Christian Worldview

His Divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.  2 Peter 1:3

Christianity, as the inheritor of Judaism, assimilated, implemented, and made its own all the good Jews brought to the world. Jesus of Nazareth is fundamentally a Jew who came, not to abolish Judaism and its laws (Matthew 5:17), but to purify it; what is important is not the letter of the law and its formal fulfillment, but the spirit of the law when applied to life.  

Since Jesus presented himself to mankind as the only role model of humanity, reference measure, paradigm, the only way, the only truth, and the only way to live life, (John 14:6), being a Christian and being authentic and genuinely human are one and the same thing. There is no such thing as human morality or ethics side by side with Christian morality because Christ is the only benchmark for measuring and evaluating the extent to which we are human.

In addition to a program of individual salvation, the way, the truth, and the life for the mental, spiritual, moral, and physical health of the human being, according to his or her nature, Christ also presented a program of salvation for society, for the human being as a social being: the Kingdom of God, that is, as Saint Paul says (Romans 14:17), “… is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit”.

The Christian worldview is to view the world, to see and understand the world with the eyes of Christ, from his perspective, from his viewpoint. From this outlook, the worldview also has to do with the way we act with the world and in the world, the place we occupy in it. While the materialistic worldview answers with NOTHING the question about our origin, our destiny, and the meaning of our life, then the Christian worldview answers these same questions in the following way:

Where did we come from? – We came from God, creator of the universe, of everything and everyone, of time, of space, and of matter or energy. He made everything good and created everything out of love. As for us humans, he created us in his image and likeness. That is, besides being like everything else, spatial-temporal beings that occupy a space for a period of time, we, unlike other creatures, have in us a seed of eternity, a spiritual aspect that we possess, and it is up to us to make it grow in order to enter eternity with God.

Where are we going? – We are going to God who sustains our life beyond death, so death is not our final destination, but a passage into eternity. As birth was a passage from our mother’s womb to the bosom of the world, death will be our birth to Heaven, that is, our passage from the bosom of this world to the bosom of God, the return to the house of the Father paraphrasing the prodigal son’s parable, or the end of our pilgrimage.

What is the meaning of life? – “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). The meaning or the objective of our life is to give glory to God. Giving glory to God who created us is the best way for us to use the talents we have received and to self-actualize, achieving the happiness that is life in abundance that God wants for us.

We were taken out of nothing to do something with our lives, so that, using our physical body, resources, materials, and talents at our disposal, as scaffolding for the spiritual body, we can make the seed of eternity, that is in us, germinate.

Every material good can be spiritualized in the Still of our life, just as alcohol can be distilled from every fruit or vegetable, or a perfume extracted from flowers that ascends to God. Created from nothing in the image and likeness of God, it is up to us to do something with our life, or go back to nothing, that is eternal death.  

By living like Christ and constantly measuring up to him, as the role model and paradigm of humanity, we acquire divine sonship, we become adopted children of God, and according to Roman law with the same rights as God’s only begotten Son, Christ (Romans 8:14-16).

Humans are both individual and social beings. The value over which stands our individuality and personhood is freedom. Whereas the value over which stands our being social and always part of a family, group or community is equality. Therefore, we fight like Christ for a better world, a more just, peaceful, and fraternal world, as we seek to extend the kingdom of God, a project that Christ brought to Earth.

It is in this struggle that we realize ourselves individually, so there is no individual self-realization without a social dimension. Whoever is not useful to others is useless to himself. Whoever does not live to serve is not fit to live. The one that is not good for something is good for nothing, that is, disposable and useless like garbage.

The Gospel, the Best Human Narrative of All Time
Christianity in the New Testament, especially in the gospels that relate the life, the talents, and the sayings of Jesus of Nazareth, has the most fascinating narrative of all time. The worldview, ethics, philosophy of life, human rights, what is truly human, is all laid out in the gospels.

Christianity is a historical religion because the gospels are not mythological accounts, like the holy books of many other religions like Hinduism. The gospels speak of a historical figure, Jesus of Nazareth, about his life, his behavior in everyday situations, his miracles and healings, his deeds, and his preaching and teachings.

Since they were written by four different authors, they have been the subject of study and research. In fact, no literary work has ever been so thoroughly subjected to literary, historical, hermeneutical, grammatical, meticulously word-for-word criticism.

