The Two-Tier and Animist Approaches
to Reality. “The Western world sees reality in two tiers… The upper tier is
the transcendent world where God, ghosts, and ghouls reside, a world which is
understood through religion and mysticism. The lower tier is the empirical
world, which is understood through science and the physical sense. In two-tier
mentality, the spiritual world has no or little practical bearing on the
natural world; we have practically excluded it from our understanding of
reality. Humanists reject the upper tier altogether. Most attempts at
integrating theology and psychology include only God and humanity (fallen and
redeemed) and exclude the activity of Satan and his demons. In stark contrast
to Western rationalism and naturalism, other inhabitants of the world have a
different view of reality. The reality of the spiritual world is part of their
culture and worldview. Animistic and spiritistic cultures appease their gods
with peace offerings and perform religious rituals to ward off evil spirits. In
many Third World nations, religious practice or superstition has more practical
relevance in daily life than science does. It is easy for those who are
educated in the West to dismiss Eastern worldviews as inferior on the basis of
our advanced technology and economic success. But why then do we have the
highest crime rate of any industrial nation and the greatest distribution of
pornographic filth? Neither worldview reflects biblical reality.” (30)
The Excluded Middle. “Between
the two tiers [of Western thought] is what Dr. Paul Hiebert calls the ‘excluded
middle,’ the real world of spiritual forces active on earth. We must include
the kingdom of darkness in our worldview because in reality there is no excluded
middle! When Paul talks about the spiritual battle in the heavenlies, he is not
referring to some distant place like Mars or Pluto. He is referring to the
spiritual realm, the kingdom of darkness that is all around us and governed by
the ruler of this world.” (30)
The Christian Worldview. “The
Christian worldview perceives life through the grid of Scripture, not through
culture or experience. And Scripture clearly teaches that supernatural,
spiritual forces are at work in this world. For example, approximately
one-fourth of all the healings recorded in the Gospel of Mark were actually
deliverances. The woman whom Jesus healed in Luke 13:11,12 had been the victim
of a ‘sickness caused by a spirit’ for 18 years… The fact that Jesus left us
‘in the world’ (John 17:11) to wrestle against ‘spiritual forces of wickedness
in the heavenly places’ (Ephesians 6:12) is a present-day reality. Supernatural
forces are work on planet earth. We live in the natural world, but we are
involved in a spiritual war. The ‘excluded middle’ is only excluded in our
secularized minds, not in reality.”
(33-34)
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