WORLDVIEW and REASON: Equipping the Christian Mind for Making Disciples in a Skeptical World

By Thomas Jones

EVERY culture, religion, and people group have all answered the same questions foundational for a worldview belief system. The Christian worldview IS NOT your conservative political persuasion, belief in traditional marriage, pro-life stance on abortion, or support for Israel in geopolitical matters of the Middle East.
A worldview answers the four most important questions of life. The answers to these questions must be coherent and correspondingly true to each other so a rational worldview belief system can be maintained.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Mar 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9781664286795

Thomas Jones

Thomas Jones is a Bible teacher and speaker with a calling to equip the body of Christ with a clear perspective and uncompromising boldness for God’s Word. Tom and his wife Courtney are the founders of WORLDVIEW and REASON MINISTRIES. Their ministry helps Christians navigate the relationship between cultivating the mind and walking in the authority and power of the Holy Spirit. With an urgency for the harvest that is imminent, Tom and Courtney have a passion to reach a world fallen away from the Truth of God.

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Copyright © 2023 Thomas Jones.

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Scripture quotations marked ESV taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), Copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked LITV are taken from the Literal Translation of the Holy Bible. Copyright © 1976 – 2000 By Jay P. Green, Sr. Used by permission of the copyright holder.

ISBN: 978-1-6642-8678-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-8680-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-8679-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022923169

WestBow Press rev. date: 06/22/2023

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Dedication

Salutation to the Believer

Preface

What in the World Is Going on?

PART ONE | MODERN CHRISTIAN IMAGE, WITNESS, AND CULTURE

• Understand What Your Nonbelieving Audience Accepts

• The Doctrines of Christian Clichés

Mentality Toward Unbelievers Represented in a Cliché

Mentality of Evangelism Represented in a Cliché

Mentality of Defending the Faith Represented in a Cliché

Mentality of Discipleship Represented in a Cliché

• How We Convey the Faith by Cartooning Christianity

• Countercultural Stand

• Fundamental Functions of the Church

Capturing People into the Faith

Growing People within the Faith

Equipping People for the Faith

PART TWO | PREMISE, SKEPTICISM, AND FAITH

• Premise 1 (The Cause): Intellectual Acumen Is Suffering in the Church

• Premise 2 (The Effect): Marginalized, Intimidated, and Unconfident

• Premise 3 (The Focus): True Atheists Are the Minority, but Skeptics Abound

• The Irrational Nature of Skepticism

• Faith: Supported by Reason or Irrationality?

PART THREE | WORLDVIEW UNDERSTOOD

• Spiritual Transformation

• Why the Mind Is Important

• What Is a Worldview?

• The Four Foundations of a Worldview

1: Origin of the World (How Did the World Come to Be?)

2: Meaning of Life (What Is Our Purpose?)

3: Morality (What is Right, and What is Wrong?)

4: Destiny/Hope (What Happens When We Die?)

• Other Worldviews and Conclusions

Postmodernism

Cultural Christians

Secular Humanism

Cultural Pluralism

PART FOUR | REASONING, PREPAREDNESS, AND ENGAGEMENT

• Reasoning and Persuasion for Making Disciples

• Common Objections from Misinterpreting the Word of God

• Scripture Underwrites Our Purpose: Be Ready Always

Be an Instructor

Have an Answer

The Prudence of Balance

• How Do We Proceed? Engaging Atheists and Skeptics

Refuting

Rebutting

• Reminders and Summary

Notes

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am reverently thankful to God the Father, Jesus Christ the Messiah, and the Holy Spirit for blessing me with the insight and ability to write this book. Without almighty God, nothing is possible. You are due all honor, glory, and praise. You are the only wise and true God, eternal and incorruptible. Jesus, I acknowledge you as my Savior and Lord of all. I have eternal gratitude for the atoning sacrifice you lovingly became for me so I can live in your presence forever. Father, I thank you for the gifts you have given me according to your grace. I pray they are a blessing to others. I am honored to be an ambassador for Your kingdom purposes.

