Isn’t it interesting how liberals and conservatives can have such divergent points of view regarding the political issues of our day? Even well-informed, well-educated, articulate people can see the world so differently.

I offer these observations to introduce what I consider to be one of the most critical issues in all of life: a person’s worldview. Now this might not be a word that we use or hear in our everyday lives, but everyone has a worldview. It determines everything.

One’s worldview is based on the assumptions that we make about life and how life works. It is the lens through which we see life.

Your worldview has been formed over time and has been influenced by your upbringing, your education, the media, your relationships…really, everything that has poured into your life has helped to form this perspective. The foundation of your worldview is based on your assumptions about God. You can call it your faith view of reality.

Dr. Tim Keller says that how we relate to God is the foundation of our thinking. It completely determines the way that we view the world. He contends that all of our reasoning proceeds from our view of God. It begins there.

Take atheism, for instance. Perhaps you do not believe in God; that disbelief actually is a belief taken by faith. It is your faith view of reality. Whether you realize it or not, all of your reasoning proceeds from this. You screen out all that does not fit this view of life.

Journalist David Klinhoffer wrote an article in The Los Angeles Times, and he says:

What we are observing in our society seems to be the struggle of religion vs. no religion. In actuality it is a conflict of various religions including secularism. If you object to secularism as a religion because it has no deity, let’s remember that other faiths like Zen—Buddhism also lack a belief in God.

What is religion, then?

Simply this: a religion is a system of beliefs explaining where life comes from, what life means, and what we as living beings are supposed to be doing with our few allotted years. Answers of these questions are not provable; they are taken by faith.

In our culture today, there are two primary worldviews: Christianity and Secularism. The two do not agree on where life comes from, what life means, or what we as human beings should be doing during the few allotted years that we have on earth. They do not agree on what motivates our actions.

One of the most emotional and divisive issues in our American society today is that of human sexuality. The traditional Christian view of sexuality has been the predominant view in our country since its founding.

Christians contend that the healthiest, most meaningful, most satisfying, and most pleasurable sexual experience is found between a man and a woman in a covenant relationship called marriage. A covenant is a promise – a pledge of love, loyalty, and faithfulness. A covenant involves continuity – the sense of a common future – to look forward to and a history to look back on together. A covenant means belonging – a commitment to a rich and growing relationship of love and care.

In Matthew 10: 4 & 5, Jesus quotes from the Old Testament, “A man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”

The word cleave is a Hebrew word that means absolute unity. Total union. Deep, profound solidarity. Not just a physical union but an emotional union, an economic union, a social union. A complete union. A complete union. To cleave to someone is to say, “I belong exclusively to you. Permanently. Everything I have is yours. I am yours.”

This is what marriage is. This is why God created sex – for cleaving. Sex is a cleaving apparatus.

God made sex to be able to say to one other human being, I belong completely, and exclusively, and permanently to you. All of me. Everything. Most followers of the traditional Christian view of sexuality believe that it is sacred, beautiful, and meaningful.

In the modern secular view of sexuality, God is not a factor. For most modern people, sex is nothing more than another form of pleasurable recreation. You may want to live in a committed relationship, or you might prefer to have multiple partners.

The most prominent sexologist in modern times is Alfred Kinsey. His research on human sexuality is extensive. A recent movie on his life’s work stars Liam Neeson.

Kinsey was a pure secularist, and he believed that God has nothing to do with sex. His view was that, as a mammal, you should be able to enjoy sex with any other mammal of your choosing. This could include your mother, uncle, sister, or even an animal. While this might sound extreme, sound reason alone would have to agree with Kinsey. As the Russian author, Fyodor Dostoevsky, rightly stated, “If there is no god, all things are permissible.” This would include human sexuality.

We can’t ignore the contrast of two opposing worldviews. The question to pose, then, is this: Which one has the ring of truth to it? Or, as Tim Keller asks, “Which worldview has the most ‘explanatory power’ to make sense of the world that we live in?”