When you first get the worldview bug, everything around you takes on a new theological significance. All the colors are vivid. But then frustration sets in, because the people around you don't seem to "get it." They're still in the shadow world of Plato's cave, and no matter how often you go back, no matter how many thick books you recommend, they don't want to leave. In contrast to your newly found clarity, their thought seems dim and muddled, like an underexposed photo.
I suspect that sense of frustration is what prompts people with a pedagogical bent to teach worldview awareness in the first place. You want to help students to think. You want to show them how to make distinctions, to ask hard questions, to apply logic and experience to the problem of living. This is noble, but if you're not careful it can result not in an encouragement to think, but in instructions on what to think. The language of worldview awareness is often used in polemics -- Christians ought to reject this idea and embrace that one -- particularly in areas where the Bible is silent. The positions advocated are seen as inevitable conclusions (necessary consequences) of a biblical perspective.
Sometimes they are. But often this kind of enthusiasm makes things more vivid without making them more clear. If the problem of the uninitiated is underexposure, the raw advocate often suffers from the opposite fault. His perspective is too extreme. It's overexposed.
What you see here isn't an attempt to capture reality with all its nuance. Instead, it's a determination to go to the other extreme. If an idea is wrong-headed, then whoever holds the most diametrically opposed belief must be closest to correct. The problem is that, although he's realized the shortcomings of the underexposed state, it remains his frame of reference. His thought is still framed in relation to his prior error. What he's trying to instill as a teacher isn't the most nuanced, accurate view of reality; rather, he's trying to be as opposed as possible to the misperceptions of his students.
As a result, we sometimes see an immature indifference replaced with an equally immature passion, when the real goal ought to be moving from poor sight to good. In other words, our frame of reference is outside of us, and we are seeking an exposure that does justice to both shadows and highlights.
To the underexposed, this still seems too extreme. To the overexposed, it looks like compromise. But if you look at the picture, then look at the real scene, you see it's just an accurate reflection of what's there.
My wife and I are staying at Randy Sims house tonight. We swung by the WA office to check it out and Randy gave us your book to read. Will be adding it to my list to read in 2008.
Posted by: Justin | January 25, 2008 at 08:55 PM