Worldliness is not simply an innocent cultural escapade, still less a matter merely of inconsequential breaches in behavior or the breaking of trivial rules of the church or the expected practices of piety. Worldliness is a religious matter. The world, as the New Testament authors speak of it, is an alternative to God. It offers itself as an alternative center of allegiance. It provides counterfeit meaning. It is the means used by Satan in his warfare with God. To be part of that "world" is to be part of the Satanic hostility to God. That is why worldliness is so often idolatrous and why the biblical sanctions against it are so stringent. "Do you not know," asks James, "that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God" (James 4:4).
Today, evangelicalism reverberates with worldliness. In first impressions, this worldliness does not appear ugly at all. Quite the opposite. It maintains a warm and friendly countenance, parading itself as successful entrepreneurship, organizational wizardry, and a package of slick public relations insights that are essential to the facilitation of evangelical business.—David Wells, God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 54.
(Written almost twenty years ago, Well's analysis still holds profound relevance and insight for our worldly world. And I do not think that this indictment of evangelicalism has been adequately heeded. Worldliness so pervades the "evangelical" church that it is hardly ever identified as worldliness anymore.)
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