The idea of perspective is an important one to us because of the absence of one dominant worldview. In the past, there was one dominant worldview, the Christian worldview; it was an important piece of culture because it served as the moral compass for culture. Even when the Christian worldview came under attack, other worldviews came forward and became dominant. All was still well because these worldviews, while not Christian in doctrine, still were very much Christian in nature and ethos and continued to serve as a moral compass for the culture. The dominant worldview always provided a venue for morality and for each new perspective to become incorporated into old ones and become part of the coming dominant worldview, which always had enough morality to keep culture on track; it is how the cycle worked for many years, but today none of that is needed. The idea of a worldview has been deconstructed and taken apart in search for that piece which welcomes all views of the world. Worldviews are too neat, ordered and consistent for today's world. To live inside a worldview, ideas have to relate in some small way in order to form a framework, even if in the end there is no relation.Worldviews will still be moral in nature because they began that way, but a perspective is different. Each one is unique and different; there is no need to relate one to another because they all stand alone, and best of all for the world, morality is not required.
A perspective is one's own ideas, and they need not relate to any other idea because all ideas are now welcome. Here lies our problem, and, to be quite honest, most see it not as a problem but as a fringe benefit. I am not sure anyone understands the true severity of this problem. In order to explain this properly, I will use the graphical idea of linear perspective as it helped me understand the issue at hand.
Linear perspective works by representing the light that passes from one scene through an imaginary rectangle, to the viewer's eye (as shown in the diagram in this post). It is similar to you looking through a window and painting what is seen directly onto the windowpane as you see it. If I view it from the same spot that the windowpane was painted, the painted image would be identical to what I saw through the unpainted window when the scene was painted. Each object painted in this manner is a flat, scaled down version of the object on the other side of the window, but each part of the painted object lies on a straight line from the viewer's eye to the equivalent portion of the real object it represents. Those who view it cannot perceive any difference between the painted scene on the windowpane and the view of the real scene, providing that the painted scene is that good and those that view stand still in the spot the scene was painted. All perspective drawings have to assume that the viewer is a certain distance away from the drawing for them to work. Objects are scaled relative to the original viewer. Now, here lies our problem; objects are often not scaled evenly: a circle often appears as an ellipse and a square can appear as a trapezoid. This distortion is referred to as foreshortening, and represents the problem with perspective.
Perspectives are always representing the view of the viewer and each viewer has a slightly different perspective. Perspectives are never true views collectively and never a view of three dimensional reality. Despite how real one perspective looks, it only takes a slight movement on our part to discover the truth; that it is only a painting and not real. What we are looking at is an interpretation of reality but not reality itself, even though it looks very much like the real thing. In much the same way any perspective representation of a scene that includes parallel lines has one or more vanishing points in that drawing so too do real perspectives. Discovering and identifying true perspectives from false ones will become impossible since all of them will be built the same way, defined in the same manner and painted in a one dimensional view by a stationary artist. Perspectives take three dimensional truths and reduce them down to a one dimensional view for the sake of art. Perspectives, in essence, reduce what is being painted to an insignificant part of the process of painting. What is important from a perspective standpoint is the painting not the scene being painted. And there lies are issue - God's creation is being replaced by man's creation.
We Christians fall into this trap as well when we try to put our spin on what scripture says.
A good example of this can be found in Eve when she responded to the snake's question regarding the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in Genesis.
"Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made.
He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate."
(Genesis 3:1-6 ESV)
Eve did not answer the snake according to the worldview the Lord God gave her; instead, she answered according to her perspective. Adam and Eve's answer reflected that flat scaled down view of the tree. They viewed the tree according to their sight; it had fruit that they wanted to eat, and it was beautiful so, naturally, they wanted to touch it... perspective.This highlights the biggest difference between perspective and worldview; perspective is always rooted in self and worldview is not. And, when you root your view of the world in yourself, you fail to see the world as it was created because you are only interested in seeing the world as you painted it. Do we need another reason why perspectives are dangerous? We need to not usher in perspectives; instead, we must demand a return to worldviews where God's creation reigns supreme. Blessings!
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