Worldliness Is Sin

Now, what exactly is worldliness? Before defining it, let’s examine its fruits.

Take a hard look at the world around you. Search your local newspaper. Visit the magazine section of any large bookstore. Scan through television channels. The modern age is filled with flashing, sparkling eye candy of multiple cultures and subcultures that compete for your attention.

Society is drowning in mobile phones, pagers, handheld computers, e-mails—possessed by people who “have” to be instantly and continuously linked to each other because they’re afraid of being “out of the loop.”

Wanting to rebel against mainstream society, some hide behind “character” outfits. Today, middle and upper class teens often dress as though they are hardcore urban street thugs trapped in an endless cycle of poverty, violence and hopelessness.

Some who are “depressed” about growing up in a two-parent, middle class family dress up in “Goth” styles, wearing black and white makeup and black lipstick to prove to the world how “serious” they take life. Others fill their lives with raves and after-hours parties, and pour a virtual pharmacy of drugs into their systems. They live to get high, refusing to face the sober realities of life.

Go to an independent music store and you will see another sub-culture of worldliness: youth full of pride and vanity, yet clean in their own eyes (Prov. 30:12). With hairstyles resembling everything from spikes to lions’ manes to unkempt, unwashed and undesirable, today’s teens and twenty-something's scrounge for the latest “underground record.” They idolize whatever is the latest band to unleash crashing and wailing, falsely called music. Such songs could be rock, rap or jazz—to a young person it does not matter, as long as his peers approve.

Observe any music award television show. Notice how so many in the audience wear tight-fitting, virtually painted-on outfits that are flashy and attention-getting, revealing parts of the body that were meant to be concealed. Many now look like aliens from outer space.

Notice the way people walk, especially in the inner cities. Full of brashness and bravado, they stroll as if to say, “Don’t mess with me.”

Listen to how people speak. Even those with Master’s degrees curse and use slang words as though they only have third-grade educations. So many love to copy those who cannot form a complete sentence without cursing or using God’s name in vain.

And there are those who swing to the other extreme. They avoid using common, everyday words and deliberately use more scholarly words that appeal to intellectual vanity, yet offer very little in substance. Such people seem to be in love with their own minds. Using the language of academia is their way of getting respect from their like-minded peers.

But King Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, said, “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity…I communed with my own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem: yes, my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge. And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increases knowledge increases sorrow” (Ec. 1:1, 16-18). Of course, accumulating important knowledge is certainly not wrong.

Notice the world of mainstream entertainment and media. It’s about what’s hot, what’s new, what’s next, the latest—the latest movie blockbuster or sitcom. Today, entertainment is about “how far can we go?” in pushing (or blurring) the boundaries of decency and good taste. More extra-marital sex, more violence, less morality, more blurring the lines between good and evil, promoting situational ethics instead of choosing right over wrong.

Many, desperate to show how sophisticated their tastes are, embrace the world of independent films—a sub-culture of sickness and depravity passing itself off as intellectually uplifting.

On college campuses and high school and middle school hallways, the air is charged with sexual tension, mixed with peer pressure and bad judgment. Using a “band-aid” approach, adults turn a blind eye to the misadventures of the next generation, which is sexually active, jaded and always ready to move on to something new. Sadly, many are in awe of homosexuality and lesbianism, thinking it is “cool,” and decide to experiment.

For increasing numbers, life is centered around weekends filled with extreme sports: mountain climbing, para-sailing, skateboarding, mountain biking, and so forth. Their world is about getting that next “rush.” Without it, they seem to not feel alive.

And then there are those who love to read whatever the intellectual world deems as “hot.” They love reading the writings of authors who they view as wise—yet they reject the Author of true knowledge. They ignore His book, the Bible, which is the world’s best-seller—while at the same time, it is the least understood.

Other readers go to the opposite extreme, filling their lives with underground “zines” and obscene independent comic books and graphic novels, which would have been stamped “x-rated” twenty years ago.

What is underground and cutting edge today—music, dance, books, plays—inevitably becomes mainstream tomorrow. This will drive the underground scene to be even more extreme…which will eventually become mainstream. And so the cycle continues, until this world becomes completely like the last days of Noah and of Sodom and Gomorrah (Luke 17:26-30). That time is soon.

Again, what is worldliness? What does it mean to be worldly? Worldliness is anything that violates—transgresses—God’s perfect and Holy Law of love (Rom. 13:10). Anything contrary to His way—found in His Word—is the way of this world. This includes our actions and thoughts. God’s Law is spiritual (Rom. 7:14). This Law covers all aspects of life.

When Jesus Christ was on earth as flesh and blood, He was tempted by the things of this world like any other man. But He overcame the world (John 16:33). He expects His servants, Christians, to follow His example (I Pet. 2:21).

God inspired John to write, “We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one” (I John 5:19). In fact, the whole world is deceived by Satan the devil (Rev. 12:9). As the “prince of the power of the air” (Eph. 2:2), Satan broadcasts his worldly attitudes of lust, greed, envy, pride and vanity.

Paul pointed out to the Corinthian Christians that, though we are physically in the world, we must come spiritually out of the world (I Cor. 5:9-11).

One of the leading magazines today is called “Cosmopolitan,” sometimes nick-named “Cosmo.” This name makes a clear statement—that its articles, advertisements, photos and readership are of this world. But when Christ and Paul taught about overcoming the world, they used the Greek word kosmos, which is where “cosmopolitan” comes from. Being cosmopolitan is not an option for God’s servants!

Avoid Worldliness

In John 15:19, Christ told His disciples, “If you were of the world, the world would love his own: but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.”

Christians are not—cannot be—of this world, even though they must live in it. God commands His people to not only “come out of her [the ways of this world], My people, that you be not partakers of her sins, and that you receive not of her plagues” (Rev. 18:4), but also not to look back, longing for what we left behind. Christ instructed, in Luke 17:32, “Remember Lot’s wife.” This woman merely looked back at Sodom and Gomorrah and became a pillar of salt as a result. The point is that she longed for a way of life that she had been taken out of.

If you are truly avoiding worldliness, then you are dedicating yourself to God and His way of life. You are living your life “by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4). You are letting God’s Word direct and guide every thought and every activity in which you engage. You are building godly character, practicing balance and moderation in everything you think and do. If you do these things, and avoid worldliness, you will have a happy, balanced and abundant life!