In Two Places at Once

In Two Places at Once

John 15:18-19

            One of the most interesting books on my shelf is Strong’s Complete Concordance.  Many editions of the Bible have a limited concordance in the back, but Strong’s is a complete concordance.  Like many titles, it’s a bit of an overstatement, but for the most part it’s true.  If you (like me) have a bad memory for numbers, all you need is a key word and you can look up practically any Scripture reference you want.

            Find a good concordance and look up “world.”  There will be entry after entry containing this word.  Many of them are in the New Testament, and many of those are in the gospels—and many of those are in John’s gospel.  You’ve probably already figured out where I’m going with this, especially if you’ve read the Scripture passage listed at the top of the page.

            Almost from the beginning of Matthew’s gospel Jesus draws a sharp distinction between himself and his teaching, and the world.  You could probably quote five to ten examples without taking a breath, even if you couldn’t cite chapter and verse.  In one way or another Jesus says over and over “Be in the world but not of the world.”  But what does he mean?  It sounds as if he’s telling his followers (remember, that includes us!) to be in two places at once.  Everybody’s got to be somewhere, but nobody can be in two somewheres at the same time.  Not even the world’s great magicians can pull off that stunt.  They are masters of deception, making you think they’re in one place while they’ve moved to another place, but even they can’t do the impossible.

            What is Jesus telling us to do?  We know we must exist in this physical world.  There is no other place for us to be.  We live our lives in this body (some peoples’ out-of-body experiences notwithstanding), and we’re physically constrained (restrained?) to one location within it.  But that’s not what Jesus is speaking of, and we know it.  We understand what he means even if we’d like to pretend we don’t.

            When Jesus tells us to be in the world, he is recognizing our physical limitations—the necessity for us to occupy some space on (or near) earth.  When he tells us not to be of the world, he is referring to our spiritual, economic, social and emotional orientation.  The physical space we occupy is not to determine the location of our thoughts, interests and desires.

            This is difficult.  Where do we draw the line?  There are people whom we love and with whom we interact.  Can we turn our backs on them?  We know the answer.  We have activities we enjoy.  Do we stop doing them?  That’s a tougher one.  Here’s where we have to be in tune with Jesus.  If we have (as Paul tells the Galatians) “put on Christ,” we should begin to understand which activities are pleasing to God and which are not.  I remember a line from my youth:  “Don’t go anywhere you can’t take Jesus with you.”  How this plays out will be different for different people, but we have to apply a standard that meets God’s standards, and that can be pretty exacting.

            The real problem comes with attitudes—with ways of thinking.  These are difficult to deal with.  We could cite many areas here, but let’s take one example.  What’s your attitude towards money?  How do you use it?  Wherever your money goes, you’ll find your heart (sound familiar?).  Many live by the philosophy, “He who dies with the most toys wins;” but Jesus gave up all the “toys” he might have had to serve others.

            Perhaps two of the most telling “world” references are in Matthew 5:14, and Matthew 16:26.  We are called to be the light of the world.  If we’ve sold out to that world to the point where we’ve lost our souls, our lamps will be pretty dim.