“The Bible says that when you become a Christian your mind is renewed, and so with that renewing of your mind comes a new view of the world in which you live.”
~ Laszlo Tokes

We are pleased to announce the third annual Laszlo Tokes Award. This award includes two cash gifts of $750 and will be given to the two rising seniors who write the best essays addressing a current issue or world situation from a Christian perspective.

If you are currently a junior, you are invited to write an essay that engages with a topic or issue that is of interest to you. Examples of issues include: poverty, race relations, healthcare, war, consumerism, HIV/AIDS, and marriage. The essay should reflect your application of a biblical Christian worldview to whichever issue you choose. (To read more about a Christian worldview, please turn over.)

If you would like to apply, please fill out an application form and submit an essay by Monday, April 21, 2008. The essay must be double-spaced, 12-point font, and 4-5 pages in length. Your essay may be an adaptation of a paper that you’ve already written, so long as you engage the subject in your essay from an explicitly Christian perspective. To be eligible to apply, you must currently be a junior who is planning to graduate in December 2008 or May 2009.

This award was made possible by the vision and donation of a Hope alumna. It is named in honor of Laszlo Tokes, a pastor in the Hungarian Reformed Church whose consistent faithfulness to his Christian convictions and calling sparked a revolution that led to the downfall of the Communist Regime in Romania in 1989. It is being facilitated by the CrossRoads Project.

Background information about Laszlo Tokes

Religious freedom was severely restricted during the regime of Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania, with government authorities controlling what was taught and preached in churches. Laszlo Tokes criticized Ceausescu and his oppressive government for starving the Romanian people while he faithfully preached and served his congregation in Timisoara. The church grew dramatically under his leadership despite the presence of secret police and armed agents around and in the church building. When the government tried to exile Tokes to a remote village, he refused to leave, even under the threat of force. Members of his church and members of churches throughout the town gathered together in front of Tokes’ home on the day the government had scheduled his eviction--Catholics, Orthodox, Baptists, Pentecostals, and Reformed; Hungarians, Romanians, and Germans stood side by side in solidarity. Tokes spoke to them from his window, saying “We are one in Christ. We speak different languages, but we have the same Bible and the same God. We are one.” The protest that began at that small church moved to the central square of Timisoara and then spread to other parts of Romania. A week later, by Christmas of 1989, the Ceausescu regime had ended.

What is a Christian worldview?

Laszlo Tokes has written that Christianity involves a renewing of our minds that leads us to view the world in which we live from a new perspective, informed by our Christian faith and convictions. This essay offers you the opportunity to explore how your Christian faith impacts and informs your view of an issue in this world. It asks you to apply a biblical Christian worldview to the issue or topic that you choose to address.

One writer has suggested that a worldview is similar to a pair of sunglasses, in that the tint of sunglasses colors everything we see. Similarly, our worldview impacts how we look at things and what we see. As Christians look at the world, their perspective is informed by their understanding of the created nature of the world and of human beings, the reality of sinfulness and brokenness, the redemption brought in and through Jesus Christ, and the hope we have as we await the full restoration of creation and humanity.

In this essay you are invited to explore how your Christian worldview impacts your understanding of a topic or an issue. As you engage with the topic you have chosen, think about how your view of the world is informed by your beliefs about such things as creation, the fall, and redemption. Think about how these beliefs impact your perspective on the particular issue you are exploring. As you write, try to integrate this Christian perspective into your engagement with the issue at hand.

Here are some other thoughts on worldviews to keep in mind as you write:

A worldview is a set of beliefs about the most important issues in life. The philosophical systems of great thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle were worldviews. Every mature rational human being…has his or her own worldview just as surely as Plato did…Achieving awareness of our worldview is one of the most important things we can do…A worldview is a conceptual scheme by which we consciously or unconsciously place or fit everything we believe and by which we interpret and judge reality.
Ronald Nash, Worldviews in Conflict: Choosing Christianity in a World if Ideas

A people’s world view is their way of thinking about life and the world, coupled with the values they set for themselves in the context of that way of thinking. The Japanese have a world view which shapes their lives together, the Canadian Dene Indians have one, the majority culture in North America has one, and so forth. There is also a Christian world view, not indeed embodied clearly in any extant society but expressed in the Scriptures. To adopt Christianity with authenticity is to be a person of faith who embraces that biblical world view…. This is a world view for shaping all of life and not just for shaping some “religious” or “spiritual” or “sacred” corner of life.
Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Foreword,” The Transforming Vision: Shaping a Christian World View

What do we mean when we say that Christianity is a worldview? What we mean is that the Christian faith is a philosophical tapestry of interdependent ideas, principles and metaphysical claims that are derived from the Hebrew-Christian Scriptures as well as the creeds, theologies, communities, ethical norms and institutions that have flourished under the authority of these writings. These beliefs are not mere utterances of private religious devotion but are propositions whose proponents claim accurately instruct us on the nature of the universe, human persons, our relationship with God, human communities and the moral life.
Francis J. Beckwith, William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland, editors. To Everyone an Answer: A Case for the Christian Worldview

For our purposes, worldview will be defined as “the comprehensive framework of one’s basic beliefs about things.”...[T]hings is a deliberately vague term that refers to anything about which it is possible to have a belief. I am taking it in the most general sense imaginable, as encompassing the world, human life in general, the meaning of suffering, the value of education, social morality, and the importance of the family. Even God can in this sense be said to be included among the ‘things’ about which we have basic beliefs.
Albert M. Wolters, Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview