Fish Out of Water

I’ve been thinking a lot about worldliness lately.

It’s a funny thing to think about – kind of like asking a fish to think about wetness.  Assuming we have a sentient fish, would he even be able to think about being wet when his entire life is spent immersed in water?  Am I able to do any better?  Jesus tells me to be “in the world but not of it”.  I despair that is a bit like asking a fish to be in the water but not allow himself to get wet.  How is it even possible?  I am so immersed in the world that it is hard to grasp what it means.

So I reduce worldliness to a bunch of external behaviours.  I don’t drink or dance or smoke or chew or go with guys who do.  I write my little checklist of what “worldly” looks like, and I smugly tell myself that I don’t do those things, so that means I’m not worldly.  And as far as those external things are concerned, I really am “not of this world”.  I rarely watch TV.  I go to perhaps 3 movies a year.  I don’t even know who Kim Kardashian is, and I don’t think I would recognise a Whitney Houston song if I heard it.  I’m not up on the latest fashions.  I don’t even carry a cell phone, for goodness’ sake (and much to the chagrin of some of my friends).

But really, is that what Jesus meant?  Does it mean that I’m not worldly?  Or does it just mean that I’m out of touch?

I think it is the latter.  (And I’m ok with that.)  But it leaves me without answers:  what does it mean to be worldly?  And am I?

Ecclesiastes says that God has planted eternity in the human heart.  And that’s where I’m different from a fish.  (Ok, I’m different from a fish in plenty of other areas as well, but this one is the most significant.)  Because every once in a while, I look up from my puny little world, and I catch a glimpse of something so much bigger than what I see around me that it takes my breath away.  It is those glimpses that make me realise just how worldly I am.  Not in external things, but at a much deeper level.  The way I think is worldly.  The way I perceive life is worldly.  My worldview is, well, a worldly-view.  It's not an eternity-view, not really.

I think like the world.  There is cause and effect.  If only I know the right information, I will be able to explain everything.  I observe, I collect data, and I analyse it until my thoughts are ordered in neat little boxes that are labelled and organised and in control.  I am immersed in the scientific method.  When I see something that appears to defy explanation, I immediately and intuitively begin seeking the explanation.  And if I can’t find the explanation, I find ways to discount what I have seen.  I must have missed something.  I must not have seen what I thought I saw.  I must have dozed off and been dreaming.  But the eternity doesn’t work like that.  There is room for mystery in the eternity.  There is room for wonder and that which defies explanation.  I know that, academically, but experientially, I think like the world.  It is not my first impulse to think, Wow, you know, I think I just witnessed a miracle!  Instead, I thrash about looking for a logical explanation, and it is only when what I have experienced utterly defies all explanation that I begin to think, Well, maybe it was a miracle.

I have the values of the world.  I like to think I don’t, because I don’t have many of the things that the world values, but I do.  I may not have a nice car, but I want one.  I think I deserve one.  I may not have a lot of money, but a great deal of my time is spent thinking about how nice it would be if I did have it.  After all, I deserve nice things. 

And what is worse, I try to make myself better by smugly telling myself that the reason I don’t have those things is because I’m doing the Lord’s work, and my reward will be in eternity.  There’s truth to that.  I believe I am doing the Lord’s work, and he has always provided for me, and I know that what is more important is what he thinks about what I’m doing rather than how the world judges me.  But the alarming rate at which I need to remind myself of these truths tells me that the truth has not yet sunk into my heart.  I am still being driven by the values of the world.  I still believe that good ought to come to those who do good, and the bad guys should get it –not just in eternity, but right here, right now.

I have a worldly understanding of power.  Jesus says that the last will be first and the first will be last, but I still act like the first will be first, and the last will be left in the dust.  People in suits carrying briefcases and iPhones walk by and I think, Oh, they must be important.  It is easy to look past the homeless man who roots through our blue box for our glass bottles.  Might is right.  I have to pull myself up by my bootstraps.  I need to fight for what is my right.  Survival of the fittest and all that.  But survival of the fittest totally contradicts what Jesus says.  When I catch a glimpse of the eternity, I am suddenly aware of just how much my understanding of power has been influenced by the world.

What does it look like to live in this world and accept with ease that there are things that defy explanation?  What does it look like to recognise that knowledge does not solve everything, that some things are simply beyond my ability to understand, and to be comfortable in that mystery?  How will I behave if I truly understand that the values of this world are diametrically opposed to the values of the kingdom?  How will it change the way I view my circumstances if I really grasp that God’s greatest good for me is not that I have a new car but that I become more like him?  What will my world look like when I really get it that God uses the foolish things of this world to confound the wise and I lay down my arms and stop fighting all the time?

I think it will make me weird.  Weirder than I am now.  A fish out of water.

But it's not evolution.  It's transformation.