveals God's heart about sexual relationships, thus dictating positions on fornication, adultery, and homosexuality. From the Bible, we learn that God is a God of order who created the universe; thus we search for God's order in science rather than relying on "fortuitous chance" to explain the workings of nature.