Find answers and develop a worldview -- without help from a Facebook quiz

I spend time on social media, and it seems I'm not alone. The other day, there was a Facebook post offering to tell respondents whether they were optimists or realists. On another day, a post promised to tell what color best suits your personality. "I'm 75 percent optimist, and I'm a green!"

What worth revelations like that have is a matter of opinion. It's a way of communicating with friends, I suppose, but little else.

There is something worth evaluating, and Christmas is as good a time as any to take a look. Everybody has a worldview -- which is a fancy way of saying we all look at the world in a one-of-a-kind way. Your way isn't mine. My way isn't yours. We all see life through a special lens, a set of invisible eyeglasses, uniquely our own. Some might call that personal bias, but that's too harsh a term. Worldview is closer to the mark.

Ravi Zacharias, a Christian evangelist originally from India, has some worthwhile things to say about developing a worldview. Zacharias says a coherent worldview must be able to answer four questions -- about origin, about meaning, about morality and about destiny. In his mind, only Christianity can answer all of them. The only worldview for which I'm responsible is my own, so here's my take:

What is your origin? I'm a tiny fish in an endless sea of generations, born in the 20th century A.D., and will die in the 21st, created by the one who, for reasons not revealed to me or to anyone, spoke the universe into existence (Genesis 1). I care little for the creation vs. evolution debate. I grow easily fatigued in arguments about how creation happened or whether or not my ancestors evolved over eons of time. However the world came to be, my overriding interest is not in the how or the when, but in the who. Who did it? My origin is a single prime mover, God, who began the universe and everything in it. Creation is not an accident. It was intentional.

What is the meaning of life? Since creation of the universe is not an accident, neither am I an accident. I have a purpose. Bill Moyers of PBS fame says the great adventure of the 21st century will be the journey of the spirit -- the journey within ourselves to find meaning. I have meaning because the prime mover, God, created the universe for a purpose. Therefore I, as part of that universe, also have a purpose. I take that purpose from the prophet Micah who, in chapter six and verse eight of his eponymous book, says our purpose is to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God.

What is morality? Morality is the real-time and everyday living out of your purpose. Sometimes morality is messy. A fellow pastor once said to me that some things don't come down to good and bad, but in choosing the less hurtful of two bad options. If justice, mercy and humility are allowed to rule -- objectified for us by the New Testament accounts of Jesus -- then we have a guide to day-by-day morality.

What is our destiny? I will die physically. What is inside me is so powerful that one day my body will not be able to hold on to it. That's death.

The first law of thermodynamics says nothing in the known universe is created nor destroyed, but is instead transformed.

Yes. I'm persuaded that's correct. When my spirit grows too powerful for my body, when I die, that spirit will waft through an unseen door to a plane of existence called heaven.

This is possible because of my Lord's rising on the third day. I enter heaven guiltless because of my Lord's sacrificial death on a cross. What happens when I get there? No idea. But I hold on to this promise: "Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor the human mind conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him," (1 Corinthians 2:9).

Take the Ravi Four challenge for yourself. Merry Christmas.