Worldliness

Techno Magic

Tony Reinke C.S. Lewis, Technology, Worldliness


Peter Kreeft writes that the following excerpt from C. S. Lewis, “contains the most important and enlightening single statement about our civilization that I have ever read.”

C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, page 77:

There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the “wisdom” of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique.

Explains Kreeft:

If the Enlightenment helped the modern world discard notions of original sin and moral absolutes, it also uprooted the foundations of truth and goodness. Unlike the Medieval era, all we have left are vague political and psychological notions of what works efficiently. Technology has replaced religion as our civilization’s summum bonum. Naturalism has replaced supernaturalism. Subjectivism has defined a new age of moral relativity.

Explains Timothy Keller in The Reason For God, page 71:

In ancient times it was understood that there was a transcendent moral order outside the self, built in to the fabric of the universe. If you violated that metaphysical order there were consequences just as severe as if you violated physical reality by placing your hand in a fire. The path of wisdom was to learn to live in conformity with this unyielding reality. That wisdom rested largely in developing qualities of character, such as humility, compassion, courage, discretion, and loyalty.

Modernity reversed this. Ultimate reality was seen not so much as a supernatural order but as the natural world, and that was malleable. Instead of trying to shape our desires to fit reality, we now seek to control and shape reality to fit our desires. The ancients looked at an anxious person and prescribed spiritual character change. Modernity talks instead about stress-management techniques.

Look Much And Consider Much

Tony Reinke BR > Reformation Heritage Books, Cross-centered life, Resurrection, Worldliness

In 1670 Puritan William Greenhill (1591–1671) published his long sermon: “Being against the Love of the World.” Our friends at Reformation Heritage Books will reprint the sermon next year under the title Stop Loving the World. This excerpt is pulled from the forthcoming title, pages 71–72 (posted with permission):

If you would have your heart removed from the things of the word, behold the crucified and glorified Lord Jesus Christ.

Set Christ crucified often before your eyes, and look on Him with the eye of faith. “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world” (Gal. 6:14). That is, “I look on Christ crucified, and by the eye of faith I can see Him hanging there, and all the glory of the world stained there. Is all the world comparable to Christ? There is the King, the High Priest, the Mediator, the great Prophet. There is the Heir of the world crucified. There is His blood running down. He has laid down His life for sinners, and to take my heart off from the world.” If you look on a dead man, it deadens your spirit. What will looking on Christ do then? It will deaden your heart toward the world if you look on Jesus Christ crucified. “I am crucified to the world,” said Paul.

Then look on Christ glorified, and your heart will be raised above the world. “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth” (Col. 3:1–2). Christ has died, risen, and gone to glory. If now you are risen out of the state of sin, transferred from the power of darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear Son, you will have your heart where Christ is. Consider Christ in this way: “There is my Head, my King, my Husband. There is my Redeemer, the one who is a thousand times better than the world. Therefore, I will not set my heart on things of the earth, but on things above. How glorious it is to see the King in His glory!”

Look much, and consider much of Christ crucified and glorified.

Anxious Impatience

Tony Reinke Anxiety, Culture, Worldliness

Craig M. Gay, in his book The Way of the (Modern) World: Or, Why It’s Tempting to Live As If God Doesn’t Exist (Eerdmans, 1998), seeks to expose the symptoms of worldliness in the postmodern world. The organization of the book is quite thoughtful and the author builds a new theme off the previously theme, eventually tying all the themes together.

In a very basic form, the book develops around five progressive building blocks:

(a) Control—Man seeks to control his world through technology and rationalism. By this he refers to the impulse in the postmodern heart to control every area of life through technology, not merely to improve certain areas of life.

(b) Secularity—The aspirations of the modern man to this techno-rational control of the world leave little room for any god, save the “self-defining self.” God—if ever referenced at all—becomes a “god of the gaps,” a god whose necessity is limited to the areas of life that are outside of our control. Think “acts of god.”

(c) Individualism—The forces of control and secularity combine to encourage individualization, a fix-it-yourself mentality that breaks apart personal relationships and community.

