I am working on a study of the "world" in the Bible; especially the gospel of John. Growing up I heard about the world as well "worldly", which is a positiion that can be derived from the Bible. What I see in the gospel of John however, and recently throughout much of Scripture, is that God sees not just individuals, but "the world" as having infinite worth. God does not just love individual people that he wants to pull out of the world at the appointed time, God loves THE WORLD. He is going to make of this old world a new world. God is about redemption not abandonment.
Why this strain of "the world" as being bad? Well, because the world is contested ground. The devil is not in hell, he is on earth as "a lion seeking whom he may devour". He is in the gospel of John, the Prince of this World, but Jesus is sent from the world above to take back for God what is his. Furthermore he calls us to love the world on his behalf. It is as we love the world and those in it that we move in the name of Christ. For Christ did not come to condemn the world, but to save it (John 3:17). And he saves it by his love. His love on the cross. His love through the Holy Spirit moving through his disciples.
Does anyone have anything to say or to add to help me with this study?
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In my experience, when Christians use "the world" in a derrogatory way, it seems like a dismissive (or fearful, depending on your theology) term for "anything non-Christian". Although I think some would say "un-Christian" instead. Here's my thought:
Denominations (or churches) that have a "God so loved the world" philosophy would use the "un-Christian" or "pre-Christian" (not even joking) connotation, in the sense that it's not necessarily a negative phrase. Just for things not of Christ. The distinction, unfortunately, being that we (Christians) are somehow completely "of Christ" and everything else is decidedly "not of Christ".
Denominations (or churches) that are more into "thou shalt not" (OT or legalistic) than "thou shalt" (maybe a more NT or John-like view) use "the world" in a negative voice, as though they are fearful of anything that may try to draw them away from Christ. They are suspicious of anything that does not place Christ at its head (or at its head in the way they interpret He should be at its head). These are the same people who frequently use the word "perversion" and who come down hard against their pet sins. These people...well, let's just say I know more than one person who has been hurt by this definition of "the world" and so may have turned their back on God forever. I hate that guy...
Again, in the end, it's all just semantics. Even people/things "un-Christian" or "non-Christian" or "secular" or "of the world" or whatever term you use to denote difference, are part of the command to love. Though I do agree with you, I think it's simply another case of how infallible and incomplete language is. What one person means as a metaphor, another takes literally, and another doesn't take at all. It's simply that certain people are trying to express something without being concrete, and others (or maybe the Bible specifically) are trying to be concrete in a commandment or encouragement of where our love (though not our loyalty) should lie. In the end, we're all miscommunicating, aren't we? Language is finite and the only thing that remains true for everyone is the unlanguageable.
Okay, now I'm confused...
It's okay, Clint, Tim just likes to beat up on me anyway. :) Ha.
I can understand what you're saying, Tim, and I don't disagree with you, but I still stick by what I said. (And, ftr, I think that the not being able to graduate thing might be a little harsh, whether it's partially in jest or not.) But as a good deconstructionist, I have a healthy respect for language as a modality, but I also understand its heavy shortcomings. Yes, words are all we have, but if we teach a blatant word worship and never alert students/people to the fallability of language, then we miss the beauty of the untranslatable, the incommunicable. The fact that language is incomplete is not a bad thing. It's just a thing. That makes the translation and the speaking and searching for meaning and studying semantics and rhetoric and linguistics (all of which I have done extensively) intensely beautiful and fascinating.
Oh, and the T.S. Eliot quote was all about this. It was all about the unspoken, unheard word--the word within a word. The incommunicable. And "The Waste Land" is also about this. He spends the whole poem searching for water and when the thunder comes, what does it do? It *speaks*!! And then immediately, is translated and retranslated and retranslated. But the beauty of that first word is that it communicates something powerful and beyond language. Well...in language, maybe, but beyond meaning. And then we (the good talkers we are) enforce and translate meaning into it. Does that mean I fault translators or speakers for this forced meaning? No. I think translation is beautiful and necessary. I think language is beautiful and necessary. We live in language, and we should love and respect it. But we should also be leery of it, and recognize where its shortcomings are. We should recognize when something is incommunicable and be in awe of that.
God, for instance, is beyond language. There is no way to accurately enclose God in language--He will always supercede our ability to explain Him. That's what I love about language--it can't really define anything, it can only explain it. Isn't that beautiful?? The Hebrews could not even speak His name, He was so far beyond it. But language is also power, and God uses language, as we all do.
But we have to realize, when we come upon rhetorical issues like the one Clint has brought up, that it is the fault of language (partially) and the fault of the human race--our inability to create a word that means exactly and only what we want it to mean. So when we talk about "the world" in seventeen hunderd contexts, and yet never explain what we mean when we say it, then, yeah, it *is* just semantics. And I'm not being dismissive when I say that.
See, Tim, you always bring out the inner philosopher in me. Why do you do that? I'm going back to being a linguist now...
I also have a hard time with the "just semantics" answer. Language does have limitations. But even Derrida, in his effort to deconstuct language, shows the worth of words through his attempt to liberate them.
Besides-the study is making its way into a sermon and the just semantics answer wont work there.
Okay, am I dreaming, or did I not just post two very long descriptions relating to what I thought the answer was? I think that constitutes a lot more than "just semantics". It's not like I said "oh, it's just semantics" with a casual wave of my hand and a dismissive glare.
And I do think that semantics has a lot to do with those "world, world, worldly" discussions. Different people mean different things when they say "the world" or "worldly", and you need to take that into consideration.
And in defense of deconstruction, I have as much respect for language as Derrida does, but the issue of confusion in language deserves a lot of respect. Christians, as much as non-Christians, need to understand how our language can be confusing and how translations (like the Bible, for instance) can be greatly effected by the personal politics/preferences of the translator. I mean, come on, has no one here read "God's Secretaries" OR the King James Bible???
So, yes, it is semantics. And yes, there's a lot more to it than that. So do whatever you need to do, but don't discount semantics. It's a lot more important than some people would like to admit.
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