I passionately thank my beautiful wife, Courtney. You are truly a gift from God. You are the one person that has and will always be integral to my understanding of the fullness of the love God has for me, and the holiness He desires of me. I thank you deeply for your enduring encouragement and support of the things I do in ministry. Without exception, you have poured yourself into the effort of producing this book. I am grateful for your commitment to have faithfully proofread all that I wrote along with your positive feedback. You are my greatest cheerleader as I fight the good fight, run the course, and press on after the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. I love you and cherish you.

I honorably thank my parents, Bill and Linda Jones for the life, love, and support you have given me. The many skills and talents God has gifted to me are through your lineage and cultivation. Know that your discipline of taking us to church to worship God as children was the initial planted seed in a bigger purpose for my life to serve the Lord in various ministry capacities such as with this book. To my younger sisters Cindy and Sheryl, I hope your big brother is still worthy of looking up to. Except, look past me to the One worthy of all honor, our Lord God who is maker of heaven and earth, and all that is in them.

I gratefully thank my in-laws and extended family. Thank you, Tony and Leah Harmon, for embracing me into your family as a son and brother in Christ. We will continue to intently look up together as our redemption draws near. Thank you, Larry and Sandra White, for embracing me into your family as a son and brother in Christ. We will continue to steadfastly press on together as we serve the Lord.

I profoundly thank Van Lynch, family friend for as long as I can remember. As you have followed my teaching and speaking ministry, I am thankful for your mutual interest in the subject matters I speak about and the conversations we have had regarding the things of God. My deepest gratitude and appreciation are for your role as initial editor of this book. Your writing advice and positive critiques of the content have been invaluable contributions to the standard of excellence I desired for this book. You have been a tool in God’s hand and therefore part of the effort to help equip God’s people through this writing.

DEDICATION

With my wife Courtney, I would like to dedicate this book to our four children, Graham, Rene, Blake, and Andrea, and our two granddaughters Brooklyn and Alana. Just as you were dedicated to the Lord as little children, we declare as adults you will be dedicated to pursuing a higher knowledge of truth and understanding through God’s Word. Your worldview, as outlined in this book, will be challenged, and mocked, but know you can stand on the unshakable foundation of God. One that supports the only rational, coherent, and absolute truth to live by. May this book be a tool to help you resist the foolish wisdom and questionings of the world. May it equip your hearts and minds.

We decree that you are most importantly heirs to the eternal kingdom of God through his love and grace toward you. You have an incomprehensible reward of eternal life through your belief in Jesus Christ as your Savior. You are sons and daughters according to God, who made you in His image and likeness. With the believers, you are consecrated as kings, queens, and priests to God. You shall reign over the earth to manifest God’s glory. We pray for the blessings, protection, and grace of God to cover you all.

SALUTATION TO THE BELIEVER

For all those who are in Christ Jesus and dedicated to the pursuit of godly mandates, which include the preparedness of giving answers about our personal faith and hope. I pray this writing finds you well and eager to reach, in love, the inquiring minds of unbelievers who are being consumed by the so-called wisdom of this world. May the Holy Spirit teach you and guide you into all truth so you can confidently and boldly stand as a beacon of light in the present darkness. I have endeavored to help equip you for your evangelical and discipleship efforts through providing rational insights and answers concerning the Christian worldview. Desire to be an ambassador for Christ. Trust God to work through you. Ask the Holy Spirit to fill you. Pray for wisdom and exercise urgency as you make your way in this world proclaiming the Word of God.

PREFACE

The preparation and majority of writing for this book occurred throughout the year 2017. More parts had been planned and the most in depth topics were yet unwritten due to the significant focus they required. It was going to have a more academic feel, trend in a more apologetics direction, and be labeled with a different title to create thought-provoking inquiry. However, I laid the book down due to the tiring rigor it required, life demands, and ultimately a divine sense the timing was not right to finish it. I didn’t ignore God’s will for me to write a book. Instead, I was thrust into a season of years realigning my own life to God’s plans by walking through doors that were opening to new paths He created and closing doors to paths that would not allow me to achieve God’s destiny for me. I was at peace with pressing pause on the book. I was not to force the book out for publication so I could check a box on a list of things to accomplish. That would have been selfish ambition. There would not have been an anointing.

