MYOPIAN OR HYPEROPIAN? WHAT’S YOUR WORLDVIEW?
The term “worldview” is tossed around a lot these days; a reference to the attitudes, values and expectations people associate with the world around them. There are basically two worldviews. One is held by unbelievers and is small, confined and cramped — temporal and terminable in nature. The other one, held by true Christians is immeasurable in scope and expansive – seeing beyond what is around us, seeing the Invisible, and into the ages to come.
Unbelievers have all of their hopes and joys – their everything – in this world; what this world contains and what this world has to offer. This is it. This is all there is for unbelievers, and there ain’t no more. How sad and painful it must be for those who hold this worldview, people ”without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12) who think that with each and every day they are moving farther and farther away from the all-there- is this towards an endless, futureless, nothingness.
Unbelievers don’t like to think about this. They busy themselves so as not to be distracted from thinking about the total loss they expect to incur of everything and everybody that has ever meant, does mean or could mean anything to them. They have hyper-myoptic near sightedness. For them, life in this world is as good, or as bad as it gets for anyone. They’re wrong.
Believers are spiritually hyperopian, supra-farsighted in their worldview. They look beyond time and into eternity with clarity and no small degree of happy expectation. This world view makes them live better now so as to be better prepared and more abundantly blessed when they leave this dimension of life and transition into a glorious continuation of it. These are those “who know their God,” who’ve been born again" through “repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ” (Dan. 11:32; John 3:3; Acts 20:21). They know that all the things in and of this present world “shall be dissolved,” but have a “lively hope” regarding their future, and say from their hearts, “Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness” (2 Pet. 3:12, 13).
Those “without God in the world” with a world view that is no bigger and reaches no farther than the outer edges of this earth are wrong to think that this is all there is or ever can be for them. The fact is, there is another world to which they are headed; a world of incomprehensible darkness, pain and regret that will never dissolve. But, this is the world they have irresponsibly chosen for themselves – chosen it through their rejection of the promise of God of heaven and earth who “so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal Life” (John 3:16).
Consider your present worldview. Perhaps it's time to see things differently.