The Dynamic Tension

You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. -- James 4:4

I was traveling with some co-workers, both good, honest men, and we observed a billboard with this verse posted along the highway.  My colleague who was driving asked what I thought about the sign and why it was worded so harshly, as he saw it.  They are decent boys but not raccoons, and my own raccoon-fu was, at best, quite proto back then.  As I recall, I said that it was a relative thing, like Jesus telling us we have to hate father and mother in comparison to the love we should have toward our Father in heaven.  After all, it is Jesus who told us we are to love our enemies and do good to those who persecute us. 

I talked about what the world is yesterday.  It’s not necessarily a good place yet it is familiar.  I think about the character Brooksie played by James Whitmore in The Shawshank Redemption.  Once a person has fully adjusted to life in a prison, the freedom of a more normal life with its openness and lack of structure can be overwhelming.  Some of us prefer to remain in the confines to which we have become accustomed. 

I said I would like to get beamed up and out of the world.  The trouble is that we are called to be in the world though not of the world -- I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world (John 17:14).  We are sent into the world as Jesus was sent, agents of reality invading Vanity Fair -- As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world (v.18).

As long as we are dwelling in this tabernacle of meat and bone, we are going to have to interact with the world system.  Even if we are not deluded and seduced by it, it remains a fact to be dealt with.  Meat and bone reminds me of one of the late Dottie Rambo’s most poetic lines, from “The Holy Hills of Heaven Call Me” -- This house of clay is but a prison / Bars of bone hold my soul .  We have to feed this old body and clothe it, walk it around, and accept the effects of time and space, physics, chemistry, and biology.  To that extent, we play by the same rules as the world, but we are governed by the truth from another realm.  Our true home and our allegiance are in heaven.   

We can be friendly to the world, at peace with it unilaterally, from our side, so much as it will allow, but we can’t be friends.  Friends necessarily share a common view, a communion.  We are to love those who are in opposition to us, but we cannot be yoked to them for we bear the easy yoke of Christ with Him.  They have to surrender to Christ.  We don’t surrender to the world.  As Charles Atlas used to teach us, dynamic tension builds strength. 

Lifted and Separated

And I confronted them and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair. And I made them take oath in the name of God, saying, You shall not give your daughters to their sons, or take their daughters for your sons or for yourselves.  -- Nehemiah 13:25

This is not advocacy for racism or tribalism.  There is the aspect that Paul touches on when he tells us not to be unequally yoked, though the passage in 2 Corinthians 6 goes beyond marriage in its implications:  Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?  What accord has Christ with Belial?  Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever?  What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God (vv 14-16).

As Christians we need to separate ourselves from the world, and it is not easy.  I go to some site that is otherwise useful and informative and find provocative pictures to generate more traffic.  I turn on the television to catch the weather report, and I am subjected to all sorts of images during the commercial breaks and endless celebrations of the latest revelations of skankiness among the skanks.  For somebody my age, the sexual aspects are less of a hook than they used to be.  I’m more likely to be entrapped by the snares of greed and acquisitiveness which is a constant in this age.

Sometimes I am afraid, even after all these years and all I have seen – afraid that I am missing out.  I suspect that I am not alone in this.  The Amish seem fascinated by my motorcycle.  I sometimes wonder if I am corrupting them just by riding through their country.  Fear of missing out drives the purchase of many things, including lots and lots of pills. 

James 4:4 asks, Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?  It seems a little harsh, a little exclusive, maybe a little intolerant.  In fact, it is antagonistic.  We are at war.  [W]hoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.  Nehemiah’s rather extreme reaction makes a lot more sense when we realize that he was dealing, in effect, with traitors, with rebels who had sided with the enemies of the Lord.  But I have to ask myself if I have not been guilty of the same thing.  I want to get along.  I don’t want to make the people around me feel bad.  I don’t want to be tagged as someone weird.  I’ve been called every name in the book just because I am less than excited about celebrating All Saints’ Eve. 

A few years back, one of the managers got me moved to another site because I didn’t go out the bars after work.  Oddly enough, it worked out to my advantage.  Some people don’t like outsiders.  They like agreement and consensus.  They like endorsement and confirmation.  Telling some folks that they can do as they please is not enough.  They are not happy until you join them – not because they care about you or desire your company in a personal way.  They crave the sense of approval they get when everybody joins in.  

When we follow God instead of the crowd (even if the crowd gathers in a church building), we become targets.  We can be as circumspect and cautious as we like.  We can try to avoid giving offense.  They still, for some reason, manage to be offended.  I have been asked if I think that I am better than other people.  The answer is no.  Perhaps I am worse and weaker, more easily shackled by a bad habit. 

I have to answer to God for what I do and with whom I associate.  There may be times when it is less critical, when we can afford to be a little less strict.  But when the darkness falls and the storm breaks, we had better be on the right side.

Worldview

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world.  And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. – 1 John 2:15-17

You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. -- James 4:4

As we know, the world does not necessarily mean the earth.  The Greek word behind world can be transliterated as kosmos, which is related to kosmeo which means “to adorn.”  We might say “to dress things up.”  As used in the above passages, and many others in the New Testament, the cosmos isn’t a place but an arrangement.  In his little treatise called Love Not the World, Watchman Nee explains:  The classical idea of orderly arrangement or organization helps us to grasp what this is. Behind all that is tangible we meet something intangible, we meet a planned system; and in this system there is a harmonious functioning, a perfect order.

