Miles Barrow
2/10/13
Reek
Faith & Life
A Twenty Three Year Old Worldview
Who am I? That is a question that until now I haven’t really thought of much. The answer to that question to me has always been, “I’m just a kid”, or “I’m a baseball player.” These are just characteristics describing myself, rather to fully answer the question of who I am I must dig deeper. Who I am I believe can directly correlate with my worldview, and my worldview is directly related with my beliefs. What I believe in has been formed over years of living and experiencing. The idea of a worldview has challenged the way I have thought about this world for several reasons, and it’s these reasons that keep my mind open and subject to change. One thought that was troubling me is that so many people have different worldviews, and a lot of the time their worldviews change as they have different experiences. In my case, when I was younger I didn’t grow up with a Christian background but as I grew older I grew closer to God. How do I know that my particular worldview is “correct” when billions of other people have a different worldview? Then I thought well there must not be a wrong or right worldview, rather a worldview is set of beliefs and knowledge that the person has formed over their lifetime. My worldview in particular has been formed by the experiences I’ve had, Places I’ve been, people I’ve encountered, and knowledge that I’ve gained. This causes me to think that as my life goes on and I meet new people and see different cultures, that my worldview will constantly be changing. There are a few exceptions and I think one of them is the role of God in my life. My freshman year I started going to bible studies with a close nit group of friends twice a week. That was the extent of my faith at the time, which has since then grown to a full on belief in Christ. God now plays a huge part in my life, and I have accomplished things in my life that wouldn’t be possible without him. My point is, meeting these few friends and going to the bible studies eventually made a huge impact on my life and eventually my worldview. As I gained more knowledge about God and the Word, my relationship to God grew tighter. Aside from my belief in God, all the other aspects of my life and belief system started at home with the seed my parents planted in me. They raised me to treat people with respect and to live simply. I had a very good understanding of what was right and what was wrong, so that when it was time for me to move out I had a knowledge base to refer to and build off of. When people go on their own they are usually faced with a sense of freedom, or an ability to make their own decisions. This is good because it allows people to branch out and become who they really are. With this freedom though, comes a variety of difficult decisions and questions about what to actually believe in or what is morally right and wrong. It’s something that we were taught when we were younger but were never faced with. People throughout their life are faced directly with these decisions by experiencing with life. In my own personal experiences I have been guided by my parents and taught to live an unselfish life. If I find a wallet on the ground my first instinct is to look for an I.D. rather than to see how much money they have. Little acts like these might not make a big impact on anybody’s life but a lot of these little acts compiled can change the world immensely. Our country has a system of laws that we must abide by but the thing is not everybody agrees with each other on every law. Two big topics in our country right now are gun control and abortion. Nobody will ever agree upon these two arguments so how do we know which side of the argument is the right path? The answer to me seems like it could be simple if for answers people looked to the Bible. Even though there are a large amount of Christians in the U.S. our answers rarely come from the Bible rather they come from