Meists Miss the Point

Another, even better worldview illustration is that there are really only two worldviews, Theism and Meism.
The Meist worships himself. What he believes is supreme, and, whether he actually burns incense to himself or to another "god", he still does it all for himself. If he sacrifices to help others, he has a selfish motive. If he gives up his life for others, it is so he will look good.
The Theist is alive, having seen the one in whom is Life, "and the life was the light of men." The Theist knows that God became a man and died for him, and He knows the God that became a man and died for him. He loves God. If he does anything for himself, it is so God will be glorified. If he sacrifices for others, it is in obedience to God. If he gives up his life for others, it is because his God, Brother, and Dearest Friend did the same for him.

Viewworld

I recently read The Universe Next Door, by James Sire, save the last two chapters. It was a good, actually entertaining read, if one doesn't mind dragging a little. It included lots of interesting illustrations, historical stories and writings, and mind-boggling philosophy on a grand scale.
What Mr. Sire set out to write was a worldview catalog, analyzing in chronological order most of the major worldviews from about 1500 onwards. The chapters went in this order:

Theism -> Deism -> Naturalism -> Nihilism -> Existentialism -> Eastern Monastic Pantheism -> New Age -> Postmodernism.

Let me try to give an incredibly brief explanation for why each of these worldviews followed upon the heels of its predecessor.
Thesim requires a relationship with One Creator God. Seperation from this God means that we cannot know Him unless He reveals Himself to us. So, when He did not do so, Deism arrived.
Deism assumes the One Creator God, and historically holds the same values as Theism, but claims that God has backed out of the universe, and either no longer cares, or cannot be known by special revelation, only by what He made. This begs the question, how do we know God was there in the beginning? So we move to naturalism.
Naturalism desposes with God, claiming that matter is the end-all and be-all. Values still exist, for some reason, but now we need not feel guilty about breaking the rules, after all, there is no God to hold us accountable. This leads to Nihilism.
Nihilism assumes that the entire idea of value is preposterous. Being entirely material, we cannot even know that we are. The chances that we are percieving reality with our senses are slim. We may not even really exist, nor may anyone else, and if we do, we are but a pillar of salt, a tower of matter with specific reactions. Nothing matters. Life cannot have meaning. No worldview can be correct. Nihilism leads to suicide, which, as a matter of practicality, has never been a predominant worldview.
Here is an interesting branch in the road. Nihilism leads to suicide, so how did we get to existentialism? By not thinking. Nihilism is arrived at by two facts being true: 1) the Nihilist does not have a right relationship with God. 2) the Nihilist thinks carefully and logically.
The Nihilist cannot change 1), but would very much not like to commit suicide, so changes 2), and assumes Existentialism, in which matter and thought are two entirely seperate fields, the objective and the subjective. The objective world may be entirely explainable a la Naturalism, but the subjective world is still there. So, one may seclude thoughts of God, value, good, and evil to the subjective mind, and strongly hold in the objective world that God is scientifically impossible, good and evil nonexistant, and value pointless. This defies reason.
Once reason is defied, Existentialism can be improved upon by Eastern Pantheistic Monism. All is one, matter is not reality, the point in life is to become part of the one. "This too is vanity."
New Age and Postmodernism fare no better
The whole point of this abstract, overly generalized, error-riddled progression is to point out an illustration.
Faith in God, knowing God, is at the apex of the illustration. Falling from that the thinking person falls through Deism and Naturalism and, finding no rest, lands in Nihilism, which, truly believed, becomes suicidism. Most people don't want to die, and so cease to be thinking people and fall even farther, if that is possible, into mindless existentialism, etc.
What people need is a right relationship with God. We must realize that the Truth, when it is shown to man, leads to despair in the absence of the Truth-giver. If we know how things really are, and Christ is not present in our hearts, we become nihilists. If Christ is present, we become Theists.
Anyways, I thought that was an interesting way of looking at it.

Yes, We Really Said That

It will quickly become apparent that I cannot claim full, or even major authoracy of this post. Therefore, I humbly acknowledge the totally amazing and hilarious brains and personalities of my family.

