Seed Planting

Tonight I gave a cultural lecture entitled "The Influence of Worldviews on Culture." The room was completely packed out for reasons unbeknowest to me. For an hour I talked about the five major worldviews (naturalism, pantheism, theism, polytheism, postmodernism), the influence of the theistic worldview specifically on the American culture, and demonstrated how questions of worldview change people and invite dialogue. Over and over again I asked the students to think about what they believed and WHY. I would ask questions like, "what do you believe about life, death, the nature of man, values, and reality?" "Where do those beliefs come from?" "Have you ever talked to someone with a different worldview from your own?"

My favorite part of the lecture was when I took the map of the world and turned it upside down on the powerpoint slide (called the "Van der Griten Projection"). The shock and gasps from students indicated that I got exactly the reaction that I was aiming for. :) :) I said, "is this an accurate picture of the world?" "No!!! That's just wrong!!" IS IT? According to the map China is no longer the "Middle Kingdom", America is on the bottom, Europe is tiny, and the especially large African continent holds the power. I smiled :) By the end of the lecture I think they understood the point (even though to them the map was still very strange, indeed).

What do we believe in? What shapes our worldview? At one point in the lecture I was able to give my own personal story (a kind of broad testimony with no specifics, if you will, as much as will be allowed here) about discovering my own worldview in Africa during an especially hard time in my life when I was the same age as those students in that room tonight. I emphasized that I was not rejecting my parents or my culture or my country, but rather I was asking myself important life questions about what I believed in order to make it real for me. In the end I found that most of my beliefs really are the same as my parents and some of my culture, but I had to ask the difficult questions in order to discover that. Asking those questions was really hard, I explained, like getting down in the dirt. In the end I was able to discover meaning and purpose in my life. While I did not explain this specifically, my theistic worldview is the only view that I feel gives purpose to my life. Since being in China I have opened my mind to different points of view and am learning things from people here just as I did in Africa. My view of the world is changing, but I believe in it all the more because its mine.

Did they understand all this? Probably not, but I think they understood the main idea. During the question-answer time one guy asked a difficult question about postmodernism (how do you narrow down postmodernism into three sentences at a language level of a first grader?). The question was significant because the topic was briefly mentioned at one point in the whole hour, which means that they were listening, or trying to. In the end, it doesn't really matter. I have to believe that it was all done for the honor of my DAD. Will they go out and talk to people of different worldviews and ask important life questions for themselves as I challenged them to do? I don't know. I just know I had to be faithful with the opportunity I had been given.

One of the girls (a Family friend) came up to me later and said that in China the mindset is so deep and is so hard to move from. She said that nobody in China has ever asked themselves these kinds of questions before. "We don't know why we exist or what happens when we die because we've never asked those questions before." I was amazed and thought to myself, "there's no time like the present."

Through all this I realized that I am a seed planter. Always have been. It's what I do best. I grumble that I'm not part of the "greater" work (as I seemed to be in my other city), but it's not really about me is it? :) This is a lesson I have to learn over and over and over again. It's not about me, it's all about Him. I got to share part of my story tonight and what could be greater than that? Will worldviews shatter tonight? Probably not. But, does Dad have a way of being honored through this? Does Dad have a way of bringing people to Himself? You better believe it!