Inspiring Reading...

"Some people try to define worldliness as living outside a specific set of rules or conservative standards. If you listen to music with a certain beat, dress in fashionable clothes, watch movies with a certain rating, or indulge in certain luxuries of modern society, surely you must be worldly.

"Others, irritated and repulsed by rules that seem arbitrary, react to definitions of worldliness, assuming it's impossible to define. Or they think legalism will inevitably be the result, so we shouldn't even try.

"...Both views are wrong. For, by focusing exclusively on externals or dismissing the importance of externals, we've missed the point.

"...[John] takes the debate inside. For that's where worldliness is. It exists in our hearts..."

~Mahaney, C. J.. "Worldliness." pp. 29.

Point to Ponder

"What does it look like when the
blood of Christ governs the television and the Internet and
the iPod and the checkbook and the neckline?"

~Forward by John Piper

in: Maheney, C.J., "Worldliness." 2008.