This World's Not Your Home

All earth loves the birth of the Jesus child,
For its feel-goodness, and its commerce boon;
And Easter, for sales of candy eggs piled,
Bunny-baskets, cash registers' tune!
But let some Christian, for love to the world,
Plead that the Babe calls them to righteousness;
Proclaim He arose, live; that death's unfurled;
He offers grace, to free them from distress;
Then the hailstorm of hatred comes unleashed;
Hell's hidden plot unveiled, which seemed benign---
'Use Christ for profit, but no gospel preached;
Gain from Him's all right, with no truth divine!'
O saved! From this world keep yourselves apart!
It is not your home, nor should own your heart!

"You adulterous* people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of this world becomes an enemy of God." (James 4:4) *['adulterous means 'if a person loves the world more than he loves God, he is unfaithful in a like sense as if a spouse has an affair with another.']

"Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world...comes not from the Father but from the world." (1 John 2:15-16)

Of course, God made the world, man, and nature. The scripture is not saying 'do not love nature'; it is speaking of the society that men have created among themselves. Any manmade philosophy, institution, or activity is likely to be a disguised trap of Satan designed to attract people; if any social activity becomes an obsession greater than a person's wholehearted love for God and His concerns, it becomes an idol. There is nothing God hates more than idol-worship. The first and greatest Commandment is to love God with all your heart, mind, body, soul, and being. Anything that encroaches on that is sin.

"For the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God." (1 Corinthians 3:19)

Christianity is facing a huge dilemma today. Remember Star Trek? People have changed. The way churches present gospel today is 500 years old. It must change its ways of presentation, or risk losing everybody's attention. It has already begun. However, the Bible is 2000 years old; it is clearly dualistic and zealously immutable in its truths. I don't know what changes may have to be made in our witness for Jesus. As for now, I accept the Bible as it is. The "Jaws" that are dominating people's ways of thinking is called postmodernism. You're probably a postmodernist being whether you know it or not. More on this later.