The Things You Can't Get Out of Your Head
When fear and division from church teaching stays with you.
“The World”
If you grew up in an evangelical setting, the way in which you hear the term “the world” is likely quite different from the way in which your non-evangelical friends and neighbours hear it.
Evangelicals often carry a sense of “the world” meaning not just the earth, or the people in the world, but rather, simply as something that is terrible and sinful and dangerous and apart from us. Such a way of seeing things is not exclusively evangelical and not exclusively Christian. Other expressions of Christian faith and some other religions share a similar way of speaking about “the world”.
In the evangelical church this division took on particular forms depending on the kind of church that you were in, the person doing most of the preaching, the history of the denomination, and the openness to theological and “secular” education.
What happens on the practical level is that those who live their formative years in such settings pick up that we (whoever those connected to the church are defined as) are the saved or the favoured ones and they (people who believe the wrong things, people who are not part of our thing) are in danger of eternal damnation and, for the time being, are people who cannot be trusted to be good like us. These other people make up “the world”. Other things make up “the world” as well and these might vary depending on your church:
secular education
theological education
science
the media
the entertainment industry
Evangelical Christians are often told in sermons that the values of “the world” are mostly or entirely sinful. Years ago, when I was a young pastor, there was a group of moms who met each week at a local high school, sponsored by a teacher, to pray for the students and the school. I have nothing against such gatherings, but even then I used to make fun of the name that the group gave itself. It was called “Moms who Care”. I used to say to friends who could handle the joke, “I think that there should be a group called, ‘Moms who don’t give a shit’.” Whoever came up with the name was likely well meaning and maybe even a lovely person, but the name gives away an assumption that the world is divided up into us and them and that in fact we are the favoured and they are “the world”.
Once this kind of idea has taken hold it is hard to shake. I find it to be far less than hopeful and indeed far less than Christian. Encountering Jesus and having faith become things that are done in contrast or opposition to “the world”. In this fearful way of thinking you escape the world to become faithful and you keep escaping the world to live faithfully. I am glad to be done with this kind of juvenile spirituality. It winds up having to have more to do with control than it has to do with faith.
One of the greatest theologians of the 20th Century, Karl Barth, rejected fearful views of “the world”. He rejected a Christian faith that divided up “us and them”, “believer and non-believer”. He described how true and hopeful Christian faith moves us towards the world, and that it can be no other way. If Jesus loves and moves towards the world, then how are we to live faith in Jesus by doing the opposite?
As mentioned in Andrew Root’s recent book, Churches and the Crisis of Decline, Barth was famous for loving the music of Mozart. Mozart was certainly not seen as a “Christian composer”. In 1955, in a newspaper article, Barth playfully wrote that “If I ever get to heaven, I would like to first of all seek out Mozart and only then enquire after Augustine, St. Thomas, Luther and Calvin.” Barth could become caught up in listening to Mozart. The music reminded him of the wonder of beauty in the world at a time that included two world wars. Mozart helped Barth to discover a deep affection for the world, a moving towards instead of a distancing.
Many young evangelicals have been told that this kind of thing is dangerous. Whatever it is that they find that connects with them in mind and spirit, if it is not deemed to be “Christian” then they may be told by evangelical leaders that it is suspect.
The hopeful theological counter to this is a realization that we encounter God in “the world”. Hopeful Christian theology sees that God’s presence is in the world, it is not confined to the church. In gatherings of the Christian community, in church; we celebrate and learn about God’s love for the world and we go from church not into “the world” (as it has been fearfully described by much religion), but into the world in which God is present.
Hopeful theology understands that God’s love is for the world, not only for the church. As Andrew Root puts it:
“The fact that Jesus lives and moves in the world (not bound by propositions of religion) means that living in the world is the very place where we are met and embraced by God.”
If you spent formative years in an evangelical church you may be familiar with fearful and divisive ways of seeing “the world”. It can take a while to undo harmful ways of understanding, but I assure you that there is a better, more hopeful, and I would say more Christian, way of faith than the divisive exclusion so often presented in even some well-meaning churches.
When I was a very tiny child I learned the song “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world…..” I am sad for those who have not been allowed to experience all the “colours” of the world.
My Bible says that “God so LOVED the world….” I am convinced that God loved “colours” and that is why He painted the world with a plethora of “colours”. He cast the world with hosts of colourful characters with a splattering of different perspectives and different beliefs. His paint brush created a masterpiece with at least as many colours as Joseph’s coat.
Those who have cocooned against the world have created for themselves a rather grey world.