Book 2, Chapter 1
-Part 7 Continued More-
Let us consider the world and how it operates against us – using “world” as it sometimes appears in Scripture to represent a collective of people and ideas that holds in contempt the notion of God and of Christian spirituality.
For clarity, let's consider that the same word for “world” is used in Scripture as the world that God so loves (e.g. John 3:16) and the world that is at odds with and opposed to God (e.g. First Corinthians 2:12). There are no separate words for “good world” and “bad world” in the original language.
What is true of the language is also true of us Christians who live in the world, good and bad, depending on our context.
We live in the aftereffects of the devil’s third temptation of Christ in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-11), which was the devil’s attempt to trade with Jesus all of the kingdoms of the world in exchange for Christ’s worship and recognition of Satan and his authority – such as it is – in the world. William Barclay refers to this as a temptation for Christ to “come to terms with the world” through compromise (The New Daily Study Bible, The Gospel of Matthew, Volume I).
Jesus rejects this offer to swap by ordering Satan away from Him, and stating Scripture: “The Lord your God is the one to whom you must do homage, him alone you must serve.” (Deuteronomy 6:13)
When believers accuse one another of being “worldly,” they are saying that the other person is like the world, or under the influence of the world, or, borrowing from Barclay, has come to friendly terms with the world. Worldliness is understood to be the opposite of spirituality, and usually carries the meaning of being connected to and interested in the pleasures of the world in a way that does not acknowledge one’s submission to God.
The “world,” in this sense, shows itself to us through our culture – our surroundings. Our culture provides us with written and unwritten rules about appropriate, inappropriate – acceptable and unacceptable – behavior, thoughts and ideas. Culture becomes a context by which a people consider something useful or useless; of value or of no value; dangerous or harmless; hateful or acceptable; ridiculous or inspired.
What does this have to do with our Christian spirituality? The world can influence, water down or demolish a spiritual life. This is why it is so important for us to visit and understand how this can happen.
The book of James warns us to keep ourselves unpolluted by the world around us: “Pure unspoilt religion, in the eyes of God our Father, is this: coming to the help of orphans and widows in their hardships, and keeping oneself uncontaminated by the world” (1:27).
Of the word group that is translated “uncontaminated,” “unpolluted” or “unstained” – it is said: “The common factor is the absence of anything which would constitute defilement before God” (Dictionary of New Testament Theology, Vol. 3). This is echoed in the teaching of St. John of the Cross, who proposes that the way to “ascend the mountain” and attain union with God is to “rid oneself of everything that is not God.”
There is a statement in Part Four of the Catechism of the Catholic Church: Christian Prayer, which reflects the same warning: “We must face the fact that certain attitudes deriving from the mentality of ‘this present world’ can penetrate our lives if we are not vigilant.” (Section 2727) (My emphasis.)
The “mystical theologians” are remarkably practical here in how to develop and carry a soul that is absent defilement and impenetrable to the mentality of this present world. The believer must have a strong interior life supported by the structure of right doctrine and moved by the musculature of prayer. The heart of this life is God’s indwelling presence.
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