If you’ve been around traditional evangelicalism long, you’ve no doubt heard that Christian should be “in the world, but not of it.” And there’s a lot of truth in that statement, when it’s rightly understood.
The problem is, there are a lot of angles from which people define what it means to be “of the world,” or to use an old-fashioned word, to be “worldly.”
In my grandparents’ generation, worldliness was usually interpreted as the activities and behaviors often practiced by people who weren’t associated with the church. You could usually list them pretty quickly.
Dancing, card-playing, going to the movies, wearing tattoos, listening to the “world’s” music… those were thought of as “worldly” things.
There’s a major flaw with this kind of thinking, however. Jesus hit it head-on with the Pharisees when he reminded them that they could be like whitewashed tombs, behaving in a “holy” way on the outside, but spiritually dead on the inside.
Besides, whose list do we use? I like to play cards. I’m a terrible dancer, but I’m happy to try when my wife and I are in the right place and time and dancing happens to be going on nearby. I could pretty much be a repeat offender of everything on that list except the tattoo thing, and I’m just waiting for the right moment.
Worldliness isn’t about behavior, alone. It can’t be. We wind up using lists that change over time and our list becomes a scoresheet we use to make sure we’re less worldly and therefore somehow more holy that the people we observe around us.
Worldliness starts with the heart. It’s about beliefs and affections. It’s about attachments.
When I’m attached to this planet, as it is in its fallen state, I’ll make decisions and demonstrate behaviors that are inconsistent with the Bible’s teachings. Being entertained isn’t worldly. Being more enamored with temporary things than eternal things is.
And this is where the church comes in.
The church is a movement started by Jesus consisting of people who are a “called out assembly,” charged with the assignment of bringing the joy and glory of God to all people in their communities and in their world.
Elsewhere the Bible calls God’s people “peculiar,” signifying that we are God’s alone and therefore are to be different and distinct in some way from the world.
So yes, we’re in the world. We’re here to love the people around us, to offer the redemptive story of Jesus to anyone who will hear it, and to improve the world around us as his redeemed people.
But how do we stay out of the world while living in it?
There are basically three strategies when it comes to living up to our role as a “called out” people.
One is isolation, whereby we disconnect ourselves from the world around us and move into a spiritual ivory tower. We do this when we establish rules of righteousness that we can easily live by and use to assign others to a notch lower than ourselves.
But Jesus wasn’t an isolationist. He was constantly moving around the community, gathering crowds, bumping into people, rubbing shoulders with notorious sinners, going to parties with tax collectors, sharing life lessons with prostitutes, and offering grace and more grace to anyone who wanted it.
The second strategy is imitation whereby we become like the world in order to reach the world. We do this when we live our lives out of unbiblical philosophies and worldviews.
I often hear people talk about guitars and drums in church as being “like the world.” No, that’s just being musical. Adjusting our style or our methods of communication to make the gospel more relatable and understandable to people unfamiliar with it isn’t worldly. It’s evangelistic.
We imitate the world when our decisions are influenced more by a godless philosophy than a God-centered one. When we think materialistically, as though this world is all there is; or when we think humanistically, as though we are sufficient without God’s influence; or when we think naturalistically, as though there isn’t a supernatural empowering available to us from God… then we’re being worldly.
The third strategy is insulation and infiltration in which we insulate ourselves with the truth of God’s Word and then carry that truth into the world with us.
God calls very few people into full-time, vocational ministry. He leaves the most of his followers in their lives as his newly-called missionaries.
Your workplace is a mission field, as well as your family and your neighborhood.
If you isolate yourself from the world, you’ll never reach it. Instead, we become attractional when we demonstrate in real ways the difference that thinking biblically about life makes on a daily basis.
When we’re committed to stronger ethics because of our faith… when we express and share more joy because of our faith… when we’re prone to show grace instead of judgment… we’re properly being in the world as witnesses while not being of the world in our beliefs and behaviors.
And how do we do that effectively? Two simple steps…
- Soak up God’s word, which shapes our worldview.
- Share the story freely, in a supernaturally natural way.
Jesus put it this way…
Father, I don’t ask you to take my followers out of the world, but keep them safe from the evil one. They don’t belong to this world, and neither do I. Your word is the truth. So let this truth make them completely yours.
John 17:15-17 CEV
One of my favorite books on this subject is Onward: Engaging the Culture without Losing the Gospel by Russell Moore.
I found your article very well written that afforded me some comfort this evening before my evening P.&M.
Thank you
Mickael
Michael, awesome! I’m so glad.
Brandon, thank you for your blog, story, article. What you said is true. Jesus, has given us what we need to be in this world but not over taken the lust of it. Jesus was in the world but not of it. He heard His Father and ours and He obeyed just like He has given us the ability with the Holy Spirit as well as the examples in the Bible.
You’re right, David! Thanks for stopping by!
i enjoyed reading your article. But Jesus called John the Baptist the greatest man who ever lived! The reason is that John was totally committed to God. He was different than the people around him in more than one way. You clearly knew who John stood for no matter if you had met him for the first time or had become a disciple.
Jesus set the disciples aside until they had lived with Him for three years occasionally sending them into the villages to see if they had learned what he was teaching.
The fact is that when we are called to Christ, we must die to self as Paul puts it. We must focus on every decision and how it will honor God. Not only do we need to be in the bible but we need to flee from those things that are contrary to the bible.
It does begin with the heart and will follow in our actions. But it we allow other things in that are contrary to what God says we become a contradiction within ourselves.
Quick example. We tell our children about Santa Claus being really. No real harm correct? In fact most of the children are between the ages of 3 and 9 while they believe in Santa, but sometime around that age they realize that there is no Santa and that mom and dad have lied to them. Children do not have core values completely developed until the age of 11. So the child learns that mom and dad may say it is wrong to tell a lie but their actions show that it may be ok.
God is not a partial God and we should not be partial believers. When we rationalize that it is ok to watch a tv show for entertainment that is contrary to God’s word we have rationalized out that it is ok since we really don’t believe it which is precisely what the children of Israel did. That applies to all things in life and not just tv.
In ministry and in our lives every decision we make should be answered by two things. First have we taken the decision to God or do we know that in the Bible it clearly states that it is ok or not ok. Second, if the Bible is not clear, are we willing to wait until God gives us the answer.
We are sinners by nature but we will be recognized by God for our hearts but anyone who truly has a heart for God is not going to compromise their belief in him.
Ken, I agree with the questions you suggest we should apply to every decision we make. Thanks for pushing back in a respectful way and offering a bit of a different point of view.
Thanks a lot. We learn everyday
Absolutely!