CONFLICTING WORLDVIEWS
by Neil Anderson

Colossians 1:13
For He delivered us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son

The Western world today sees reality in two tiers. The upper tier is the transcendent world where God and angels--as well as ghosts and ghouls--reside, a world which is understood through religion and mysticism. The lower tier is the empirical world, which is understood through science and the physical senses. In two-tier mentality, the spiritual world has no practical bearing on the natural world; we have excluded it from our understanding of reality. Most attempts at integrating theology and psychology include only God and humanity (fallen and redeemed) and exclude the activity of Satan and demons.

In stark contrast to the secularism of the West, two-thirds of the inhabitants of the world hold an Eastern worldview. They live and operate believing that spiritual forces are an everyday reality. These people appease their gods with peace offerings and perform religious rituals to ward off evil spirits. To the common people in Third World nations, religious practice or superstition has more practical relevance in daily life than science.

It is easy for those of us raised in the West to dismiss the Eastern worldview as inferior on the basis of the "success" of the Western world. But both are worldly systems and neither reflects biblical reality. The West tries to ignore the reality of the spiritual world and the East tries to appease it or naively enter into it. The Bible clearly depicts the reality of the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light. God's Word tells us we can have victory over the former by being transferred into the latter.

Many Christians either exclude the supernatural from their worldview altogether or consign it to the transcendental tier where it will have no effect on their lives. By doing so they not only exclude God's power from their theology and practice, but they also explain all human failure--even that which is induced by demonic influence--as the result of psychological or natural causes.

Prayer:

Lord, I accept the worldview presented in Your Word. Help me deal victoriously with the reality of demonic forces in my world.