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The Nature and Necessity of World Views
Dallas Willard
Dallas
Willard informs us that "everyone has a world view, even though they may
not think about it." Furthermore, our world view impacts our understanding
of knowledge and truth, for the very concept of truth is subject to the
way we perceive the world around us.
Willard asserts that truth does not accommodate belief. Instead, belief must
accommodate truth. "The bitterness of truth is its total indifference
to human will and desire together with the fact that human desire and
will is set on reshaping reality and therefore truth to suit itself,"
according to Willard. These tensions reflect a conflict between "desire
and will" and "truth."
As a result of such a dynamics, several crucial questions are raised. For example,
What is reality? "Sometimes reality is what you run into when you're
wrong," says Willard. A deep world view question is "Am I a good
person?"
This is a pervasive question that troubles us. Leaders must consider
this question because "world view is modeled—taught by example. Rarely
is it ever taught by explicit statement." Willard warns us about forces
at work that ridicule the Christian world view and hope thereby to extinguish
the flame of truth that Christianity seeks to bring into the world.
Dallas Willard is one of today's most brilliant Christian thinkers and the
author of The Divine Conspiracy, which Christianity Today named
1999 Book of the Year. He is a professor of philosophy at the University
of Southern California and has held positions at UCLA and the University
of Colorado.
Program recording date and length: April 2003 ~ 1 Hour 7 Minutes (This study was presented originally at the University of California, Los Angeles.)