(d) Anxiety—Man becomes an individualized self. But “the assumption of godlike responsibilities has turned out to be a heavy burden and that we have become increasingly anxious beneath the weight of this burden” (p. 308).

(e) Impatience—Combine control, secularity, individualism, and the anxiety from these godlike responsibilities and you end up with “what is possibly the master theme of modernity, and now of ‘postmodernity’: that of impatience” (p. 308).

This progression is helpful. And when the author begins to weave together the anxious impatience of our world his work really proves practical. Because, as Christians, we are called to cultivate an eschatological worldview and the spiritual disciplines of waiting and watching, distinctives directly undermined by modern forms of worldliness. I will leave the topics of prayer and community is for another post altogether.

I mention the five building blocks of his book because it provides an introduction to an important quote from the conclusion on the topic of “anxious impatience.” Gay writes:

…anxious impatience is evident in virtually all aspects of modern social and cultural existence, and not least in the increasingly frantic pace with which so much of life is carried on today. It is largely by reason of impatient frustration, after all, that we have been persuaded to try to perform the functions of the hidden—and, indeed, seemingly absent—God.

“God is either unwilling or incapable of helping us,” we say in effect, “therefore we have no choice but to help ourselves, to take matters into our own hands, and to try to engineer a habitable environment for ourselves.” Ironically, it is this same anxious impatience that has consequently moved us to surrender ourselves so naively to the dehumanizing techniques of the modern world.

Indeed, it is anxious haste that has incited us to mortgage ourselves to technical rationality for the sake of its promise of control. “After we have taken control of the world,” so we tell ourselves, implying that taking control of the world must somehow enable us to take control of ourselves, “then we will discover how to be human persons again.” But the horizon keeps receding, and we always seem to be waiting for the promised control to be established.

The longer we are forced to wait, however, the more anxious we become; and the more anxious we become, the more prone we are to placing what little hope we have left into the possibility of technical-rational control, and thus to giving ourselves over to dehumanizing modern systems; and so forth. It is an unfortunately vicious cycle.

Modern secular society is thus a culture of anxious impatience, a culture in which so much stress has been placed upon human abilities and human agency that the modern mind has effectively lost the ability to trust anything, or more importantly anyone, else.

—Craig M. Gay, The Way of the (Modern) World: Or, Why It’s Tempting to Live As If God Doesn’t Exist (Eerdmans, 1998), pp. 310–311.

So it’s not difficult to see why our postmodern culture find it difficult to understanding the value of faith, why it finds trusting in God difficult, why it’s unlikely that man waits patiently for God to lead and act, and how the cultural assumptions impinges upon God and distracts the heart by anxious impatience. Even as Christians, we feel the weight of this unbelief, this worldliness.

And so if you are looking for a book to help make sense of the modern world and to expose the subtleties of worldliness (and its costs), this book is an excellent—albeit studious—starting point.

Worldliness

Tony Reinke Worldliness

“’I have crucified the world,’ says Paul.

That word, the world, is used in Scripture with varying meanings. Sometimes it stands simply for the numbers of our fellow men and women round about us. And, in that sense, God loves the world—the foolish, ailing, blundering, kindly, human, stumbling world—loves it well enough to give His Son for it. And we must learn to love it too.

But often the world means that vague, dim, ever-present, threatening mass of things inimical to the soul; the currents that sweep one away from what is high and true and unselfish; the pressure of the crowd about us tending to carry us along with it into the customary, the mean, the earthy; the throng of interests that crowd our minds and leave no room for Christ.

Whatever robs God of our allegiance, whatever cheats us out of our inheritance in Him, whatever drags us down and back, that is the world; not necessarily anything evil in itself—that is more the flesh and the devil—but just the fullness of life, the rush of things, the babble of affairs, our dreams and hopes and ambitions and desires. Matters quite harmless, even true and beautiful in themselves, can grow into one’s world.

A man’s home, says Christ, can become his world—even the wonderful gift of human love! For he may sink back luxuriously into that, grow soft and flabby and self-indulgent, and forget that those about him need his help.