Now even though the kosmos has an internal harmony, it is hostile toward God and rejects Him.  Though it could not exist apart from God’s creation and is, in fact, derived from creation (it could not be otherwise), its internal consistency allows it to function apart from and in opposition to the Divine order.  In John 12:31-32, Jesus, speaking of His coming crucifixion, contrasts what has been with what is about to be:  Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out.  And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.  The Cross dethrones and casts down the one who has been ruling and will give mankind a new ruler and a new cosmos.

Christianity is often cited as a source of conflict in the world.  Jesus would not argue with that.  He said He came to bring division.  We are bound to be in conflict with an order and a system that rejects God and thus rejects us.  We tend to think of things being worldly that are obviously immoral or that are associated with debauchery.  But worldliness is simply looking at things in a way that lines up with the mind that is behind the world – the prince of this world. 

Satan does not rule over planet earth.  He rules that kosmos.  He has a hierarchy and structure upon which his system is organized and integrated.  If you accept that system, it will make perfect sense and have, as Nee said, an internal harmony.  Of course, this requires us to reject truth and much of what we know is real, but it does provide those who are of the world with the ability to live in a coherent way. 

If I say that the kosmos is a “state of mind” it conjures up connotations of positive thinking and positive mental attitudes.  It’s more like being of one mind with the mind behind the system.  In Romans 8 Paul says that to be fleshly- or worldly-minded is death while to be spiritually-minded is life and peace.  He says, in Colossians 3, that we should set our minds on things above, where Christ dwells.  If we accept the thinking of the world system, it is spiritual death because it cuts us off from God.  If we accept the mind of Christ we will have everlasting life, and, for a time, we will continue to live behind enemy lines, in contact with the world system, confronting, abrading, offending it – not because we are doing anything wrong, but because that kosmos has been judged and its ruler dethroned by the Cross.

A lot of us would like to declare a truce of some kind with the world.  It won’t work.  I’m going to have to close this out, but there seems to be a lot more here.  Maybe when I’m not so addled from working all night I'll be able to come back to it.    

I’m In the Pen But I’m Not A Pig

You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. – James 4:4

By the way, the reason James uses the feminine version of adulterer is that he is speaking to those of us who should constitute the Bride of Christ.

What do we mean by the world? The Bullet Notes in the back of my Holman Christian Standard Bible give about as good a definition as I can find. The world is [t]he organized Satanic system that is opposed to God and hostile to Jesus and His followers. The non-Christian culture including governments, educational systems, and businesses. I’d say that pretty well covers it, although I might add that much we call “church” or religious can be classified as of the world. And, though it is included under government, I would specifically list the legal system as being of the world. Separation of church and state didn’t originate with Jefferson’s letter – more like James’ Letter.

As a Christian, I don’t owe the world anything. I do pay my taxes and pay my own way primarily so the world will leave me alone. I am, by necessity, in the world, but there is no need to be of the world. There is no salvation in the world, in its ideas, plans or institutions. Proverbs says there is a way that seems right to a man, but it ends only in death. That’s the way of the world, the observable way, rather than the hidden way of the Tao. So, too, the Lord says the Kingdom of God does not come by observation – the Way, the Kingdom – same thing.

I know even as I am trying to put this into words that I am going to sound like some sort of desert hermit, anti-government survivalist flake, whacked-out malcontent, or somebody sitting on a rooftop in a bed sheet waiting for the Rapture. Well, whatever. What I know is that the world system works against godliness and for materialism. It favors carnality over spirituality and form over substance. It rewards clever conniving and rejects truth. The only way for a righteous person to win within the system is to become a part of it, to get down purely on the horizontal and see things as the worldling sees them.

The world will read a statement like the one above and laugh at it. Of course, the system will work against the “spiritual” and for the pragmatic. The non-conforming person should have no expectation of success in the real world. You can believe what you like, the world says, but you have to play by our rules.

No.

I’m tired of trying to appease the world, of trying to get along, of playing a rigged game. The righteous will, by their very nature, have to operate at a disadvantage. I am called to be pure in heart, a peacemaker, one who turns the other cheek, goes the extra mile – one who hungers and thirsts after righteousness. I am called to seek first the Kingdom, not fame, acclaim, or someone to blame. I do not believe that ultimately I have to be of the world to be in it. Either God is in control or no one is. Either Jesus is Truth, or there is no truth.

Every institution and process that is of the world is simply an attempt to usurp the place of Christ, to build a tower of Babel, to achieve by human effort what is mine by faith. To the extent that I believe in the system, I do not believe in Christ.

It sounds radically radical. It sounds scandalous to my own ears. Surely I don’t really believe what I am saying. I do believe it. I may struggle to live it, to synchronize my confession with my conversation, but I believe it. Too many times, God has slapped me with the reality of the system’s antagonism. I have been depressed enough to die over the fact that, although I knew I was in the right, the system turned against me. Why? I cried to the Lord. And He said, because it’s not My system, not My Kingdom, not My Way. When I abandoned the world and stepped back into the Way, miraculously, one might say, the problem was resolved. Peace came into my life, and I walked again in light.

Weeping endures for the night – for the world is in darkness, even unto this hour. But joy comes in the morning.