When
reading from the Gospel of John or the letters attributed to John there is a
dumb-sounding question that should really be addressed, and it is this:
What is the world?
It's the kind of question most of us would be ashamed to ask because it sounds so
stupid. The world is the earth and all
that is in it, duh! That’s true, but that’s not the primary definition that John uses, and it’s not the definition Christians often use
when talking about things that are spiritual and things that are secular. John
sets up this dichotomy between those who are in Christ and those who are in
the world that has infiltrated our language as Christians to this day, and
I have to admit that on most days I wish this idea didn’t exist because it is
so confusing and so appallingly used by those who see themselves as the morality
police that it ruins the original intent. It is one thing for John to
say, “We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us, and whoever is not from
God does not listen to us.” But it is quite another thing for one of us to say
the same thing. I don’t know about you, but I’m always concerned whenever
somebody claims God’s authority for what they are about to say because what
they use that authority to say is usually offensive and poorly thought out.
The
misuse of this phrase, “the world,” has led to the implication that everything
out there is bad and everything in here is good. The idea that there are those
set apart who are above reproach in the midst of a broken world may sound nice
in principle, but the problem is (if I’m honest) that I can never know on which
side of that fence I’m standing. Yes, the world is broken—a quick check of the
news is enough to know this is true. War in Israel
and Gaza; the mess that is Ukraine and Russia;
the killing of Christians in Iraq;
Ebola in Sierra Leone and Liberia; plane
crashes and tornadoes. The world out there clearly has its problems, but this idea that we are a beacon of righteousness in
a sea of godlessness is about as dangerous an idea as a person can have. To say
that I am in Christ but he or she is in the world is not only arrogant; it’s
an impossible distinction for us to make.
Christianity has
this way of talking about brokenness that
is helpful. We say that everything was created “good,” but everything is now covered by this veneer
we call “sin” because of our human desire to become like God. Everything is
covered by sin. It’s not that those of us “in Christ” are less broken than
those “in the world;” we are all the same. So when we talk about the world as a
place of godlessness, implying that the way to fix the world is for it to
become more like us, we betray our motives. I’m sick of those who belittle the world as if they are not part of it,
as if their holiness excuses them from blame. But on an even more basic level,
I have concerns whenever we distance ourselves from the world because in our most famous, most quoted verse in the
Bible from John 3:16 God promises that redemption comes not just to a faithful
remnant but to the whole darn creation: “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son so that whoever
believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” God loves the world. In fact, the Greek word here
is “kosmos,” which Neil de Grasse Tyson could tell you is bigger than the earth
but in fact encompasses, well, everything functioning together as one
harmonious system. And if God loves that whole business out there that is
covered in sin how hypocritical of us to suggest that those of us who are “in
Christ” are set apart from it!
The
world doesn’t stop at our doorsteps. We are part of it whether we like or not.
The reason that John talks so extensively about the world is because John wants to make sure we understand that as
Christians we are called to live not only in this old world but also into this
spiritual reality of a new creation in Christ. But, hearing that, we too often
throw the baby out with the bathwater, believing that our destiny is apart from
the world; that, in fact, the world is evil and heaven is good; that the Bible
is “basic instructions before leaving earth.” All of this completely undermines
God’s love for the world, because God is redeeming the whole stinking thing.
And, yes, it does stink. It stinks that children die of cancer and malaria, and
it stinks that some people who live into their 90s bury children and
grandchildren. It stinks that there are droughts and floods and viruses that
kill doctors and nurses dedicated to saving others; it stinks that some people
feel so trapped and isolated that they turn to alcohol and drugs or, failing
that, suicide.
We
can peel apart the world into categories that make us comfortable. We can try
to make sense of senseless suffering, pretending that it is karma that rules
our lives. There is nothing more human than preferring karma to grace, as
ultimately unfulfilling as it may be. We try to split the world into two
realms: physical and spiritual—good and bad. There’s nothing that makes me want
to bash my head against a wall more than hearing “you just have to be in the
spirit,” as if that is something that happens because of the strength of my
willpower. John doesn’t allow that kind of bologna. He writes that we are
to test spirits by asking whether they proclaim Jesus or not, which means that it
is not enough to be in the spirit,
because there are spirits that are pro-Jesus and anti-Jesus just as there are some
things in the world that proclaim
Christ and some that don’t. It’s not that spiritual things are good and
physical things are bad. In fact, the more we try to parse the physical and the
spiritual—the “this-worldly” from the “other-worldly”—the more evident it
becomes that the distinctions we make between what is physical and spiritual
are mostly imaginary. What matters more than spiritual things and worldly
things is whether something speaks to the reality of a God who died on the
cross for you, or whether it speaks a message of self-sufficiency and hedonism.
Do you want karma
or do you want grace? That’s really what this “world” business comes down to.
John wants you to be wary of messages that suggest you can save yourself, and
yes, you hear those messages out in the
world—by which we tend to mean out there where talking about God is not
commonplace. But let’s not pretend that we are the faithful remnant of
Christianity and everybody else is “the world,” preaching something other than
Jesus, because I know people a little bit and if we are anything we are
concerned first about ourselves, and if we’re concerned first about ourselves
we’ve already missed the boat on what Jesus taught, and if we’re already off that
boat then our conception of the world
is already out of whack, and from there it’s only a small step to making
everything out there evil while I am this paragon of all things good.
Then
the world becomes scary and bad so God forbid we would go out into it with anything
but scorn. The world, apparently, is out to kill us. Well, maybe this much is
true. It seems that Jesus knew this. At the very least he knew that the world could kill him and so that’s exactly
where he walked: straight out into the world. For God so loved the world… And if we’re going to be anything
resembling Christians we might want to consider that ourselves. If God went out
into a place that was inhospitable, then maybe that’s where we are being called
as well. But maybe even more important is realizing that to people in another
place we are the world, and maybe we
are the ones being inhospitable to strangers; maybe we are the ones who
others—Christian and non-Christian alike—look at and say, “They are scary. They
might kill me.”
Who
are we to assume that the side of the fence where we stand is the side that is in Christ? And if we’re truly not
sure—if there is even the slightest doubt in our minds—then it is time to take
a step back and change that way we think. If none of us can be 100% sure of
where we stand—if all that we can fall back on is the grace of God—then to be
in Christ or in the world, in the flesh or in the spirit, is a distinction without
a point. Our job is, as it always was, to pick up our crosses and follow the example
of the only one who saw life as it truly is. We are to pick up our crosses and
follow Jesus to death—the death of our bodies, the death of our expectations,
the death of our judgments on the world from which we are inseparable. For God so loved the world. Thank God.
Because we are so a part of it.
Amen.
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