Or a man’s business, it seems, can become his world; though surely we are given our talents to use and not to let them rust. Yet we can grow so one-idead, so absorbed in it, that ‘getting and spending we lay waste our powers’; and the soul forgotten, left untended, sinks and flickers, and goes out.

Our success can become our world, and we intemperate for more and more and more of it. If anything is crowding God out of your life, if anything is making you throw aside the dreams and hopes and high purposes with which you started as quite obviously impracticable, if anything is convincing you that of course Jesus’ teaching is mere poetry that can’t be taken seriously, and is not meant for literal obedience, that is the world for you. And it is through things like that that souls are mostly lost. The flesh and the devil are open enemies. But the world is far more subtle and insidious and deadly….

You, too, will have to pass through Vanity Fair; and at every booth eager hucksters will thrust their tawdry nothings into your face, and plead and press for custom. You also must meet Madam Bubble with her many-colored wares, how beautiful, and yet a touch, and they have vanished. You can’t evade the ordeal. ‘I pray,’ said Christ, ‘not that Thou shouldest take then out of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil.’

We must live in the world, must do our part to keep the great earth spinning round and round. But we must not be of it, must not drift into adopting its aims, its ends, its standards, its ambitions, its methods and ways.

And not to do so is so hard.”

—Arthur John Gossip, The Galilean Accent (T&T Clark, 1926), 144—146.

Anxious Impatience

Tony Reinke Anxiety, Worldliness

Craig M. Gay in his book The Way of the (Modern) World: Or, Why It’s Tempting to Live As If God Doesn’t Exist argues that worldliness is life severed from daily dependence upon God. In part Gay argues that worldliness is exposed whenever we grow anxiously impatient. Why? The reason is simple.

In the modern world we grow familiar with technological advancement. As the innovations multiply we are increasingly capable of controlling the world we live. Or so we think. Convinced we have harnessed some level of control, we actually become godlike, bearing a divine weight that none of us, not all of us collectively, can carry. And although we are surrounded by evidence that our techno-rational control of the world is insufficient, we are not quick to turn to God but ironically we are prone to look for further control of the world, which further roots our modern hope in technology. This in turn heaps a further weight of responsibility upon our finite shoulders.

Thus by channeling our anxious impatience into further technology we are left with an eroding theology that refuses to wait upon God. We find in the midst of technological advancement—which itself is a gift of God—that no matter how much control of the world we believe we have achieved we cannot free ourselves from anxious impatience.

In fact our anxious impatience drives us deeper into what Gay calls “the dehumanizing techniques of the modern world” (p. 310). As we praise human potential we are, in fact, praising technological advance. As we praise technology we grow increasingly impersonal. As we become increasingly impersonal we become incapable of trusting in anyone, certainly not a god. Thus the modern man finds it impossible to trust patiently in God, impossible to walk by faith and not sight, and is found to be clutching a worldview that is not nourished by a healthy anticipation of Christ’s return. Our anxious impatience in the modern world is a signal that (to some degree) we have given up on our faith and trust in God and no longer patiently anticipate His timing.

Please do not misunderstand. Technology is not itself sinful or wrong. I believe technology is a gift of God’s common grace. However when we find ourselves growing impatient and anxious in this world we should be concerned that our appreciation for technology has overstepped its role and has displaced God. Anxious impatience is a signal that we seek to control our world and our own lives. Thus when anxious impatience appears in our hearts, it should be truthfully interpreted as a manifestation of God-ignoring worldliness. Only by grace and a firm faith in God can we be freed from the anxious impatience of the modern world.

A Treatise on Earthly-Mindedness by Jeremiah Burroughs

Tony Reinke Book reviews, BR > Reformation Trust, BR > Soli Deo Gloria Pub., Jeremiah Burroughs, Sin, Sin in Culture, What is sin, Worldliness

Book review
A Treatise on Earthly-Mindedness
by Jeremiah Burroughs

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Jeremiah Burroughs (1599-1646) is one of my favorite Puritan authors and (I dare say) one of the most overlooked.

In his extensive writings, Burroughs authored a very helpful book on discerning worldliness in a book now titled A Treatise on Earthly -Mindedness. It was retypeset and edited by Don Kistler and published in 1991 by Soli Deo Gloria.

