The following student report was submitted by Ambassador League Agent Colleen H. during the 2007-2008 League.
Book Report on "Lifeviews"
In the book, "Lifeviews: Understanding the ideas that shape society today," the author, R. C. Sproul teaches the readers about the different world views that are in our society. This book opened my eyes to many different ideas that I did not know even existed. It also was very helpful when the author broke it down, and showed us, as Christians, specifically what to do in certain situations. The world views that I learned about in this book are Secularism, Pessimistic Existentialism, Sentimental Humanism, Pragmatism, Positivism, Pluralism and Relativism, and finally, Hedonism.
Every Christian is a missionary. This is God's call for our life - showing the world His love. For some, this means traveling around the world, spreading the gospel. But for most of us this means touching he lives of the people right around our home. The Kingdom of Heaven is invisible in so many places in the world. It is our calling, as Christians, to make God's love visible to those who cannot see it. For when it is invisible, people come up with their own ideas of what the meaning of life is.
Secularism is the way people think when they ignore the eternal. Secular people and things are ones that simply have nothing to do with God. They focus on the things that are here, right now, on this earth. Secularism does not realize that there are eternal consequences for their earthly behavior.
Pessimistic Existentialism is the idea that sees no point in life. This worldview is one that views man not by his mind or soul, but by his feelings and will. It is all about man's feelings. Existentialism is centered around concern and caring.
Sentimental Humanism is the belief that man is the center of everything. The idea is that man is the measure of all things - the way by which values are to be determined. All reality and life center on man. Humanism has nothing to do with Jesus Christ - it focuses solely on man.
Pragmatism does not care what the right thing to do is. This is the idea that if something works, that that is the right way to do it. The pragmatist is only focusing on right now. What works now? They don't think about the future.
Positivism contains no faith. Faith, as we know it is the "evidence of things unseen." The idea of positivism only believes what it sees. If we look at different things in the world, we see proof that God exists. But because we cannot directly see God, positivism has nothing to do with God.
Pluralism and relativism strongly recognizes the diversity we have in our world. However, it does not realize that there is an absolute truth. It believes that we have particulars, but no universals. While this is true for some things, such as languages, it is not true for faith. There is only one God.
The final worldview is Hedonism. This worldview's main principles are that good and evil are defined by pleasure and pain. Basically, if it brings pleasure, it is good. If it brings pain, it is evil. However, there are many things in life that feel like they bring us pleasure, but in God's eyes, they are evil.
In the last part of this book, the author explained specifically what we, as Christians, need to be doing to change our world. The main step that each one of us needs to take is to share the good news with the whole world, and show people the love that God has for each and every person.
