1 John 2:15 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. 16 For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life[c]—is not from the Father but is from the world. 17 And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.
This is a passage that Christians have often mishandled and continue to mishandle today. The stumbling block is the word, “world.” What does it mean to love the world? What does it mean to love the things of the world? How does doing the will of God stand in opposition to loving the world.
When I was a young man, I grew up in a tradition that defined “the world” as anything that was associated with intrinsically sinful behavior. So, for example, people played cards while drinking and gambling and fraternizing with strange women and so in the Church tradition I grew up in, “playing cards with a standard 52 card deck” was “worldly.” As such the college I attended (which was connected with that Church Denomination tradition) forbade playing cards on campus, though playing Rook was perfectly acceptable. Another example was consuming adult beverages. Drinking was often associated with drunkenness, loose morals, floozy women, and broken homes. As such, by that association alcohol was considered “worldly” or “a thing of this world.” Again, like playing cards alcohol was forbidden. Other examples were dancing, and going to see any film. Now, keep in mind, not many of us paid attention to these rules but the rules were there all the same.
There is a way to answer the questions that we opened with about how to concretely define what it means to wrongly love the world and to wrongly love the things of the world and that is found in understanding the distinction between structure and direction.
In creation God created all things good. The whole structure of the Cosmos was created good and when we live in terms of God’s law within that structure created and ordained by God we are at that point living in the world but are not loving the world or the things of the world. As examples here, God created a world of beauty and when we love beautiful creations as created by artists that are consistent with God’s beauty structure we are not loving the world. However, should we fall into loving ugliness as beauty (a John Cage concert, or a Andrew Serrano art piece) we are at that time loving the world and the things of the world.
Another way to love the things of the world is to love the gift above the giver, so that if we start loving our art museum more than we love God we have abandoned the God ordained structure of the world for the world itself absent God. At that point we disobey John’s writ. We would say then, that there is a worldly way to love art that displeases God and a way to biblically love art that pleases God.
We have needs to understand that it is not the God created structure itself that is evil (dancing, alcohol, films, a deck of cards) but the direction of the heart that is plying these structures.
The structure of politics might be another example. God has created a world where there is a necessity to govern. A Christian can theoretically go into politics because it is a creational structure ordained by God. However, the Christian could fall into loving the world and the things of the world by altering the God intended direction of politics. Being a politician is not inherently sinful because politics is one of the structure God created the world with. However, sinful men can fall in love with the world and the things of the world and so by setting a direction for their politics which is contrary to God’s intent and law displease God in their politics. For example, Politicians need to heed the warning of John if they are headed in a anti-Christ direction with the Structure of politics by becoming a Stalin or a Mao. On the other hand Christian politicians properly loving a world structure of God’s creation would be Christlike by embracing politics like a Cromwell or a Kuyper. You see it is not that politics is inherently evil and so always to be avoided as a thing of the World. It is that politics as a World structure that God created can be taken in a Christ like direction or a anti-Christ like direction.
The point here is that in terms of structure (the vertical axis of creation) God created all things good. However men as fallen will set a direction (the horizontal axis depending upon mean’s heart) that is contrary to the creational structure and so will begin to love the world and the things in the world. Another way to think about structure and reality that might be helpful is to realize that structure is reality as God created and intended it to be, whereas direction is the disposition or lean (sinful or righteous) of men and women operating in those God created structures.
What we are seeing here is that there is nothing in the world that can not be received and handled with thankfulness as to its structure. There is nothing in creation that is inherently wicked as a structure There is a great deal that is wicked because of the direction that men move in, in terms of the structure.
Biblical structure as handled in a Biblical direction by a Christian will yield genuine art as opposed to postmodern ugliness, science as opposed to pseudo science, historians who begin with God and His revelation in writing history as opposed to economic determinacy as the foundation of their history writing, and social orders that have a harmony of interests vs. a conflict of interests. The structure is never the problem but rather the direction.
In this kind of understanding, even non-Christian can contribute to a positive direction of the cultural structure as they operate (inconsistently with their avowed presuppositions) in keeping with the majority direction as set by Christians in a culture. Non-Christians like Mozart, can create gloriously beautiful music. Their abilities move in a Christian direction because the structure around them is set because the culture itself is moving in a god-ward direction. A Mozart would still be loving the world and the things of the world because he loved the gift more than the giver but the music that the man made can be received as a good gift from God.
As we consider then what it means to love the world and the things of the world we must keep in mind the question of structure and direction. If we are moving in the proper direction we can handle dance (for example) as a structure from God to the glory of God. Dance won’t be reduced to some kind of sinful sexual grinding but will exhibit the beauty that reflects the glory of God and will be consistent with God’s character.
When we consider the issue of structure and direction we must also speak about Radical Two Kingdom theology (R2k). R2K gets this manner seriously wrong as the R2K boys insist that only biblical structure can exist as it relates to the Church as Institution. All other structures, regardless of the direction in which men handle them, will always be structures that are not Christian and can never be Christian. Institutions like family, law, arts, education, science, or politics will always be structures that are, at the very best, a-Christian. In R2K it is not possible for these structures to be God’s structures in the sense that they can be so directionally handled to the glory of God, and in keeping with His law that they can be considered part of God’s Kingdom. Per R2K they are and always will remain structurally inert. As such, even if these (per R2K) “common” institutional structures are handled by God-honoring Christians the structures themselves can never be Christian. The structures always remain (in R2K land) “common,” which is to say they remain neutral in terms of their Christian impact.
So, by embracing this notion of “structure” and “direction” we can at one and the same time deal a knock out blow to both the often seen otherworldiness of pietism and the refusal of R2K to honor Christ as King in all areas of life.
Summarizing then when we think of the admonition to not love the world or the things of the world we have to make distinctions in our mind. We need to remember that the idea of “world” in terms of structure and direction. As Christians we can affirm, as we have said, the World as structure in the sense that God created the world and everything in it and called it “very good.” This corporeal world that God created is a positive that Christians can and should delight in. After all,
This is my father’s world
I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas
His hand the wonders wrought
The qualifier here though is that this is true only as the World as Structure is moving increasingly towards its “age to come,” new creation direction.
For you see, speaking of the World as structure it is always moving in one of two directions. It is either moving in terms of the first Adam or it is moving in terms of the Last Adam. When the World as structure has the direction of the 1st Adam then we must we obey the words of John here.
1 John 2:15 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. 16 For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life[c]—is not from the Father but is from the world. 17 And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.
However, when the World as Structure is moving towards the Last Adam … towards it’s ever increasingly age to come consummation then we must embrace the World keeping in mind that God was in Christ reconciling the World unto Himself and remembering that the World itself is
itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
Direction and Structure … distinctions that we must keep in mind to avoid the anti-Christ other-worldliness found in many forms of pietism, the anti-Christ intentional de-Christianization of the common realm as taught by R2K and the anti-Christ syncretism of Christianity and cultural Marxism as taught by the ubiquitous Marxist clergy.
Idiocratic experts.