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Don't Try This At Home!

 

Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. (I John 2:15-16)

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

          We’re not supposed to love the world. But God loved and loves the world. The word for world in the Greek is the same. The word for love is the same root: agape, but different tenses. I don’t think it changes the meaning significantly. The writer of the book of John and the writer of the first letter of John are the same, and the One who inspired both is the same. It makes you want to say, “Huh?”

          The main difference is the subject. We aren’t to love the world. God is. This makes a big difference. When I was in high school, I decided I wanted to be a wildlife manager. Shortly before I actually started college, I realized something. My idea of being a wildlife manager was not spending hours in hot sun, covered in dirt, having insects and arachnids (especially the latter) crawling on me, sneezing my head off (allergies), and shooting the bear to move it into an area where there were no people. No, my idea of being a wildlife manager was somewhere between Grizzly Adams and Tarzan.

          My idea of loving animals isn’t good for animals. There are other people who treat animals as if they were human. Their idea of loving animals isn’t good for animals. Our way of loving the world tends to not be good for us or for the world, partly because we tend to end up making the world our god. God doesn’t do that, and because He is God, He’s capable of paying a price for love that we, as mortal beings, cannot.

          The old disclaimer comes to mind, “Don’t try this at home!” We’re not to try them because we don’t have the wherewithal to accomplish them safely. We’re more the dangerous than the thing we’re not to try.

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