WORLDLINESS

I believe one of the greatest problems facing the church today is worldliness. I am convinced that the majority of our problems, individually and collectively, are rooted in this one problem. I believe worldliness is at the bottom of the problems of attendance, small contributions, and the lack of development in Christians.

Our definition of worldliness has been too narrow. I am afraid that preachers and teachers have contributed toward worldliness by leaving the wrong impression. Too often we have confined the term to some few things, which were certainly worldly, but were far from covering everything that should be included in the term. Many members of the church think that because they do not dance, or wear immodest clothes, and a few other similar things, they are not worldly, yet in God’s sight they are. I do not mean to suggest by this that these things are not worldly and that they should not be condemned, but we should not leave the impression that worldliness is confined to these. When John says, “Love not the world,” just how broad is that? Is it confined to some few things, or does it cover all that belongs to the world?

What is “worldliness”? Worldliness is sin. Worldliness is conforming to the world. Worldliness is anything that is opposed to being transformed. Worldliness is “worldlikeness” in anything. Worldliness is anything that is not Christlike or that hinders “Christlikeness.” Worldliness is a wedge that sin drives into the heart of the member of the church, disuniting his own will and God’s will for him, making his actions incompatible with his spiritual potential because he allows selfish interests to usurp the place of God in his life.

Worldliness, the opposite of spirituality, is an obsession with temporal, material things. Worldliness is a force that sidetracks the Christian from his greatest privilege and his greatest function. When one persists in worldliness, he will inevitably decrease in spiritual perception. Worldliness is majoring on the temporal rather than the spiritual.

Worldliness is a cancer which creates an indifference to moral values, a “no-difference” attitude about right or wrong. It makes a person insensitive to real abiding values and, in most cases, unsteady in Christian life. Worldliness splits an individual’s loyalties, making him selfish, spiritually indifferent, careless, near-sighted, and complacent.

What is your primary concern? Is it to be a social leader, prominent, comfortable, wealthy, popular, living in ease, spending all of your free time in some sort of pleasure that may be right in itself, or is it to be the best Christian possible? These things may be worthy of attainment, but not to the neglect of spiritual growth. Let us keep in mind that worldliness is the opposite of spirituality; an obsession with temporal and material things to the detriment of spiritual growth. One does not have to be knee-deep in sin to be worldly. The person who considers himself a “pretty good fellow,” but whose ideals are material and self-centered is a worldly person.
--Lamar