I  have been pondering these questions for a few months trying to perfect my world view. A world view is like the window that you look through and make sense what surrounds you. My world view is influenced by media, the world around me and my political outlook. Here are the questions I have been pondering.

Are you grateful for God's gifts to you?

Are you charitable  and kind to others?

Do you seek peace or conflict?

Do you seek to love others?

Do you love those that you don't agree with?

God’s Greatest gift is our chance to choose.

How has your testimony  of Jesus Christ changed your life?

How has His atonement changed you? 

How do you look at those around you?

We are taught to have good judgment and to be wise, Are we?

When you see someone who is rough or a different color, or a different look or hair, or not wearing a mask,  what are your thoughts? Do you dismiss them because they are not of your tribe? Do you shy away and disapprove? Do you instantly pass judgment? Do you think, I wonder what their life is like or how they manage or how they got there?

How does appearance warp your perception of other people?

Do you like being judged?

I base my world view on large groups & statistics since I am a software analyst, which has setup how I relate to the world.

For me, I am not a huge fan of:

Tattoos

Foreigners

Smoking

Homosexuals and the he the whole LBGTQ effort to warp society.

Anarchists

And Homeless people.

With this world view I cast my eyes about and tend to judge those around me.  I sit on my high tower and look down with less than loving thoughts about those that might fall into one of those brackets.

This world view flies in the face of my actual experiences with those around me.

I work with someone who has tattoos and crazy hair

I also work with someone from another country, how I respect and appreciate his nimble mind.

I know and love someone who used to smoke.

I worked with a person who became homosexual in his later years, I learned to respect his kindness and amazing mind.

I have a brother who is an anarchist. We don't agree on much, but I still love him.

When I work to feed the homeless, I see the humanity in their eyes and their appreciation for my service.

So how can I reconcile my world view with those that I know?

It is a real dichotomy, I have these group think concepts that cloud my world view, then I have actual experience that clarifies my perception and gives me cause to re-examine my thoughts.

Instead of judging and or dismissing, I need to think and look as God sees the world. One individual at a time.

So when we look out at the world, we need to work on our worldview. How we think about those around us, affects how we interact with them. As members of the church we have received more light and knowledge about God and we need to take that knowledge and become more like Him. That means we need to find a way to love more and judge less. We need to show the pure love of Christ more. He loved the sinner, He didn’t reject or judge them, He was kind. 

We can do the same.

Can we really be a light to the world if we think everyone is so wrong?

It all boils down to charity which is the pure love of Christ.

We need to show Charity or love to all of those different folks around us. We need to see them as God sees us:

Human

Flawed

A bit lost

Confused 

Striving

Priceless

Loved

Then we need to show that same charity to ourselves. We need to acknowledge that we are:

Human

Flawed

A bit lost

Striving/ Repentant

Priceless

And most of all so Loved.

That message needs to be shared. His redemptive power can refresh your soul, it can strengthen you, and help you make the changes that will lead to your happiness and eternal joy.

The world needs to know that they are loved, they are not alone, they each all have the ability to know who God is and how they can be whole. Christ’s greatest gift, His atonement, is what we can share to the world. That message is precious, but it ends up being worthless if we fail to share it. We all have doubts and fears. The world tends to resonate with doubts and fears today, but we have the magical balm that can calm those fears. God loves us. He loves them. We are all the same in His eyes. He has compassion on our flailing attempts at perfection. His arms are outstretched, He seeks your embrace. He seeks to lift our burdens, calm our fears, and heal our wounds. He sees the strive. He loves the part of us, that continually picks ourselves up after we fail and how we then proceed to move forward again.

We can learn to look at those around us with that same kind of love,  kindness and acceptance. We need to let that love shine forth in our eyes and our faces. That is how we can be a light to the world, one face, one smile, one kind look at a time. That is God’s gift to us, our spirit, our choice. How we use it or hide it is up to us.