Tag Archives: Ravi Zacharias

Philosophy, Religion

How Should We Analyze a Worldview?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

There are many worldviews out there to choose from:  Christianity, Islam, secular humanism, New Age spiritualism, and so on.  Since choosing a worldview is perhaps one of the most important things a person must do, it is highly important that we have a trustworthy method to evaluate the options.  Our worldview colors the way we see almost everything around us, so we must choose wisely.

Apologist Ravi Zacharias offers what he calls the 3-4-5 method of analyzing worldviews.  I would like to share it with you because it will provide you a method with which to judge worldview options.

First, there are three tests that a worldview must pass.  It must be:

  1. logically consistent – Its teachings cannot be self-contradictory.
  2. empirically adequate – Its teachings must match what we see in reality.
  3. existentially relevant – Its teachings must speak directly to how we actually live our lives.
 Second, each worldview must address the following four ultimate questions:
  1. origin – Where do the universe and human beings come from?
  2. meaning – What is the meaning or purpose of life?
  3. morality – How do we know what is right and what is wrong?
  4. destiny – What happens to us after we die?
 Third, there are five academic disciplines that must be employed to study a worldview:
  1. theology – the study of God
  2. metaphysics – the study of what is ultimately real
  3. epistemology – the study of how we can know things
  4. ethics – the study of moral right and wrong
  5. anthropology – the study of what and who humans are

Why do I believe that the worldview of biblical Christianity is the best choice?  Its teachings are logically consistent, they accurately describe reality as it is, and they speak directly to the human condition.

In addition, Christianity provides compelling and powerful answers to the questions of origin, meaning, morality, and destiny.

Finally, the theology, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and anthropology of the Christian worldview are expansively rich and deeply profound – unsurpassed by any other worldview. 

If you are a Christian and you haven’t analyzed Christianity using the 3-4-5 method, you are truly missing out.  Read, and read some more.  Dig into your faith, as it provides comprehensive answers to life’s most important questions.

If you are not a Christian, I plead with you to open your heart and mind, and study the Christian worldview.  Apply the 3-4-5 method described above, but never forget that Christian doctrine always revolves around a person, Jesus Christ.  He is the embodiment of our faith, and it is to him that we look.

Eschatology, Jesus Christ

Who Is the Real Superman?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

If you’ve ever listened to Ravi Zacharias, you’ve noticed he likes to quote from English journalist Malcolm Muggeridge.  One of my favorite quotes from Muggeridge has to do with his description of the frailty of nations and empires, with particular attention to those of the 20th century.  In a gripping message, he contrasts the temporality of the world’s powers with the eternality of one person.  Please enjoy the quote below!

We look back upon history and what do we see?  Empires rising and falling, revolutions and counter-revolutions, wealth accumulating and wealth dispersed, one nation dominant and then another.  Shakespeare speaks of ‘the rise and fall of great ones that ebb and flow with the moon.’

I look back on my own fellow countrymen ruling over a quarter of the world, the great majority of them convinced, in the words of what is still a favorite song, that, ‘God who’s made the mighty would make them mightier yet.’  I’ve heard a crazed, cracked Austrian announce to the world the establishment of a German Reich that would last a thousand years; an Italian clown announce that he would restart the calendar to begin his own ascension to power.  I’ve heard a murderous Georgian brigand in the Kremlin acclaimed by the intellectual elite of the world as a wiser than Solomon, more humane than Marcus Aurelius, more enlightened than Ashoka.  I’ve seen America wealthier and in terms of weaponry, more powerful than the rest of the world put together, so that had the American people desired, they could have outdone an Alexander or a Julius Caesar in the range and scale of their conquests.

All in one lifetime.  All in one lifetime.  All gone with the wind.

England part of a tiny island off the coast of Europe, threatened with dismemberment and even bankruptcy.  Hitler and Mussolini dead, remembered only in infamy.  Stalin a forbidden name in the regime he helped found and dominate for some three decades.  America haunted by fears of running out of those precious fluids that keep her motorways roaring, and the smog settling, with troubled memories of a disastrous campaign in Vietnam, and the victories of the Don Quixotes of the media as they charged the windmills of Watergate.

All in one lifetime, all gone.  Gone with the wind.

Behind the debris of these self-styled, sullen supermen and imperial diplomatists, there stands the gigantic figure of one person, because of whom, by whom, in whom, and through whom alone mankind might still have hope.  The person of Jesus Christ.