by Elder Peter Lim

David F. Wells defines worldliness as: “that system of values, in any given age, which has at its center our fallen human perspective, which displaces God and his truth from the world, and which makes sin look normal and righteousness seem strange. It thus gives great plausibility to what is morally wrong and, for that reason, makes what is wrong seem normal” (Losing our Virtue, page 4).

Given this definition of worldliness, the sign of spiritual maturity that I am highlighting this month is the exact opposite of worldliness. To maturing Christians, righteousness looks normal and sin seems strange.

This different perspective on life becomes very evident especially when we compare our view of entertainment to the world’s. Certainly we share some commonality as well in our sense of humor, but as we sense growth in our spirituality we become increasingly uncomfortable laughing at inappropriate topics, and indeed we recognize that there are such things as inappropriate topics. Vulgar or crude humor becomes less funny because we see how such words/topics can be offensive to God. When Jinny and I first got married in 1994, the popular TV show of the day was “Friends.” Like many others, we became hooked on the show for it’s witty sense of humor. Of course we realized that much of the show was about celebrating immorality but we excused it away as just the way things are in the world. But then we noticed that as we grew spiritually, making light of sin wasn’t as funny as it used to be. It just seemed strange that we were watching a show that depicted an immoral life as normal and a righteous life by biblical standards strange, and being entertained by it. It was apparent that shows like this had a hidden agenda, to challenge any notions of impropriety and to question morality and even the mere existence of morality. We stopped watching the show because it just became less funny to us and we didn’t want it to fill our minds with what the world considered as being normal. “Friends” of course is far from being the only show to depict sin as being normal. It seems that almost every TV show’s goal is to one-up other shows to push the bounds of immorality or further the homosexual agenda or whatever immorality of the day.

So how is a maturing Christian to respond to this? The Bible doesn’t tell us how to choose movies or TV shows to watch, does it? It does better than that. It gives us principles to live by which goes beyond simply which shows to watch:

• Friendship with the world is hostility toward God. (James 4:4)
• Do not love the world or its values. (1 John 2:15-17)
• Deny ungodliness and worldly desires and live righteously. (Titus 2:12)

We need to understand that as Christians, we are inherently enemies with the world and its values. The devil is prowling about like a lion, seeking to devour us! (1 Peter 5:8) We don’t belong here in this world because our home is in heaven. We are aliens here and we live as ambassadors to represent Christ. (1 Peter 2:11, 2 Cor. 5:20) If we find that we are comfortable here and there is no struggle against the world in our own hearts, something is wrong. We are being too friendly with our enemy. We need to see sin as strange for ourselves. On the other hand, when we always seem to struggle against the world, that’s appropriate. In other words, righteousness looks normal to us.