worldliness

Any book on worldliness faces a difficult challenge. The author who takes too firm a stand on issues may slip into legalism while the author who takes too lax a stand may slip into the worldliness he seeks to avoid. The discerning author will need to tread the line, being careful to say no more than Scripture does while still dealing effectively with issues of contemporary importance. Because such a book is long overdue I was pleased to see that Worldliness would be coming from C.J. Mahaney and those whom John Piper affectionately refers to as “his gang.”

Mahaney handles the introductions in this book, beginning with a reflection called “Is This Verse in Your Bible?” He biblically defines worldliness saying that this world we’re not supposed to love is “the organized system of human civilization that is actively hostile to God and alienated from God.” Worldliness is a love for this fallen world and, specifically, “to gratify and exalt oneself to the exclusion of God.” Mahaney is careful to point out that worldliness is not extrinsic to us but intrinsic, inhabiting our fallen hearts. Worldliness does not consist of outward actions (though such actions can certainly be evidence of worldliness) but instead is a heart attitude that rebels against God. The antidote to worldliness is the cross of Christ. “Only through the power of the cross of Christ can we successfully resist the seduction of the fallen world.” Worldliness dulls our affections for Christ and distracts our hearts from him. Hence it is so serious “because Christ is so glorious.” While resisting worldliness is the theme of the book, its aim is to exalt Christ.

Each of the subsequent chapters is meant to build on this foundation. In “God, My Heart, and Media,” Craig Cabaniss discusses issues related to the pervasiveness of media in our society. Cabaniss grounds the discussion in grace, saying “any discussion of biblical obedience, including entertainment guidelines, must spring from a robust understanding of grace.” He offers the fair warning that we must guard our hearts as the conscience is prone to become dull over time. As we relax our standards and as we engage in ungodly media habits, our hearts may slowly become dulled to the things of Christ. He warns against the temptation to see anyone with stricter standards as us as legalistic while seeing anyone with more lenient standards as worldly. He encourages us to view proactively, to view accountably and to view gratefully.

In “God, My Heart, and Music,” Bob Kauflin takes on the subject of music, beginning with the fact that music was God’s idea long before it crossed the mind of any human. He states that “listening to music without discernment and godly intent reveals a heart willing to flirt with the world.” Saying that music itself is amoral (there are no holy or unholy harmonies or melodies) he warns that music does convey three things: content, context and culture. The Christian will need to discern what is being communicated through the music he listens to in order to ensure that he is not, perhaps inadvertently, absorbing messages that would conflict with his Christian faith. Kauflin closes with some good thoughts on using music for the glory of God.

To this point I felt the book was excellent. Though in a work of this nature each of the chapters could be little more than a cursory introduction to what might have been a book-length project, I felt the authors did a great job of teaching, exhorting and illustrating while avoiding those perilous extremes of worldliness and legalism. Unfortunately I felt that Worldliness soon stalled out. And this is where the job of a book reviewer gets tough. What do you do when you have great respect for an author (or a group of authors) but just don’t like the book they’ve produced?

The fourth chapter, entitled “God, My Heart, and Stuff” was authored by Dave Harvey. While I haven’t ever met Dave (at least to my recollection) I have benefited from reading his book When Sinners Say ‘I Do’. From my experience in reading that book I had high hopes for his contribution to this one. I was disappointed. While he addressed the heart so well in his book on marriage, in this case I found little of real depth. The next chapter, from the pen of C.J. Mahaney is titled “God, My Heart, and Clothes” and discusses the issue of modesty. It had very little application to men beyond stating that this is an issue for pastors and fathers to consider. Ultimately he provided a lot of quotes and a few good thoughts on modesty and encouraged women to dress properly. Both of the book’s appendices carried on the theme, with “A Modesty Heart Check” and “Considering Modesty on Your Wedding Day.” But this was quite a superficial look at modesty and one that offered little that we haven’t heard C.J. and others say before. It did not take the issue of modesty to men (where modesty of heart and intention comes into play) but instead serves as just another encouragement to girls to check their neckline and test their hemline (see Josh Harris’ Sex is Not the Problem, Lust Is for a more thorough look at it). Jeff Purswell concludes with a chapter titled “How to Love the World” in which he reminds the reader “To impart biblical discernment in areas that increasingly escape the scrutiny of the evangelical world so intent on ‘relating to the culture.’” He offers a summary of redemptive history in the grid of Creation, Fall, Redemption and Consummation and gives the reader a three-part charge: to enjoy the world, to engage the world and to evangelize the world. These last three chapters and the appendices were uniformly disappointing to me. Missing was the depth and intensity I’d expect from a book authored (or edited) by Mahaney.

