What Worldview Did You Pick Up From Your Family?
Part 1: Are humans inherently good or bad?
How do you see the world? What do you believe about who we are, who God is and how life works? All of those beliefs make up your worldview. It’s the basic operating system that you understand yourself and those around you to be functioning in.
As a Christian, we have come to believe that God exists and that He’s intimately involved in the world. We believe that Jesus was God in the flesh, that He lived a perfect life, died on the cross to provide us forgiveness, and rose again.
When we trust Jesus as our Savior, does that instantly change all the things we have believed about the world? Does that undo any years of understanding the world differently that we learned from our family of origin? Not usually.
It’s helpful to look back over what our family of origin believed and whether we have carried any of those beliefs into our Christian faith.
One of the core beliefs that we need to sort out is the nature of human beings. Are we generally good or are we generally bad? What we believe about that seriously impacts how we live our lives, how we parent, our political leanings, etc.
The world around us tends to believe that human beings are generally inherently good. If we give them enough breaks and enough help in life, they will mostly make good, responsible decisions. There are a few bad humans, yes - the drug dealers, the murderers, the child molesters. But if they just are given enough direction and resources, they will change their ways.
The Bible says that we are inherently sinful human beings. We have been tainted by sin since Adam and Eve sinned. “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) Romans 3:9-18 talks about how no one is righteous - not even one. Not everyone is as bad as he or she could be - not everyone is a murderer - but we all are inherently sinful. That’s why we have police forces, military, and laws with consequences if we break them. We need that external impetus to help keep us from making bad decisions. If there were no such thing as speed traps and and speeding tickets, how many people would follow the speed limit signs?
How does our belief about this impact our lives?
My family of origin believed that people are basically good. When my younger brother made poor choices and didn’t stick with things that he had committed to, my parents allowed him to bounce from one thing to the next without being forced to follow through with his commitments. As a result, he never had a true career and was still dependent on my father for money even into his 30s.
When he made worse choices (driving the family car onto the beach just for fun, drunk driving, getting physically violent with my parents, inviting friends to our house in the middle of the night, getting numerous women pregnant out of wedlock…) my parents didn’t follow through with consequences for those choices. They thought that he would grow out of it and eventually start making good choices. He just needed enough “breaks” in life and things would turn around.
He died several years ago in a drunk driving motorcycle accident. The consequences eventually caught up to him.
If we believe that people are inherently sinful, we implement consequences for poor decisions, just like God does. The Bible talks about the “law of sowing and reaping”.
“Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.” (Galatians 6:7-8, NIV)
Reaping what you sow is a type of consequence. Plant good things and you get a good result. Plants weeds and you get weeds. When we rescue people too much from the consequences of what they’ve sown, we rob them of the lesson to learn and the encouragement to make better choices.
Paul told the Thessalonians that anyone who would not work, shouldn’t eat. There were consequences for their laziness.
“For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: ‘The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.’ We hear that some among you are idle and disruptive. They are not busy; they are busybodies. Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the food they eat.” (2 Thessalonians 3:10-12, NIV)
Please hear me: This is not some Christianized version of karma. There are definitely times to show mercy and compassion, even when someone has made poor choices. God certainly does that for us. Jesus died for us while we were still sinners. (Romans 5:8) But when someone is unrepentant, has a track record of these poor choices and shows no interest in changing what they’re doing, perhaps the godly thing to do is to let them feel the consequences of those actions.
How about you? What did you learn from your family of origin about humans being inherently good or bad?
In your family, were there consequences for disobedience and poor choices?
Were there rewards for doing what is right and good?
How does the law of sowing and reaping look in your parenting? In your political leanings? In your workplace?
This topic overlaps into the idea of boundaries. One concept behind having healthy boundaries is that we don’t take on the consequences of other peoples’ poor choices, but whenever possible, allow those consequences to do the teaching they’re meant to do. If your teenage child gets a speeding ticket, do you have them pay for it? Or do you pay it for them? If they procrastinate in getting their homework done, do you help them get it in on time? If your younger child forgets to bring something somewhere that they are responsible for, do you turn back to get it? If your coworker doesn’t get their work done because they’re surfing social media, do you cover for them and finish their work for them?
You can read my other posts on boundaries here:
Serving God and Others with Healthy Boundaries
God allows us to suffer the consequences of our choices in order to lead us to Him. Those consequences lead us to live the way God designed us to live.
What beliefs about whether people are good or bad did you incorporate from your family of origin? Let me know in the comments.