The Importance of the Seven Cornerstones of a Biblical Worldview
By George Barna

Any competent contractor will tell you that to successfully erect a building that will serve its users well and endure the tests of time, that building must be constructed upon a strong foundation. There are specific elements that must be included in that foundation to ensure that the building can withstand the demands placed upon it. Without a sturdy and durable foundation, the building may look nice from the outside but it will be dangerous to all who dare to enter it. Jesus Himself alluded to this principle in Matthew 7:24-27.

Structurally, your worldview is no different than a house or a 20-story office building: it is only as reliable as its foundation. Everybody has a worldview, and every person’s worldview is built upon a small number of central beliefs that serve as the foundation for their entire worldview. If the foundation of your worldview is a hot mess of ideas that are not integrated and true, then your life will be one of chaos, confusion, disappointment, and failure. But if you take the time and make the effort to intentionally and intelligently create a firm foundation for your worldview, you have the potential to thrive.

The research indicates that there are seven particular beliefs without which a person is very unlikely to develop a consistently biblical life of thought and action.

We know from our extensive study of worldviews that it is the rare person who has a pure biblical worldview; there are usually some elements of worldly thinking that creep into an otherwise biblical perspective on how most Americans think and behave. Similarly, the statistics indicate that very, very few people who do not embrace all seven of the cornerstone principles are able to circumvent those errant perspectives to successfully think like Jesus and then act like Him.

The Seven Cornerstones are virtually a “must—have” series of insights into life that substantially influence one’s ability and likelihood of developing a biblical mind and lifestyle. Simply stated, if your worldview foundation is wonky, the life that emerges from that foundation is usually more in harmony with the ways of the world than the ways of the Lord. That rejection of biblical principles often produces serious problems and dissatisfaction in the person’s life.

As a word of caution, know that while these seven fundamental beliefs provide an irreplaceable foundation from which the rest of your significant beliefs flow, free will and our capacity for internal dissonance occasionally enable a person to construct a weak worldview despite a strong foundation. That does not happen often, but there is no guarantee that embracing the Seven Cornerstones will produce a truly biblical worldview. What beliefs are necessary to have a strong foundation for a biblical worldview? You may be surprised at how basic these beliefs are—almost like an outline for what used to be the Sunday school lessons shared with third or fourth graders. (Both the times and church experiences have changed dramatically in the past few decades, so even if a church still offers Sunday school to elementary school children, this content is not what most fourth graders in American Sunday schools receive these days.)

Despite their deceiving simplicity, establishing these seven beliefs as the foundation of your worldview takes more than a casual verbal assent to these ideas. For these principles to qualify as foundations requires both understanding and a passionate, thoughtful ownership of these beliefs in order for the rest of your worldview to be firmly and biblically constructed.

1. An orthodox, biblical understanding of God
A basic understanding of the existence and nature of God is a crucial building block. Many worldviews do not believe in the existence of a higher power or supreme being. Christianity is among the faiths that do—but there are other perspectives about deities held by other faiths and life philosophies. What distinguishes the God of Israel from other alleged deities? Here are some of His attributes described in the Bible:

These attributes portray Him the One who created and sustains everything (including you) that exists. He is a powerful, all-knowing, loving, just, merciful, reliable creator who is also our companion and unerring guide for life. He is a unique presence who wants a relationship with us. That relationship must serve as the focus of our life; we were created by Him, for Him, and will ultimately answer to Him.

2. All human beings are sinful by nature; every choice we make has moral contours and consequences.
We begin life with the inherited sin of Adam (sometimes called “original sin.”) The temptation to sin is always present in our lives, just as Satan often sought to tempt Jesus into commit- ting sin. Fortunately, God provides us with His power delivered through the Holy Spirit—but we must be willing to deny the lure of sin in favor of honoring God and His ways. Every

choice we make either pleases or displeases God. Each day we have hundreds of opportunities to demonstrate our commitment to being like Jesus through the decisions we make. Constantly appropriating the power and wisdom of the Holy Spirit as we make those deci- sions is critical toward making proper—i.e., biblical—choices.

