This document discusses the key elements that make up a person's worldview: values, norms and rules, loyalties, experience and empirical data, and theological assumptions. It examines how each of these elements shape what we view as important, how we behave, who and what we are loyal to, what we believe to be true about the world, and our underlying assumptions, especially regarding God, humanity, and morality. The document encourages reflection on one's own worldview and how specific experiences, loyalties, or assumptions have influenced one's perspective.

1. Who We Are What We Love Where We Live
What We Believe Where We Belong
Worldview:
An Implicit
Perspective

2. What makes up
our “worldview”?
How do we (literally)
“view the world”?

3. Elements of Worldview
Values
Norms and Rules
Loyalties
Experience and Empirical Data
Theological Assumptions

4. “Value” –
what it’s
worth to us
Values
• What do we want most out
of life?
• What gives purpose and
direction to our lives?
• What are the goods or things
that we desire?
For some people,
it is wealth, beauty,
security, family,
social status…

5. Norms and Rules
These assist us in
conforming our social and
personal lives to to our
visions and values.
They are a particularly
important part of
recognizing human
sinfulness.
These may include religious norms:
The Ten Commandments
Truth-telling
Promise-keeping
Doing no harm
The Golden Rule
They may be societal and cultural:
The laws of society
Societal and cultural norms and
mores

6. Augustine divided
the world into two
cities based on one’s
central love.
What do we love?
• What are the loyalties by
which we live?
• To whom or what are we
most deeply loyal?
• Where do we locate
ourselves and with whom
are we primarily allied?
• We might be loyal to our
“way of life.”
We love God,
ourselves, our family,
nation, ethnicity,
religion, race,
business.
Loyalties

7. Loyalties
We see some of the ugliest
expressions of this in resurgent
nationalisms and ethnic identity that
has no place for the other.
Loyalties can become idolatrous
when wrongly ordered – not bad
in themselves, but destructive
when they are ultimately more
important than God.

8. Experience and
Empirical Data
What do we take to be facts?
How do we understand the
problem?
What do we think we know
about the way the world is?
Some differences are rooted
here— as in the abortion
debate, where people differ
over whether the fetus is a
human being.

9. Experience and
Empirical Data
As we think about this, we
quickly realize how tightly
our loyalties, experiences,
and what we take to be
"facts" are intertwined.
We partially know things
out of our experience, from
where we stand in the
world—and this affects our
ethical thinking.
What is the role of our own
experience?
What is the role of the
experiences of others?

10. What are our theological
assumptions about nature, the
character and work of God, of evil,
of persons, of society?
• We believe that God is good, just,
merciful, deeply relational, and
concerned about His creation.
• We believe that the world is
fallen; creation is good but is now
distorted by sin.
• We believe that persons are made
in the image of God.
Theological
Assumptions
How do these theological
assumptions frame our moral life
in explicit and implicit ways?
Do our moral decisions always
reflect our explicitly stated
doctrines? Do they align more with
our implicit presuppositions?

11. Now, take a moment to consider
your own particular life, and
answer the following question:
"What specific things have formed
my worldview?"
Take some notes on one actual,
concrete example of one of these
components of your worldview.
Briefly describe how this
component has shaped your
worldview.