Reverse Engineering Your Life: The Importance of Worldview
I have been doing Yellow Ribbon reintegration briefings for the 81st Infantry this month. One of the main themes I have been emphasizing is the concept of reverse engineering your life. The idea is that we should set a long- range goal for our personal lives and families 30-50 years down the road from now. We then work backward, laying out the necessary stages in life to accomplish the goals. In this way, deployment and the stress of reintegration become an opportunity to re-evaluate life and start creating a “new normal” for daily living.
This is the first post in a series I plan to do on reverse engineering your life.
Worldview
Before one can determine goals, plans, or even dreams, I believe one needs to resolve the question of worldview. Your worldview is your perspective and understanding of the world around you. It encompasses your understanding of life, the universe, and everything (yes, that’s a Hitchiker’s Guide reference for you sci-fi fans). Your worldview affects your understanding of politics, your neighbors, and the news. It determines your major and minor decisions. Your worldview determines your morality and explains who you are in relation to God, family, and others. Where you choose to work, who you marry, and how you raise your kids are all affected by your worldview.
I do not mean religion. A religion, as I understand it, is a list of do’s and don’ts that promise to earn you favor with God. A worldview moves beyond that sort of living. It is a perspective, a complete system of understanding for life. Now, most people do not operate under a comprehensive worldview. It is common to have a religion to explain God and morality that has no say in how one chooses a mate. You may follow your desires when it comes to selecting a movie to rent, with no regard to how it fits into you larger worldview. For the most part, we live fragmented lives which display little coherence. Before you can really begin putting together a reverse-engineered life, it is necessary to have a coherent, comprehensive worldview. You can’t determine a general path into the future if you don’t have guidance in what that future should look like. It’s one thing to have dreams, but if you realize your dreams someday, will you be fulfilled? Will you be satisfied? Or will you find the accomplishment empty?
The problem is that there is way too much in life to take into account through any single system. Even Christianity as a system is unable to encompass all of life. Christianity has little in and of itself to say about choosing a doctor, designing a skyscraper, determining an MOS, fixing your car, or going to the game. It simply doesn’t cover all that. And when you consider all the world systems and religions, you find that no one has created a system which can be this comprehensive. Truly, such a system must be so large that it would have to be the result of knowing everything and being everywhere at the same time. On top of that, in order for a reverse-engineered life to work, it would have to be put together by an architect who knows the future.
Does such a worldview exist? Yes. But not as a system. It is a person: Jesus. Jesus is himself God. This means he is present in the past and the future. This means also that he knows everything and is everywhere at the same time. The only way to have a comprehensive worldview is not to find a workable religious system, but to instead have a relationship with Jesus Christ. I’m not telling you that the answer is in Christianity. It’s not in any system. The only way to follow a comprehensive worldview is to follow a coherent, comprehensive leader. That leader is Jesus.
One of the reasons I am not denominationally affiliated as a chaplain is because I want to emphasize in my ministry the centrality of Jesus. Other chaplains are denominational, and that’s fine. Many of them are Jesus followers within their denominations. For me, though, as a chaplain I want to emphasize to you that Jesus is sufficient to handle all of life–marriage, parenting, war, PTSD, anger, worry, anxiety, distress, joy, happiness, excitement, hatred, democrats, republicans, infanticide, IED’s, sex, movies, music, deformities, jobs, lay-off’s, promotions, insurance, death…you name it.
To get a handle on all of life and to have the wisdom to lay out a reverse-engineered life, you will need to have a personal relationship with Jesus. I don’t mean a cordial, informational understanding of the bible’s description and words of Jesus, but a true personal one-on-one relationship with him. That sort of relationship provides for you a leader who is already in the future. Jesus then becomes your guide in planning your life and working through your plan. He’s there to show you where you got it wrong and where it needs to be adjusted. He provides support and grace and strength during the tough parts. He reassures you that everything really is under control when life seems to spiral out of control because of a diagnosis. And in the end, regardless of how life went, he brings you home to heaven. Guaranteed.
The perfect worldview is not a system, a philosophy, or an ideology. It is Jesus.
Next in this series: Sin, Jesus, and the Perfect Plan.