3. Jesus Christ is the sole means to individual salvation, accomplished through our acknowledgment and confession of our sins and complete reliance on His grace for the forgiveness of those sins.
Even the best of us sins, perhaps despite our best intentions and spiritual commitments. No person has ever been perfect enough to earn God’s favor; every human being sins and falls short of God’s standards. As our loving and omniscient Creator, God foresaw this dilemma and solved the crisis by sending Jesus to die on our behalf. Through that act of propitiation He has offered every person a means of remaining righteous in God’s eyes. To exploit that offer of eternal life in His presence and joy, we must admit to our sins and ask Jesus to save us from their consequences. He is the only means to righteousness in God’s eyes. Our salvation is a matter of grace, love, mercy, and compassion—a reflection of some of His core attributes. Without that gift of salvation we would be condemned and hopeless. Thanks to that gift we have hope and a pathway to glory.

4. The entire Bible is true, reliable, and relevant, making it the best moral guide for every person, in all situations.
God’s desire is that we thrive on earth. To do so, He provided us a blueprint for life, telling us the stories of people who lived before us and offering us lessons through their experiences. The life of Jesus Christ visiting our planet is contained in there as well, incorporating numerous true principles for life. For more than 2,000 years people who have trusted and applied His words have found them to be invaluable and fulfilling. Because of original sin we will never be perfect people, and we are not genuinely good, but the stories, commands, principles, warnings, and wisdom that God provides to us in the Bible point us in a right and better direction. And because God is the embodiment of love and truth, following those words lead us to a moral life in ways that human emotion and thinking cannot. Those who put their faith in His words—rather than societal norms or public preferences—are hum- bled and grateful for the experience; those who resist and reject them pay the price for such arrogance and stubbornness.

5. Absolute moral truth exists—and those truths are defined by God, described in the Bible, and unchanging across time and cultures.
Abraham Lincoln once silenced a contentious argument among his colleagues as they debated about truth by saying, “Calling a dog’s tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.” Absolute truths define what is right and wrong. Moral truths exist whether we like them or not, whether they are popular or not, whether they are convenient or not, whether we understand them or not, whether we “feel it” or not. The only surefire way of knowing those absolutes is by consulting the inerrant source of truth: God. As the Bible teaches, He is truth. He cannot lie or deceive because that is against His nature and purposes. Truth is so central to the being of God that He went to great lengths to provide an understanding of truth in His words to us, words designed to enable us to thrive. Truth, when properly understood and fully applied, leads to righteousness, which pleases Him and empowers us to know, love, and serve Him better. Circumstances, emotions, norms, and preferences change over time; truth does not. It is a fixed, reliable standard that is the same in all ages, in all places, for all people. You cannot know absolute truth by following the culture or your feelings; it is only available through the scriptures.

6. The ultimate purpose of human life is to know, love, and serve God with all your heart, mind, strength and soul.
Jesus was clear in telling his challengers that the most important of the commandments is that we love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. (Mark 12:29-30) There is nothing more important than that commitment. To genuinely love Him we must know Him— and knowing everything we can about God produces a humbling, profound love for Him. That love, in turn, generates a deep desire to do everything we are capable of in service to Him and His purposes. Satan works hard to distract or prevent us from pursuing such a relationship. But human fulfillment cannot be experienced until we clarify our true life’s purpose and wholeheartedly invest ourselves in that commitment.

7. Success on earth is best understood as consistent obedience to God—in thoughts, words, and actions.
If our purpose is to love God in every conceivable way—focusing on His truths, applying His principles every moment and in every situation, serving Him at all times—then it is obedience to His principles that makes us “successful” here on Earth solely because we are continually fulfilling our God-given purpose. The purposes that the world promotes—wealth, fame, achievements, power, sexual fulfillment, knowledge, prestige—have no bearing on our real success. The Creator, alone, determines the criteria for the success of those whom He creates. Jesus plainly stated that we will be His disciples when we obey His teachings. (John 13:34) That succinctly defines the parameters of our success.

When you put these seven commitments together, you can see how transformative they are—and why the failure to embrace one or more of these cornerstones will render a person virtually incapable of thinking like Jesus and ultimately living like Him.

Cornerstones and Behavior
If worldview is an equally important blend of beliefs and behaviors, you may be wondering why the Seven Cornerstones are only beliefs. The answer is simple: you do what you believe. In other words, if you believe what the Bible teaches, you will behave in harmony with those beliefs, but if you do not have biblical beliefs as a foundation, it is highly unlikely that you will behave biblically. If you have a set of fundamentally sound beliefs from which your behaviors will emerge, the chances are much greater that you will demonstrate biblically resonant actions.