Had I been hoping that this book might be another Humility or The Cross Centered Life, Worldliness would have been quite a disappointment. This is not to say the book is without value—there is a good bit of biblical wisdom to gain from it. But where it got off to a strong start, it quickly tapered out. In the end it just seemed a mite shallow—a work of far less depth and offering far less application than I’m accustomed to seeing from a book with Mahaney’s name on the cover. It came across as an uneven collection of essays of unequal value. I almost feel I should apologize when I say, it just isn’t that good of a book.

It is available at Westminster Books or Amazon:

I grew up in a Christian culture in which very little evangelism took place. How little? Well, the first adult I ever witnessed getting baptized was my wife (she was my girlfriend at the time) and that was when we were eighteen or nineteen. It was the first time our church had ever baptized an adult. And what’s more, it was the first time most of the people who attended that church had ever seen an adult get baptized. While it is not necessarily so, it seems that there is usually something amiss with the evangelistic focus of churches that never, ever see any outside converts through their ministry.

A few years after my wife’s baptism we moved away from the town we had grown up in so we could be closer to my place of business. In the past decade we have been members of two different churches that place much greater emphasis on reaching the lost. We have seen many, many people come to faith, including several who are now close friends. We have seen lives be altered dramatically and have seen more baptisms than we can count - baptisms in churches, rivers, pools, hot tubs and a really big, ugly aluminum tank. We have shared in the joy of seeing people profess their faith by being baptized. It truly is one of the greatest events on any church’s calendar!

Over the years I’ve had to reflect on what made the churches I attended as a child and teenager so ineffective at evangelism. I have to be careful here because I know several people from the churches of my youth who read this site and I want to be careful that I accurately characterize these churches. While there are several reasons I could provide, and they are of varying importance, there is one that I believe stands at the foundation of the rest: These churches often regarded the unbeliever as the enemy. Of course the church would never have articulated that belief, but it seemed to be deeply rooted.

This attitude manifested itself in many ways. One of the clearest ways was among the children of church members. They would rarely, if ever, be allowed or encouraged to play with the unsaved children in the neighborhood. I knew a man who was an “urban missionary” whose children were confined to their backyard and were never, ever allowed to play with the other children in the area. The churched children were not allowed to play with other children lest they become corrupted by their worldliness.

My observation was that this approach failed badly. First, the church was not faithful to its calling to take the gospel throughout the world (the world that begins just outside the front door). They preferred to exist in an enclave, safe from outside influences. Second, the children developed a fascination with the world simply because any access to the outside world had been denied to them and they had never seen the pain and heartbreak that are the inevitable result of forsaking God. The world looks awfully attractive until a person sees the results of giving himself over to it. Third, the parents were prone to ignoring worldliness in their own children. I know that I saw more drugs, more drinking, more disrespect and more awful behavior in the Christian schools I attended than I did in the public schools. This isolation simply did not work. We do not need the world to teach us worldliness. Rather, worldliness arises from within.

The attitude that was modeled by my parents was far different. My family took the opposite approach and we were always encouraged to make friends with the children in the neighborhoods we lived in. We saw many children and parents come to faith in this way. Many others may not have become believers, but they received a clear presentation of the gospel so that they are now without excuse. And regardless of whether or not these people came to faith, we gained many good and valuable friendships. Mom and dad did not do this because they regarded the folks in the neighborhood as a project, but out of a genuine love, concern and appreciation for these people. The person next door was not an enemy, but a person who was just as unsaved as my parents were not too many years before, and was thus someone in desperate need of a Savior. And they intended to give everyone the opportunity to meet the Savior through them.

Sometimes worlds clashed. There were a couple of times when my sisters brought friends to church, friends who were unsaved but were showing interest in the gospel, only to have them mocked or scorned. One little girl was scolded and had her ear “flicked” by the woman in the pew behind her because she was not able to sit still throughout the service. A friend my sister brought to church was openly mocked by the children in the church because he had dyed-blond hair and an earing. He never returned, and as far as I know, never expressed any openness to the gospel after that time.

I truly believe, after many years of reflection, that the real problem in these churches was in their attitude towards the unbeliever. The person next door was the enemy, a person to be feared for what he might do to the family, and the children in particular, and thus someone to be regarded with distrust and suspicion rather than with love.

Sometimes I think it is little wonder that many people in the Emergent camp rail against evangelism metaphors that make the unbeliever sound like an enemy. Perhaps these metaphors do cause us to regard unbelievers as a rebel army that we need to fear. It occurs to me that when we sing “Onward Christian Soldiers” we are not singing a battle cry that will lead us out to battle against the unbeliever next door. No, we are not waging war “against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).

The real enemy is not next door. The real enemy is our own sinfulness and the worldliness that continues to try to manifest itself in our lives. The enemy is within, not without.