The parable of the Prodigal Son is perhaps the shortest and most significant story that mankind has created. It has inspired poets, painters, musicians, and literature, in addition to shaping the universal idea of unconditional forgiveness. It is difficult to talk about forgiveness without mentioning this parable.

The parable of the Good Samaritan has entered the minds and imagination of every man and woman as a synonym for solidarity with those who suffer or those who occasionally need our help. Samaritan today, more than an inhabitant of Samaria, means an empathetic person who weeps with those who weep and suffers with those who suffer.  

The gospel is the magna carta of human life, the standard of reference, the ultimate criterion of humanity that serves as a genuine and authentic reference for every individual. There is no narrative in the world that surpasses the gospels in humanity. The gospels have been the inspirational text of Western civilization, the beacon that illuminates it.

The United Nation human rights charter, which almost every country has signed, is clearly taken from the gospel. Christianity played an important role in stamping out practices such as human sacrifice, slavery, infanticide, and polygamy. In general, it affected the status of women, condemning infanticide (female babies were more likely to be killed), divorce, incest, infidelity, birth control, abortion, and defending marriage and the family as the cell of social life.

Christianity is the most practiced religion on the planet, as the mother and mentor of Western civilization, it is the most developed and most extended in the world. Therefore, Christianity has shaped not only the minds of Christians, but also the minds of almost every human being living on this planet, even those who refuse to acknowledge it, such as the Muslim societies.

The feasts of Easter and Christmas are universally marked as holidays; the Gregorian calendar (of Pope Gregory XIII) was adopted internationally as the civil calendar; and time itself is measured by the West from the calculated date of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth: the AD (Anno Domini). In the list of the 100 most influential people in human history, 65% are Christian figures from various fields.

Women's liberation
The rights of minorities, the respect of each person’s sexual orientation, the liberation of women, the values proper to Western civilization that place it at the forefront of human rights, cannot be explained without the gospel.

Jesus was the most feminist person the world has ever known; the only founder of a religion who never made a statement against women, who treated them as equal to men, who had female disciples - something never seen before or after him (even today rabbis do not have female disciples). It is true that his disciples followed the patriarchal mentality of the surrounding areas more than their Master’s practices. However, we cannot deny the importance of the gospel in the conversion of minds and hearts for gender equality, which started in the Western civilization and, little by little, is being assumed by the other civilizations, with the Muslim one being the most reticent in the matter.

It is true that even in the West women do not yet enjoy full equality, but it is certainly in the Christian West that women enjoy the most rights. What makes the degree of gender equality vary from country to country, is not wealth or poverty; that is, it is not necessarily in the richest countries that women are treated as equals. Saudi Arabia is wealthy, and yet women there are treated as second-class citizens. The determining factor is culture, not wealth.

Japan and the Philippines are two Asian countries not far from each other; the former is much wealthier than the latter, and yet there is much more gender equality in the Philippines than in Japan. As both are Asian countries, they have cultural elements that are in common. The big difference, however, is that the Philippines has been a Christian country for 500 years, while in Japan, Christianity has never been able to penetrate in such a way as to influence the culture. Like in Japan, restaurants where food is served on the naked body of a female teenager do not exist in the Philippines and it is unthinkable that they could ever exist there.  

Moral Conscience and Conscientious Objection
One sabbath he was going through the cornfields; and as they made their way his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, ‘Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath? And he said to them, ‘Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food? He entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions.’

Then he said to them, ‘The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so, the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.’ Mark 2:23-28

In one of his inflammatory speeches, intended to guide the German people into World War II, Hitler acknowledged that the moral conscience was a Jewish invention. The applied law, without jurisprudence, becomes injustice, so the ancient Romans used to say "sumum jus summa injuria": it is one thing to be just, it is another to overdo justice, that is, a strict application of the law can turn into a great injustice. Moral conscience, like conscientious objection, are creations of Christianity.

Nobody and no institutions are above our moral conscience; it is in our moral conscience that we are free, people with rights and duties, with responsibility and free choices. I may object to taking up arms and going to war to kill my brothers; I can object to participating in an abortion or assisting someone to die. The state cannot force me to do anything that my moral conscience guides me not to do.

