Worldliness

Almost everyone of us have heard the adjective “worldly” or the noun “worldliness” from the famous, but never published Christianese dictionary. It’s a term that instantly connects with certain forbidden activities. Some denominations consider wearing lipstick, earrings or even buttons on a shirt worldly, while other promote more common restrictions like drinking alcohol, going to pubs or watching TV. These lists are always widely known within particular Christian circles but seldom written down. Why? They don’t have to be, because every denomination firmly believes that all of the items of their worldliness list are recorded in the Bible. Well, let’s take a look at the person who invented this famous term. His name is Jesus Christ and he died about 1980 years ago. 

The first public miracle Jesus ever did was turning water into wine. This event took place on a wedding, where actually all the alcohol ran out and Jesus was asked to create alcohol! I used the term alcohol instead of wine because so many of us are blinded by our denominational terminology that we don’t consider wine to be the same as alcohol when reading the Bible. 

Now, can you imagine a modern day healing evangelist or a biblical miracle maker to perform his first public miracle the way Jesus did? He would be instantly labeled a false prophet by many. Creating wine for drunken people at a wedding that already drank the last drop? How’s God glorified in such a thing? 

Let’s say that about 50% of modern denominations would consider Jesus worldly at this moment of his ministry.  

Let’s continue. This Jesus of Nazareth participated quite often on big feasts with “bad” people. He ate and drank. He enjoyed the loud companies. In modern jargon we would say he enjoyed hanging out with people in the pubs. In our definition of holiness we wouldn’t consider him to be holy at all, we would be much closer to labeling him a worldly, maybe backslidden pastor. Let’s say 70% of modern churches would reject Jesus after one year of his public ministry. 

Now, let’s take a look at how Jesus treated religious rules – keeping the Sabbath, washing hands before meals, submission to local religious authorities. He often ignored these rules, plus, he was seen promoting rudeness, violence and anger. All these things are carefully recorded in the New Testament, however, they are not pleasant attributes. They don’t fit in our perception of a good Christian. They rather fit the worldly weird pastor. I think by now most of the modern denominations would definitely label Jesus – WORDLY! (Please don’t think this is only a 21st century problem, I’m saying modern, because in medieval ages the word denomination probably wasn’t even invented and if Jesus came somewhere around 14th century he would have been burnt at stake right away.)  

What do we see? By present day standards, the person who invented the term worldliness and was 0% worldly according to his own words would be described as worldliness itself! How come? 

I believe there’s a scale injected in everyone of us. The most bigot and the most liberal Christians have it and are at least to some extent aware of it. Let’s say the scale ranges from 1 to 10, where 1 is the least worldly, 10 is the most worldly. We consider ourselves to be somewhere between 6-8. We believe we can never reach number 1. Why? Because we have a picture of an ideal Christian in our minds. This Christian is never angry, doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke, his hair is nicely cut, his clothes are clean, he always smiles and never shows his emotions, he participates on every religious event, he never complains, never criticizes anything, he doesn’t watch TV, he’s never been to cinema and he reads no other books except the Bible.

I believe that to some extent most of us have this picture in our minds. However, if this is number 1 in the described wordliness scale, I have bad news for you guys. We’ve been screwed, because Jesus Christ, the inventor of our religion is at about number 5 on this scale. What??!! 

Now, we are standing in front of a dilemma. Either Jesus was worldly or our perception of what worldliness actually is, is completely wrong. I believe the term world as Jesus used it was never meant to become a list of restrictions. But yet, that’s exactly what we believe it is. We’re constantly beaten because we don’t fit the perfect Christian image, however our God didn’t fit it at all! If we realize this, there’s a great pile of fresh freedom waiting for us in the fridge. 

If you think I’m trying to say that we can go to any bar we want and drink 20 liters of wine per evening you are desperately mistaken. The purpose of this blog was to try to locate the worldliness scale and the perfect Christian image in our minds and replace it with Jesus Christ, the physical person that lived on the surface of this planet and never did one worldly thing. Worldliness is defined by seclusion from the Father, not by violating modern Christian to-do lists. And once we’re in Christ and walk the path of Love, we’re already a Formula 1 on the real worldliness scale as Jesus defined it. You and I are in this world but are not of this world. You and I are in the Father together with Jesus. You and I are Jesus’ brother and sister. Father made him equal with us and us equal with him. We’re safe and free.