It wasn’t until the spring of 2022 when God gave me the green light to proceed with the book. I was at a gala event in Orlando, Florida for the Christian discipleship ministry, Man In The Mirror. While sitting in the banquet room the Holy Spirit gave me the prompting and solution to finishing the book. It was somewhat random timing but nevertheless was incredible. I received clarity on how to alter and refine it, so it would be less involved and less academically complicated for the reader. I received the topical focus that would change the title. The Lord was telling me to adjust the book to thematically focus on the Christian worldview…a topic I had been routinely speaking on that nobody was addressing with insight, understanding, or depth.

I talked to my wife Courtney the next day about my revelation with renewed energy and direction. As she normally does, I received a resounding endorsement and steadfast support to get going on it. Before long she suggested that I needed to write a workbook to complement it. After thinking about it, I saw it was a chance to offer a small group facilitator a tailored study guide that would be bible study rich but also expound on the book’s key topics. Because of the number of years that had elapsed between starting the book and finishing it, the study guide became complimentary with a fresh anointing of the Holy Spirit to say things and address some things with new insight.

The writing of this book is the culmination of many years of teaching and speaking on a multitude of subjects that help Christians understand how to think about and give rational defenses for the faith. This book takes one fundamental subject matter, the Christian worldview, and presents a thoughtful exposition of the direct and indirect considerations that define it. The book is not constructed as an academic text simply born out of knowledge. This book is a result of insight that, for me, has been understood as clarity and wisdom from the Holy Spirit. Apparently, when you indulge your thought-life to process and communicate the things of God, He will provide unexpected revelations. This certainly has been the case in my study efforts to teach the Word of God over the years. And consistently, it has been the case in my effort to write this book. When the enlightenment is imparted to me, I freely give as I have freely received. And this, as a stewardship to God’s people.

False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the Gospel. We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion. (September 20, 1912, address by Princeton theologian J. Gresham Machen)

—

I must be frank with you, the greatest danger confronting American evangelical Christianity is the danger of anti-intellectualism. The mind in its greatest and deepest reaches is not cared for enough.

For the sake of greater effectiveness in witnessing to Jesus Christ, as well as for their own sakes, evangelicals cannot afford to keep on living on the periphery of responsible intellectual existence. (September 13, 1980, address at Wheaton College by Charles Malik)

—

If the Christian worldview can be restored to a place of prominence and respect … it will have a leavening effect throughout society … Laypeople need to be intellectually engaged if our culture is to be effectively reformed … We need laypeople who are intellectually engaged with their faith, and take their Christian identity to be definitive for their self-conception. (Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, 2003)

WHAT IN THE WORLD

IS GOING ON?

The skeptical world deserves thoughtful responses from Christians in the form of rational explanations of the Christian faith and worldview.

I am not talking about your personal testimony or your presentation of the Gospel as things in desperate need of thoughtful content. I am not talking about your relative capability compared to other Christians to recite scripture as the means to relay the wisdom of God to the lost world. I am not talking about your ability to eloquently convey religiously oriented doctrines in a way that would have to compel the most hardened atheist to admit you have some measure of credibility.

However, I am talking about the general ability of Christians to think about, reason, and communicate their faith or worldview. I am talking about the present measure of credibility the institutional evangelical Christian church has in American society. I am talking about your own willingness to stand against the strong current of secular ideals for the intents and purposes of exposing false propositions and flawed traditions. I am talking about a mentality shift we may desperately need as a Christian people, which would bring us to a place of having more patience and love for those who we may typically see as the opposition. You know, the ones who—whether out of anger, ignorance, or contempt—insult and dismiss anything related to the existence of God, the organized church, or the need for Jesus Christ to be their Savior.

There is a mentality shift needed among Christians so they can present thoughtful insight exposing the irrational thinking of unbelievers. This contrasts with the all-too-common approach of quietly residing in the margins of society due to our insecurities while thinking we cannot rationally compete in the marketplace of ideas. After all, the pastor hasn’t equipped us. There was no small group with a related study topic. Surely, we have other cares in life to spend our time and mental energy on. There really is no residual long-term side effect with that approach, right? Life goes on. Culture evolves. Society naturally slips further away from the truth of God, and the church people still meet on Sunday mornings to do their thing quietly out of the way.

The cultural battle for the minds of our children and young adults