Other higher values rise up, as Camões would say. Our moral conscience, well formed and informed by the gospel, doctrine, and tradition of the Church, in a hierarchy of values discerns in every situation with the help of the Holy Spirit what to do or what not to do. If I am on my way to Church on a Sunday to participate in the Eucharist and someone asks me for urgent help, I must leave the value of the Eucharist to assist my brother.

The above text quotes Jesus who says that he is Lord of the Sabbath, we are all lords of the Sabbath, the law, the rule, the norm; therein lies the dignity and freedom of the human person. Jesus cites the exception of David who, apparently, also already used his moral conscience to discern what to do in each moment. To steal is a sin, but to steal to eat is not a sin, says the people.

Sin is in the one who has too much and does not share with the one who does not have. "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”  The law exists for the sake of human life, self-realization, and happiness, and not the other way around.

Freedom and Equality
As we said above, the human value of the individual dimension of human beings is freedom; the human value of the community dimension of human beings is equality. Freedom and equality are the values on which human life rest and on which the political and economic systems of society rest or should rest.

Capitalism exacerbates freedom, socialism exacerbates equality. The balance or harmony of freedom and equality is as difficult to internalize for the individual as it is for society. The mundane world does not have an ideal formula for harmonizing these two dimensions; but Christianity has: the commandment of love.

The cross, the symbol of Christianity, is where the verticality of love of God above all things and the horizontality of love of neighbor as oneself meet and harmonize. Without freedom there is no human life, without equality there is no social life, without fraternity there is neither.

Welfare State
‘For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the labourers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. (…) And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, “Why are you standing here idle all day?” They said to him, “Because no one has hired us.” He said to them, “You also go into the vineyard.” When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, “Call the labourers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.” When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage.  Matthew 20:1-2, 6-9

The welfare state was not invented by Karl Marx when he said that the state should demand from each according to his possibilities and give to each according to his needs. The welfare state, like so many things that we assume today to be part of our culture, was created by Jesus, and already put into action by the apostles in the first Christian community in Jerusalem, where they had everything in common and each was given according to his needs (Acts of the Apostles 2:44-47).

As the parable described above says, when the landowner paid those who worked a single hour the same wage as those who worked all day, he did not pay the labourers according to the work done, but according to their needs.

The labourers who had been in the market place all day because no one hired them, had the same needs as those who had worked all day, a wife, and children to support. The landowner, aware of this, paid them the same amount as those who bore the heat and weight of the day. In this Jesus invented the welfare state where from everyone is demanded according to his means and given according to his needs.

Christianity is not a Religious Religion, but a Civil Religion
Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?”

And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” (…) Then he will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.  Matthew 25:37- 40, 45-46

When Jesus appears to Paul, he does not ask him, "Why are you persecuting my disciples?" but rather "Why are you persecuting me?" Jesus, the older brother, the universal brother, is on the side of the reviled against the reviler, on the side of the poor against the rich exploiter, on the side of the oppressed against the oppressor, it is He who makes sure that injustice does not have the last word.

If a teenage girl while returning home alone at night, was approached by a group of delinquents intending on raping her, this violation will surely take place because the girl would have no way to defend herself. However, if one of these potential offenders recognized the girl as the sister of a feared and fearless police officer, the group would think twice before committing the rape and would most likely look for another victim. Christ is our older brother, our feared and fearless brother, with Him by our side we have nothing to fear.

The truly revolutionary thing about Matthew’s text is that Jesus turns religion into a civil matter; he had already done this by saying that the only two commandments that count are the love of God, which guarantees freedom, and the love of neighbor, which guarantees equality. In this last text, there is no religious question, the questions at the Last Judgment are not about what religion you practiced, what church you went to, or even whether or not you were an atheist; every man and woman will be judged by their degree of humanity, and not by their religious practice.

Christ, in fact, came into the world to teach man how to be man; those who, with Christ or without Christ, have shown in their daily lives a high degree of humanity, shall enter eternal life; those who, on the contrary, have lived for themselves cultivating temporal values, have reduced their life to nothingness and to NOTHING they shall return, dying eternally.

Conclusion: Christianity reveals human nature and shows the way it can be lived in order to achieve fullness of life in this world and in the next. To be authentic and genuinely human and to be Christian are one and the same thing.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC