We are supposed to love and revere the Word of God, but we are also told to love not the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. Almost all of us know that loving the Scriptures means reading them, but few people know that not loving the world means reading the world.
It makes no sense to tell us to avoid something we cannot see. It makes no sense to tell us not to bump into the invisible thing.
This is why Christian worldview thinking is not an optional add-on extra. We must know and understand the gospel of John, of course, and the book of Romans, certainly. But we must also know what to do with rap music, sitcoms, neckties, tattoos, secular universities, sports cars, and eye liner. If we are steeped in Scripture, but cannot read the world, we are helpless. If we are steeped in the world, but do not know what the Bible says, then we are just worldlings, plain and simple.
The problem that many Christian young people is that they are familiar with the things the world is dishing up, but they are like a foreign student memorizing phrases, without any understanding of what they mean. Familiarity is not literacy. And one of the prime indicators of whether you are literate or not—if you are a true child of God—is whether or not you hate it. The fear of the Lord is the hatred of evil. If you don’t hate a good deal of what is going on, then it is clear you can’t read.
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