Meet my family.

Hope: "We don't eat coffee in this house."

Dad, after discussing marriage to PCA members: "It's not like you're marrying a Catholic."

Joben to Hope: "I'm not talking to you about anybody anymore because you always match them up by the end of the conversation."

Mom, about Dad: "He's just hoping that I'll die."

Hope: "I just want to rent a dorky movie."
Mom: "That sounds like a very good idea."

Hope: "But I don't want to marry suitable young men."

Mom to Hope: "You go running down a beach with a bunch of men with white underwear and tell me that that's not a sporting experience."

Joben: "We like dad, but we like food better."

Hope, on exposing herself to Nicaraguan diseases: "I tried to avoid the life-threatening ones."

Claire: "Some of the funniest things I ever say, I never said them."

Hope: "My goal in life is to be sued by the ACLU."

Joben: "Hope's shackles start rising."

Claire to Joben: "You're overhyperating!"

Lewis Rule Rhymes

At all times
Remember these rhymes.

Clean off the table
As much as you're able.

When you can't think
Have water to drink.

Don't take food from the kitchen
Unless you get special permission.

Life will get out of whack
If you don't put things back.

We notice when other people are weird...

Pizza box: "Keep frozen cook thoroughly."

Bottom of pizza box: "Do not turn upside down."

But we think they are really lacking in talent compared to us.

Mom: "Don't talk like that."
Dad: "Bill Rife talks like that."
Mom: "And you notice I made very sure I didn't marry Bill Rife."
Dad: You were married to me when you met him!"

Mom: "Why are people prejudice against Jewish people? They've got such nice noses."

Mom: I'm flambuzzled.

Mom: "It's a good thing I go through the trash every day.

Hope, pointing at a bag of chow mein noodles: "It's a bag!"
Mom: Aaaaaaaggghhhhh!!!"

Mom, on the phone with Dad: "I could ask Hope. Oh, no, Hope's at camp. But I could ask Hope."

Mom to Claire: "It would help if you could be a driver's license."

Anonymous: "Redundant and repetitious."

Joben: "I don't joust with girls."
Mom: "They're best if you cut them in half so you can put butter sauce in them."

Joben to Claire: "Centralize main aqua dispenser arm!"

Hope: "I wasn't poking my nose into trouble; I was smelling whiskey!"

We're quite profound.

Joben: "I think I'm growing up: I'm forgetting to eat!"

Claire: "I've never laughed so hard in my life; I just stood there with my mouth open, sweating."

Mom wrote this, with some help from -Dad-: "People who think slow-ly- should not talk fast.-quickly-
-Or write quickly.-"

Mom, stealing from Babylon 5: "Don't make the mistake of thinking this is a conversation."

~"There must be some mistake."

~"There is no why."

Hope: "105. [boys]"

Mom: "You know, you've really got to learn not to interrupt the host."

Claire: "I am not a yam."

Mom, on people who don't meditate on cokes: "You're being inconsiderate."

Joben: "Is your ego creeping up over your cerrebellum?"

Here by Popular Demand: A Short Poem

A wooden frame a picture frame.
Every eye a connoisseur.
From ice to mist to wind to flame,
Each one observed from bedroom floor.

Outside this room full of angles
The fallen world I don't see.
Though sin and Satan would strangle,
Your creation shows You to me.

Because of You

Because of You Lyrics

The first time I heard this song I understood it perfectly. Since that time, however, it has come to my attention that is has been misinterpreted and romanticized to a point which is somewhat nauseating to me. This is a grimy, tough, song of love for the sake of love, of eternal devotion, and eternal tragedy. It is the story of a poor helpless guy who turned out to be a jerk but may have come around in the end, and a sweet, loving girl filled with fear and heartache after loving him.

