I’ve been trying to understand the worldview the Bible was written in, and I’ve noticed that without Jesus I have three seemingly insurmountable worldview obstacles.

1. I have eyes that can’t see
2. I have ears that can’t hear
3. I have a heart that can’t understand

Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them. – Mt 13:15

My worldview isn’t just a set of beliefs; it determines what I can even notice.

1. Eyes that Can’t See

A worldview helps us quickly make sense of what we see by highlighting what matters and filtering out what’s irrelevant. Imagine scrolling through a social media feed. Your worldview saves your from evaluating everything you see from scratch. It automatically filters what information gets in before you even notice. That means, you didn’t even read the ad. It was auto-discarded.

The problem is that if something is missing from your worldview, your worldview keeps you from even seeing it. Here are some examples of things I couldn’t see in the Bible growing up:

• In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth – the “s” was silent; I didn’t know “the heavens” in an ancient near east perspective meant far more than just the stars and sky
• Genealogies – I just skipped them; I didn’t see that they were at the very least the fulfillment of the human commission to be fruitful and multiply
• Greetings – I would skim through the beginning of any epistle to find where it started; I didn’t notice that e.g. Paul was writing to his close friends

The notable thing here is that I didn’t choose to ignore these things. I couldn’t even see them. Like the “s” on heavens. I had eyes, but I couldn’t see. No matter how many times I read the verse. I just auto-discarded the “s” before it even registered in my brain.

2. Ears that Can’t Hear

A worldview helps us evaluate what we hear by giving us criteria for weighing the quality of the information. Imagine hearing a crazy story from a friend. Your worldview helps you not believe everything you hear at face value. It gives you some standard ways to discern if something is legit. That means, you don’t have to research every story. You mostly know what fits with reality and what doesn’t.

The problem is that if something is outside your worldview, your worldview provides the criteria to automatically discard the information so you can’t even hear it. Examples:

• A missionary came into town and told stories of miracles. The missionary was respected, so I believed him. But there was no way to actually verify the stories, so the data wasn’t worth keeping. I couldn’t use it again.
• My Sunday School teacher would tell me God loves me. That’s true, even if I can’t see it, so it gets in. But the next time something bad happened, I would throw out the statement, because there weren’t consistently reproducible results to prove it.

I didn’t consciously choose to discard these truths. My worldview automatically discarded things that didn’t meet its criteria.

3. Hearts that Don’t Understand

This is potentially worse that eyes that miss information in the first place or ears that relegate it to irrelevance after. Our hearts automatically think our worldview is the best one. No one lives knowing that some other worldview is better for them. So… we don’t want to understand.

In my life:

• I grew up thinking First Nations culture was backward; why would I want to understand it? I didn’t know that it’s our modern western culture that is the historical and global anomaly. Their culture is quite similar to the Ancient Near East.
• I’ve thought that people who don’t want to listen to God’s voice are arrogant. I didn’t realize that to them I sounded like the arrogant one, as if I know what God’s saying.

So even if the data survives the entry filter and the criteria filter, it eventually hits the ethnocentric filter that just irrationally discards anything uncomfortable. Again, without conscious thought.

Otherwise… I would Heal Them

How then can we change our worldview? If we can see the problem, it’s not being discarded automatically. That means we can’t even see the problem. If we have heard the solution and remember it, that means we didn’t discard it. So we can’t remember the only things that would help us. And besides that, we don’t want to, because it’s uncomfortable to explore something that doesn’t fit our understanding.

Thankfully, Jesus can open eyes, ears and hearts. I can’t use bullet points to share the examples from my life, because they are too precious. But I’ll summarize how those moments of revelation usually happen:

• Suffering – your worldview stops working and you’re forced to think differently
• Miracles – something significant happens that your worldview can’t explain

Our job is to have the humility to receive these experiences as worldview adjusters, not package them up neatly and stay inside our worldview prison. Ideally, let’s not wait for the suffering or the miracle, but pray for God to open our eyes, ears and hearts to what he’s showing us today.