Who Programmed Your Glasses?

I was thinking about this as I was watching the new sign go up on our Virtual Reality Experience building at the Ark Encounter. Inside this building, we have a high-tech virtual reality ride. People put on our special virtual reality glasses that are programmed to enable them to go back in time and see a different world—the world of true biblical history, which most have never seen before because of the way they were programmed by the secular culture. They find themselves inside a spacecraft with P.O.D. the robot, who then takes them back thousands of years to the time of Noah. The seats move and vibrate and wind blows—it feels like you are flying in this machine.

Most people don’t think about the fact that we see the world we live in differently, depending on which glasses we are wearing and how they were programmed. These glasses are really what we call our worldview.

The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines worldview as “a comprehensive conception or apprehension of the world, especially from a specific standpoint.” We could say that your “standpoint” is the foundation that builds your worldview. Ultimately, there are only two foundations for this: God’s Word or man’s word. Your “comprehensive conception or apprehension of the world” is the way you look at the world because of the foundation you have.

Only God knows everything, and in his Word, he has revealed to us the key information we need so we can put on the right glasses.

You see, we all live in the same world. Now as Christians—to be able to understand this world and interpret all we see correctly—we must start from the foundation of God’s Word. Only God knows everything, and in his Word, he has revealed to us the key information we need so we can put on the right glasses. And Genesis 1–11 is the foundation for the rest of the Bible and for our worldview. For instance, when we look at the world through biblical glasses, we realize it’s not all beautiful because the creation was marred by sin and the judgment of death. There’s a remnant of beauty in a fallen creation.

However, if someone has the foundation of man’s word—that life arose by naturalistic evolutionary processes—then their glasses show a world of death and suffering that they believe has gone on for millions of years.

Sadly, even most Christians look at the world through the wrong glasses because they’ve been influenced by the secular world. So I’m challenging us all this month to think about what glasses we are really wearing and how they are programmed. Let’s make sure the glasses, or worldview, we have come from the foundation of God’s Word. Not only does this determine how we understand the world but also how we behave. As the Bible clearly states:

The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks. (Luke 6:45)

Make sure you are wearing your biblical glasses, and never take them off!