Burroughs builds his argument from Paul’s sobering ‘enemies of the Cross’ statement — “their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Phil. 3:19-20).

Contents

Burroughs first discerns the seriousness and dangers of worldly thinking (pp. 3-92). His goal in this first section is to call this earthly-mindedness what it really is – adultery, idolatry and enmity. This earthly-mindedness suffocates the work of grace, opens the soul to further temptations (1 Tim. 6:9), stifles the hearing of preaching, breeds foolish lusts in the soul, spreads roots for future apostasy, deadens the heart for prayer, dishonors God, hinders our preparations for death, and ultimately drowns the soul into perdition.

The second section covers the implications of our citizenship in heaven (Phil. 3:20), and is filled with helpful practical advice on to living as foreigners in our sojourning through life on earth (pp. 93-178). This theme continues in the final section which helps discern what walking with God looks like in everyday life (pp. 179-259). The final chapter contains very useful wisdom on walking with God when His presence seems distant (pp. 254-259).

Grace

Throughout his works, Burroughs avoided a common Puritan pitfall. The Puritans frequently narrowed in so tightly on a particular topic that surrounding contexts and connections were forgotten. It’s not uncommon to read a Puritan on the topic of sin continue on and on without any mention of the Cross, God’s grace, and living in freedom and victory over sin. Even some of the great Puritan classics (such as the works of Richard Baxter and The Life of God in the Soul of Man by Henry Scougal) woefully assume the Cross.

Burroughs is quite the opposite. He’s hardly begun a lengthy diagnosis of worldliness in the heart before breaking into a short digression on the glorious work of grace in conversion (pp. 29-30)! This work of God transforms enemies of the Cross into those who now have quickened souls. Those once veiled by sin and blinded by the world now see the light of God’s glory! We are new creatures, creatures no longer content with worldliness but now transcending the circumstances of the world and clinging to eternal hope. This new life enlarges our heart and our spiritual appetite becomes so large that no earthly means could fill it. This grace severs our grip on the world, and we begin to experience God’s sanctifying grace in our souls. For Burroughs, even when discovering the depth and darkness of sinfulness in the heart, God’s grace is ever in view.

With careful pastoral balance, Burroughs encourages us to pursue excellence in our earthly calling, while exhorting us to carefully avoid the snares of worldly-mindedness.

“Considering what has been delivered, I beseech you, lay it seriously upon your heart, especially you who are young beginners in the way of religion, lest it proves to be with you as it has with many who are digging veins of gold and silver underground. While they are digging in those mines for riches, the earth, many times, falls upon them and buries them, so that they never come up out of the mine again. … Keep wide open some place to heaven, or otherwise, if you dig too deep, noxious gas vapors will come up from the earth, if it doesn’t fall on you first. There will be noxious gas vapors to choke you if there is not a wide hole to let in the air that comes from heaven to you. Those who are digging in mines are very careful to leave a place open for fresh air to come in. And so, though you may follow your calling and do the work God sets you here for as others do, be as diligent in your calling as any. But still keep a passage open to heaven so that there may be fresh gales of grace come into your soul” (p. 85).

Conclusion

Fitting of Burrough’s classic, Soli Deo Gloria published A Treatise on Earthly -Mindedness with an attractive dust-jacketed, durable cloth cover and Smyth-sewn binding. It’s an excellent work for those of us who sometimes find ourselves surrounded by the cares of this world, asphyxiating on temporal toxins rather than breathing fresh grace.

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Title: A Treatise on Earthly-Mindedness
Author: Jeremiah Burroughs (1599-1646)
Editor: Don Kistler
Reading level: 2.0/5.0 > easy thanks to excellent editing (includes nice section and subpoint headings)
Boards: hardcover, embossed
Pages: 259
Volumes: 1
Dust jacket: yes
Binding: Smyth sewn
Paper: white and clean
Topical index: no (would have been very useful)
Scriptural index: no (would have been very useful)
Text: perfect type
Publisher: Ligonier; Soli Deo Gloria
Year: original ed., 1649; edited ed., 1991
Price USD: $18.00 from Ligonier
ISBN: 1877611387