Can you be a follower of Christ and not have a Christian worldview?

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The simple and immediate answer to the question above is a resounding “no.”

Let’s understand why.

First, according to a study called the American Worldview Inventory conducted by the Cultural Research Center based at Arizona Christian University (and is the first of what will be an annual report from veteran researcher George Barna, who is the CRC research director), only six percent of Americans hold a Christian worldview (read more about the study here).

Your worldview is what you think and believe (both of which directly craft your behavior) about the world; if that contradicts what the Bible teaches, you’re not following Jesus, you’re following yourself.

Jesus said:

“Jesus told him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me,'” John 14:6.

And He also said:

“Then he said to the crowd, ‘If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross daily, and follow me,'” Luke 9:23.

God’s grand work of reconciling us to Himself was so that He could transform us into the likeness of His Son by changing the way we think (Rom. 12:2, Eph. 4:17-23) and so that we could have “the mind of Christ.”

So to think and behave about the world in contradiction to Christ, is not to follow Christ. To profess to be a follower of Jesus, but think and act differently from Jesus, is certainly not being a follower of Jesus.

Many have already written more deeply on the vital need of anyone professing to be a Christian to have and live by a Christian worldview, so I’m not going to attempt to “reinvent the wheel” here. Instead, I’ll now point you to two of those more detailed articles and encourage you to read them for deeper insight as to why a Christian worldview is a necessity for all who call themselves Christian. Check out the article, “The Importance of a Christian Worldview,” written by David Dockery for The Gospel Project – you can find the article here. The other article, titled, “The Importance of the Christian Worldview,” can be found here.

Scotty