This is a preçis of a paper "The Western World View and its Effects on the Church, problems and solutions". Click here to view it... It's fourteen pages long and I'd like it to end up as a book - called "God, the West and the Church" - but it needs a lot of work, and I'm still thinking what approach to take. You are very welcome to contribute your thoughts on the material, especially to improve its accuracy and readibility, and of course your ideas will be acknowledged.

EXPLANATION OF FIGURE 1.

The key elements in the diagram are these three words.

CONSUMERISM   PERFORMANCE-ISM   PERFECTIONISM

1.*

These are the ways that the world works to meet our three basic human needs - which are: security, significance, and acceptance - things which God wants to give us all freely, as His created children.

I believe this is an expression of the scripture, 1 John 2:16.
"For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world."  In Greek the latter means to boast about one's livelihood. 

In the garden of Eden, we see the first man and woman failing before these three things; in the wilderness of Jordon, we see Jesus overcoming each one. 2.*

They are western cultural behaviors, and unhappily, they fit right in with Satan's scheme of things, as illustrated by figure 1.  The other groups of three-word concepts illustrate the values, beliefs, and the world view which contribute to the make up of the two opposing cultures.  You may find some answers on my homepage - under "The Gospel from Head to Heart"

DIAGRAM OF CULTURAL ASPECTS A world view begins to form in our earliest moments. A Hindu will learn the world is full of spirit beings needing appeasement for temporal and eternal gain.  Westerners (with roots based in the Greco-Roman cultures, mostly learn the need to compete; and that the fortune, power and glory we value is up to us to gain.  Daily life is ordered around these things, spiritual beliefs rarely affect us.  We assume we can create our own destiny, and are expected to be good, assuming that problems are a result of wrong influences, rather than an inbuilt malaise.  It is a non-spiritual reality, and largely self-focused.  It allows evil influences to control our lives, illustrated by the characteristics shown in the following diagram. As Christians, we will recognize some of these behaviors - because we live by the same world view, not knowing how to make a thorough application of the full Gospel of Christ so that we can change completely to seeing things how God sees them.

1. These concepts came after prayer for revelation about our western world views.  The words came to my mind with a resounding way, falling into my mind like the foundation cornerstones of a building, or the last pieces of a jigsaw, which revealed the significance of the whole picture.  I had not had anything like this happen before, and it brought together many ideas that I had been working on over the years. (Return to place*)

2. Genesis 3:1-6;  Matthew 4:11 (Return to place*)