[1]ORLANDO, Fla. (BP)–A worldwide harvest of souls will require a shift from the prevalent postmodern view of the world to a Christian worldview, Hayes Wicker told the Southern Baptist Pastors’ Conference June 11.
How you see Jesus Christ determines your worldview, said Wicker, senior pastor of First Baptist Church, Naples, Fla., and Resolutions Committee chairman for the June 13-14 Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Orlando, Fla.
A “worldview,” Wicker said, is one’s method of critical thinking that “examines everything in this world system.”
He described the postmodern worldview as “nothing matters” in contrast to the Christian worldview of “God is who matters.”
As a worldview metaphor, Wicker described a boy at his son’s t-ball game who hit the ball and then ran from first base to the right field fence, to the center field fence and to the left field fence before running home. He was called out because he failed to touch second base.
Southern Baptists “are called narrow-minded fundamentalists because we insist on touching all of the bases, yet Jesus Christ says there is truth,” Wicker said. “Those who believe in consistency of values are seen as mentally unstable, while postmodernists consider themselves as always changing and therefore, freeing.”
[2]For postmodernists, truth is not absolute, but obsolete, Wicker continued.
Postmodernists compartmentalize truth and life, he said. “Their private world does not affect their public world. One does not have influence on another.
“Since truth is considered relative, what is true for you may not be true for me,” Wicker said. “Yet the Scriptures say, ‘Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.'”
While postmodernists emphasize tolerance, they “are tolerant of everything and everybody but conservative evangelical Christians,” Wicker said.
“The storm clouds are gathering,” he said. “There is a downpour of persecution in Sudan and the drizzle of persecution in the U.S. Unless we turn our culture around, the storm will break in on us. We must do everything we can to witness around us.”
To counter postmodernism, Wicker said Christians must first be transformed by the renewing of their minds, “to be changed from the inside out.”
Christians must rebuke postmodernism in the minds of the people to whom they minister and share the Christian worldview, Wicker exhorted.
Unlike Carl Sagan, who claimed there was nothing more beyond our cosmos, Christians must believe that everything begins and ends with God, Wicker said, noting that Christians worship “Father God and not Mother Earth.”
The Christian worldview also addresses the issue of evil, Wicker said. “Right and wrong are determined by a holy God and not by environment.”
Wicker quoted the theologian Francis Schaeffer, who said that the only issue is “Truth, true truth.”
“People today do not ask what is truth, but is there truth?” Wicker said. “Truth is absolute and objective.
“God has spoken unambiguously and he has not stuttered. He has spoken in his inerrant Word that is flawless and without mixture of error. … He has spoken, and when we preach his Word, God speaks. When we teach his Word, truth speaks.