Skip to main content

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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The List

              Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,   through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;   perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)           Think about it. We have been justified. At least, we could be justified if we stopped insisting that our justification be based on our merits. We have peace with God, or could have peace if we stopped throwing temper tantrums. We have gained access into grace i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Way, The Truth, and The Life

              Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me . (John 14:6)           If “I am the gate of the sheep…I am the good shepherd” from chapter 10 is a double whammy, this verse is a triple whammy. And its first victim is the notion that any other so-called god was acceptable or the same as Jesus. He, and He alone is the way, the truth, and the life, and the only way to get to the Father. There is no other Savior, or Redeemer, according to Jesus. Now, to be fair, other religions will claim that their religion or god(s) are the only way. That is the nature of gods and of religions. If this and that are equally good and agree on what’s necessary, then this and that are the same thing, so there’s no need to from the other to one. If that’s the case, then why speak against the other or promote the one? There’s a song I’ve been listening to i...
Post a Comment
Read more