One's worldview is also referred to as one's philosophy, philosophy of life, mindset, outlook on life, the formula for life, ideology, faith, or even religion. This paper will be going into detail about my worldview and how it compares to a film's secular worldview. Firstly, I will be explaining my definition of a worldview and the setting of my Christian worldview which include these 6 areas God, Creation, Humanity, Epistemology, and Culture. Next, there will be a brief explanation of the creator of the film and the socio-cultural context at the time of the film’s release. Then, I will be describing the film’s worldview and how it interacts with the world now. Finally, this paper will answer the question that keeps popping up in the world which would be “so what”.
My definition of worldview is that it’s a set of beliefs about fundamental aspects of reality that ground and influence all one's perceiving, thinking, knowing, and doing. My perspective on a Christian worldview doesn’t change at all from the definition above because God created us to do all of those things. Such as in the book of John the story of the Samaritan women and Jesus talking. The woman first perceived Jesus as just a regular Jew who was just trying to make trouble but later in the story as Jesus and the women keep talking, she is thinking whether he is the Messiah because he is telling her life story starting with her husbands. Then in John 4:25-26 Jesus tells her that he is the one her and her people have been waiting for, so the women now know that he is the Messiah. Now that Jesus had established himself to the woman, she then told everybody to come and meet the messiah which turns out was the right thing to do because one of the men had a dying son who needed the help of the Messiah. This story is just one of many that have examples in it explaining my Christian worldview and how it can relate back to my life.
Another area that represents my view is creation because creation is something that makes the world go around. The world is a beautiful creation of God. It was made at the beginning by God out of nothing. Before God created the world, nothing was here except him. It was made deliberately, not haphazardly. God created the world with a plan and a purpose. God created the earth to be better. Although the world displays destruction it declares the beauty of God, the world will still show signs of wickedness which will then turn into corruption and how much we need his grace. God gave us the earth to be careful of and apply wisely. He knows the reality that He has created and hates that it is tainted by sin.
In Genesis -the first book of the bible- it opens with God’s creation of the earth. The so-called “perfect world” God has created has fallen into evil hands when the humans disobeyed God, and the human population splits into distinct nations and languages. This comes back to my perspective of the Christian worldview because in Genesis humanity was the one who changed for the worst instead of being faithful to God. The story of humanity disobeying God goes in two different ideas about what it means to be human in relation to God. Humans are, the first and foremost, a creation of God, called on out of nothing but the word. We rely perfectly upon God for having gone into existence and continue to rely on God to be maintained in creation. But humans occupy a strange place in this created order. Humans were created in the picture of God and had a particular character, that of dominion, with regard to other animals. “Creationism, the belief that the universe and the various forms of life were created by God out of nothing (ex nihilo). It is a response to modern evolutionary theory, which explains the emergence and diversity of life without recourse to the doctrine of God or any other divine power. Mainstream scientists generally reject creationism.” (“Creation Science”).
In the history of philosophy, there are some known arguments for the creation of God: the ontological argument, the cosmological argument, and the debate from designing. From the epistemological (theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope; investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from the opinion) viewpoint, the question is whether such arguments will establish the logical foundation of religion, or even give us knowledge of God. There is also one known question casting doubt on the world of God: Why, if God is an omniscient, all-powerful, and benevolent state, is there bad in the world? A couple of days ago somebody asked me if God created the world. I replied, confidently saying that God did. God is the expression on the water that we see when we decide to search for answers. What we realize is that likeness of the individual, through the expression of countless lights. What we don’t think is the personal level of the water particles, the motion of the body of water, and the lighting which casts the expression.
As Christians, we take the view of ethics that differs from the perspective taken by the secular world. In my journey through time, I have discovered that the origin of religious philosophies is God. Through our understanding of God and of his world the strong foundation for ethics is made. Ethics are standards based on one’s beliefs, on one’s faith, and on one’s individual love for the Lord. “The terms ethics and morality are closely related. It is now common to refer to ethical judgments or to ethical principles where it once would have been more accurate to speak of moral judgments or moral principles. These applications are an extension of the meaning of ethics. In earlier usage, the term referred not to morality itself but to the field of study, or branch of inquiry, that has morality as its subject matter. In this sense, ethics is equivalent to moral philosophy.” (Singer).
The cultural question for Christians should be very distinct from what it is for modern people who are non-Christians. Modern Christians should remain trying to maintain this society revealed by God while they reside among people whose path is no longer compatible on some levels, including some of the most fundamental ones, with what God has taught. Christ was born a Jew is not an argument against God. In observing one society, he respected all civilizations. Understand God is the bigger trade than gravity and make this attempt to try out that one real God. There is but one God, there always has been but one God. Creation occurred through the idea of the one God. My God is greater than your god is not a speech about God, it is untrue, a misleading philosophy. God is not a philosophy.
Andrew Niccol, writer of The Truman show which aired in 1998 is a New Zealand-born screenwriter-director who began his career in London and moved to America to make films “longer than 60 seconds”. He has written and directed movies such as Gattaca, S1m0ne, Lord of War, and The Truman Show. All of his works are technology driven for example in The Truman Show Niccol uses Truman to express the experience of being followed all the time with cameras and how some celebrities have to be on all the time. “Twenty years later, The Truman Show writer Andrew Niccol frequently experiences what he calls Trumanesque moments. Terrible acting. Incongruous casting. Sloppy art direction and set design. Continuity errors. Generally inept production management.”(King).
During the time the film was released we were getting ready to move toward a digital age with the century about to turn to google search engine coming about. Also, in 1998 there was a Religion Symposium to discuss the religious duties of America and what we can to better improve our journey with God. “David D. Hall, professor of American religious history at Harvard Divinity School, delivered the Thursday morning session's only paper, speaking about "Religion in 18th Century America." He proposed that the differences in how Americans practiced religion during the 18th century become most apparent by comparing New England with the Southern states.”(Grunke). During the speech, Hall mentioned that the church was more of a social activity than a spiritual concern for the US and that in central Europe they were having more diverse groups come about than ever before.
In the worldview of The Truman Show, it coincides with the worldview from the beginning of the paper. In the movie, the director and writers are controllers which are classical representations of God. In Christianity God is the master over all things, working out plans to bring his own pleasure a foot. Truman’s fictional creator Christof is in a TV interview when he engages with an ex-cast member who is campaigning to free Truman from his artificial world. When she spits at him “What you have done to Truman is sick.” his reply appears petty and arrogant as he shouts her down declaring “Do you think because you stole some air time with him you know him?” This seemingly echoes much of God’s prophetic judgment against the nations in the Old Testament, in which the prophets declare “Thus saith the Lord” as He then goes on to declare that he knows the end from the beginning, that He knows all things and in knowing all things man should not oppose or question him. Of course, the whims of Christof appear selfish and petty and he comes across as a weak, needful being who believes that he has the right to behave in this way because he is the creator of the show. The parallel is very clear, Christof is the TV version of God with only hints of the jealousy.