WORLDLINESS continued
There is a tendency to withdraw . . . to seek, our oxen crowd . . . to create cur own separate world
was terrible. And yet in most places, here in the West at least, mixed bathing is not frowned upon at all. We consider it quite a normal, natural thing and few think twice about it as being essentially wrong. There are places in this world today where lipstick is called “ devil's grease” because it’s thought the devil is behind the lipstick business. I’ve met people who thought that drinking coffee was a terrible worldly thing. Now I’ve mentioned things that most of us would laugh at as being considered worldly. I haven’t men tioned any of the things that are on our lists. But the point I want you to see is that these people are just as disturbed about these things as you are about the things on your list. And the result is that these ideas have been passed on from generation to generation. We all have a tendency to think that the things that we have been taught are inspired truth. And few of us have ever taken time to check these with biblical principles as to whether they’re really worldly or not worldly. I’m afraid that many of us often mistake our prej udices for our convictions. And it’s a very easy thing to do. I was talking with a man about a certain matter, and I had to confess that perhaps I was mistaking my prejudice for a conviction of immorality in connection with it. That’s an easy thing for us to do. But we must remember that not what we’ve been taught or what our fathers believed or the way we were raised is the standard of Christian behavior, but the Word of God. Always! And if what we are taught is not in accordance with the principles declared in the Bible, then we’d better revise our standards and our thinking in accord ance with those principles. Now that’s a very simple thing to say but it’s hard to follow out. If we will follow it out though, we’ll discover that it’ll make some great changes in our lives. he result of this habit of drawing up lists of things which are worldly and making an index of that which is right and which is wrong in the Christian life has been that to day nine out of ten Christians have mental lists'of “ do’s” and “ don’ts.” And by checking this list they blithely determine if they’re worldly or spiritual. And they call these lists Christian standards! Yet, if they were so very important it’s strange that they’re not mentioned in the Scriptures themselves. Now I don’t want to make fun of certain Christian standards at all. There are necessities along that line, and those standards once arrived at in each individual ^
these passages we begin to realize that there’s some thing dangerous about the world and the world’s ways and the world’s thinking. Christians have rightly taken these passages very seriously. They have thought that the Lord would not speak so plainly if there was not something to be warned against. They’ve remembered the sad words of Paul when he had to write about one of his own young men who traveled with him: “ . . . Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world. . . .” And Christians have realized that a worldly Chris tian is a useless Christian. He’s no good to the world and he’s no good to God. Neither one gets any good out of him at all. So Christians, in the light of these passages and because of them, have through the centuries drawn up lists of things they considered worldly. The trouble was that their ideas differed very widely along this score. Whenever anybody had any trouble with something or with some temptation or some particular type of recreation or some type of work where trouble oc curred, they learned a lesson from it or thought they did and wrote that thing down as worldly. And so there came into being a great many differ ent lists of worldly things. Tremendously different because of the different places. And as a result of this you have such things today as the folks in the South called the Hook-and-Eye Baptists. They got that name because they believe that buttons are worldly, and that the proper way to fasten your clothing is not with a button hut with a hook and eye. And so the button-wearing folks are worldly in their estimation and the hook-and-eye people are spiritual. F rankly, I can’t for the life of me imagine (and I have a very lively imagination) how they ever got started thinking of buttons as worldly but that’s what they think. So buttons are on their list as worldly. And they mean it! They’re seri ous about it. It’s just as much a worldly thing to them as some of the things on your lists. You find standards differing widely in Christian circles about other things. Drinking of beer among Christians is very normal in places like Germany, and Christians over there think nothing at all about having a glass of beer with their meals. Nobody thinks they’re not spiritual because of it. But in this country it’s quite a different matter. In this country beer drinking is almost always considered a worldly thing. I’ve been in parts of this country where people re garded with horror mixed bathing, when boys and girls went swimming together. They thought that
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THE KING'S BUSINESS
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