Hi jerry lynch

Thank you for your comment at Provoketive Magazine (http://provoketive.com). We’re creating a space of rich conversation about life, faith, justice and culture without judgment. Our desire is to provoke the reader’s imagination through conversation and open up spaces of dialogue, learning, and hope.  We want to invite you to come back soon and continue to participate in the conversation. 

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Jonathan Brink
Provoketive Magazine

You posted the following comment:
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Jason, you write, "The work of Christ in us restores us to the person that God created us to be." I wrote, 'Sanctification is the steady reduction of acquired worldliness and the devastating effects that has had on our soul. We are being whittled down to our original self, the spitting image and likeness of God, that was there before the foundations of the world were laid.' We appear in complete agreement, albeit you are thankfully less verbose.

It was not my point simply "to roll around these ideas"; I felt a word or two about "worldliness" was crucial to the discussion. Clarifying the differences between a scriptural worldliness and gnosticism did not seem to me to be wasting the reader's time. A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. Those who pay enough attention to hear the warning about the infiltration of gnosticism, usually in attacks on Roman Catholic and certain Baptist beliefs (as well as the Amish and Mennonites), dismiss the topic of worldliness as “yeast.” The fact that the Church “has varied broadly” regarding this issue is why I broached the topic. I see worldliness in the very making of rules by churches to guard against it. 

Worldliness, to me, is being attached to the things of the world, not the things in and of themselves, and to find my value in their possession. Image is one of those things, and the most dangerous. We are to become as little children, and what does a child possess? Nothing, all is given to him or her. Everything is a gift, for which gratitude, and not a sense of ownership or merit, is the response. We then delight in the love of the giver, not in the thing itself. The love of God is preeminent, from which all life comes. I am not to praise worldly philosophies, values, or systems but recognize where truth may surface within them, the ways of love and mercy, compassion and grace. I can then freely love the artist of inspiration, creativity, and beauty, which is the mind of God surfacing in art and music and even technology. What is uplifting, what rejoices in a loving Father's bounty, is to be enjoyed. Sex, a rock concert, or a needed nap can bring glory to God, as does a human being fully developed. It all comes down to how we see, and on this, from what you wrote, I feel we agree.