Brian Walsh - Transformation: Dynamic Worldview or Repressive Ideology?

This section from Brian Walsh’s very useful paper - Transformation: Dynamic Worldview or Repressive Ideology? Published in Journal of Education and Christian Belief 4.2 (autumn 2000). The story is very telling and I think that Brian’s alternative questions are very thoughtful and need much discussion and action in local church contexts. So much resonates with the story told by Ron Sider and posted by Bob Carlton here.  Practically embodying the realities which the Gospel announces and makes possible in Christ is just so, so important in our very visual and cynical post-Christendom Western contexts.

The highlighted questions are seldom asked in church contexts (well not in my hearing anyway) yet they are fundamental discipleship questions. In essence they are asking: “What difference does following Jesus actually make in the everyday contexts within which you embody and live out the gospel?”

“…Some years ago a graduate student wrote to me about a doctoral dissertation that he was writing on the effectiveness of Christian colleges in inculcating a Christian worldview in their students. He had set up a survey that he was sending out to alumni of one Christian college as part of his research and, since he was, at least in his own mind, so indebted to the influence of The Transforming Vision in his work he asked me if I would comment on the survey he had designed. Now apart from the fact that the survey asked questions that, given the context, had clearly right and wrong answers (like, “Do you think it important to pray for your colleagues at work?” - what Christian college grad would want to say no to that?), thereby rendering the results useless from a social scientific perspective, there was another glaring problem with his work. All he was doing by means of this survey was measuring what these people thought about the world, not how they actually lived. This student felt that if he could ascertain the basic furniture of their intellectual framework then he would be able to discern the effectiveness of their Christian college education.

I wrote back and suggested that the student had not understood what worldviews were all about and that this survey would not give him real insight at all. I suggested a different kind of survey that would ask different kinds of questions.

Things like:

What kind of involvement do you have in your neighbourhood?

What are the local social and political issues that you are concerned with? How do you enact that concern?

Would you please send us a photograph of your living room? [Which could be then analyzed in terms of the art on the wall, whether there is a television, video game, etc. in the room, and how the furniture is set up in relation to such entertainment technology.]

Could you estimate for us how much time you spend watching television each day? How much time surfing the net? Would you send us a list of your favourite television shows and web sites?

Could you please send us a list of the meals you have shared with your family in the last two weeks? What was on the menu?

Where do you buy your groceries?

What is your principle means of transportation?

Would you be so kind as to send us your last three credit card statements?

Would you give us permission to sift through your garbage at the side of the road for the next three weeks? We promise not to make a mess; we just want to see what kinds of things you throw out.

Then I suggested to this doctoral student that if he wanted to know about the Christian worldview of these Christian college alumni, then these would be the kinds of things that might help him make such a discernment. Worldviews are lived more than they are thought. And the question of the success of Christian education hinges on the lived lives of our graduates. The issue for Christian education must be character formation for radical discipleship…”

Comments

[ron cole]

Great questions Paul...questions we should all try to answer honestly. Doing that, I think we'll find a huge separation between the christian culture we speak about and the christian culture we live. I guess the key is to merge the two into something that is more real, relevant and less hyocritical. This post ties in nicely with the 2 previous posts...there is so much culture outside the church, that it fears or shuns...that could be redeemed to to great things with.

[Sivin Kit]

I read the Pdf article. I found it very helpful. Thanks ..