A Biblical worldview starts with the assertion that God has created all that there is and He rules over it sovereignly. He is not a part of creation, and He affirms the goodness of what He has created (Gen 1:31, 1Tim 4:4-5.) Some important aspects of creation are that God affirms the goodness of physical reality. Unlike the Greek philosophers (and much popular Christian teaching), physical reality is not inherently of a lower order than spiritual reality. In fact we could say that all of life is spiritual! We should never make a sort of sacred/secular dichotomy in our thinking about life or our callings. Also mankind (male and female) is made in God's image and is the crown of creation.

     Mankind has dignity because man has been made in God's image, and though fallen, we still retain that image (Gen 9:6.) Francis Schaeffer is correct when he calls man a "glorious ruin." From the creation account in Genesis we find what our purpose is. We are called to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, in everything we do, as image bearers living in a covenant relationship with our Creator-God. It is important that we answer the question of purpose correctly. Often Christians make the mistake of confusing a valid sub-purpose (like evangelism or social justice) with purpose of man. To paraphrase Calvin, a half truth masquerading as the whole truth, is a complete untruth. Our purpose is to glorify God, though there are a plethora of ways this is carried out.

     To help us categorize what it means to glorify God, theologians often refer to the three mandates of creation. The first is the cultural mandate (Gen 2:15, 1:28) We are called to "till the Garden." This means first of all that work is not a result of the Fall but it is part of what we were made for. As O.P. Robertson says, we are called to, "... bring out all the potential within the creation which might offer glory to the Creator." This means we should pursue things like science and the arts because they are no less important than things like evangelism and so-called "spiritual" activities. The second mandate is the social mandate.

     This is found in Gen 1:28 where we are told to be fruitful and multiply. This is the basis for marriage and family life. The third mandate is the spiritual mandate. This is the call to worship God and cultivate our relationship with Him. We see the Sabbath as part of God's provision for nurturing our love relationship with Him. When we take all of these mandates together we see that God's call to obedience is bigger than refraining from eating the forbidden fruit. He calls us to glorify Him in every area of life.