Allow me to extrapolate. Our story begins on a cheerful sunny afternoon when Lucy and her guy Bob are walking downtown together for an ice cream soda. Imagine downtown Fayetteville, if you would. Well, they are crossing the westbound branch of 54, and are almost to the big mural, when this insanely reckless driver runs the light and mows Bob down. The driver takes off, and is never heard from again. Bob is not dead, contrary to the idea you'd get from Lucy's reaction. Unfortunately, emergency personel from the nearby fire and rescue station cannot reach Bob where he lies bleeding out, because a baker's dozen automobiles collided as a result of the red-light runner, and have completely blocked off 85 and 54 westbound. Since everybody else is running around screaming, Bob suggests from the ground that Lucy stop wailing and get him out of the middle of the road and past the pileup to the rescue station, where he intends to plug his wounds and prepare for life as a paralytic. Lucy drags his bleeding heart (and hers) through the carnage, and eventually, scarred for life, they both arrive at the station, where Bob is stabilized and sent to the hospital in an ambulance, leaving Lucy swooning and blood-stained in the arms of a rather unnatractive fireman, who would much rather be finishing his game of chess.
At this point it would be fair to mention that the pileup resulted in three fatalities, but the rapid response of Fayetteville's fire and rescue department saved several others from death, including Bob.

This, however, is not the end of the story.

Bob was indeed paralyzed permenantly, but managed to recover from his other injuries. Returning home, and unable to continue to work his way through college, he found Lucy always at his bedside. As a matter of course, he would not let her mourn the demise of his life's plans -- including marrying her, since he no longer possessed the means to support a family, or his own body, for that matter. As time passed, Lucy found Bob's sickbed more of a prison than he did. The memories of dragging his broken body through downtown Fayetteville, and looking on as he remembered that day in his nightmares, slowly wore her down until she fell terribly ill.
Lying in her bed at home, she realizes that she had not done anything but watch by Bob's bedside for the past six months. Her classes are all W-F, her acquaintances whisper about her behind her back; her close friends call her on the phone and try to get her to go shopping, and cry when she hangs up on them. Then, one fateful day, as she is almost recovered, Bob neglects to call. Horribly upset and apprehensive, Lucy drives herself over to his house (almost causing a repeat of the hit-and-run incident), only to find that, for once in her life, her girlish assumption that if a a friend neglects to call, every terrible thing imaginable has happened, was correct. Bob has given up the ghost, complications of his spinal injuries leading to a sudden lack of autonomic activity. Lucy is distrought, and joins Bob's mom in weeping on Bob's dad's shoulder.
Two days after the funeral (which was, indeed, touching), as Lucy prepares to write a tearful love song and get over it, Bob's parents deliver a sealed letter Bob wrote for her a few days before he died. The contents are as follows:
Dearest Lu,
I have no more strength in me. My soul has been beaten down by your love for me, and now I must tell you everything so that you will waste no more of your life. I do not love you. I never have. I am sorry! How can I ever hope to hear you forgive me for making you cry as you must be doing now? [here Lucy had to pause for a moment to absorb the horror and weep and blow her nose] The horror you feel has been in my heart since the accident. I know who hit me...her name was Betty, and I broke her heart too. I think she was trying to hit you, not me, but I suppose it was justice that I got it instead. See, I'm a jerk, really. I just have girlfriends to satisfy my pride. Yes! My selfish pride! Now I've been payed for it, and my life is ruined just like all those girls'. Well, there is the truth. But all the other girls were easy to dump, because they didn't really love me either. Betty just cared about her own reputation. Anyway, you were just so great and wonderful and...[here Bob pours on the complements for five pages or so]...and so good at impersonating Elvis, and so wonderful at cooking hamburgers...that I had to tell you. So now you know. I'm sorry. Go, forget about me lying in this bed with my punishment, and live your life! Don't waste any more time on me!
Goodbye now!
Sincerly,
Bob

Needless to say, by the time Lucy recovered from this additional shock, she was a changed person, unsure of whether she should still love Bob, for having told the truth, feel sorry for him for having died, or just be mad at him for being a jerk. She revised her song into the form it is in today, and became a famous star. But she always bears the pain of that day...and she still doesn't stray too far from the sidewalk. After all, Betty may still be out there.