The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Friendship with the world?

Practices Christian Living
#1

What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. (James 4:1-4 NASB)

I am wondering what people’s interpretation of these verses, and how does one apply it practically to one’s Christian walk (without falling into the trap of legalism). I also wondered if your views of sanctification changed after switching over to a Universalist mindset? If this has been already discussed, I apologize. I did try to do a search and did not find it.

Thanks,
Michelle

#2

Hi MIchelle -

The way I interpret this passage is that ‘world’ here does not mean the world that ‘God so loved’ (that is, it does not mean the people in the world); nor does it mean the creation, which God pronounces in Genesis is ‘good’ (and remains ‘good’). Rather it means the patterns of desire that lead to rivalry between people (that is covetous desire). It is this type of worldly desire that leads to conflict, violence and murder – and unfortunately the structures of human civilisation are often patterned after this form of desire. So we need to desire differently.

All the best

Dick :slight_smile:

#3

Hi MIchelle -

The way I interpret this passage is that ‘world’ here does not mean the world that ‘God so loved’ (that is, it does not mean the people in the world); nor does it mean the creation, which God pronounces in Genesis is ‘good’ (and remains ‘good’). Rather it means the patterns of desire that lead to rivalry between people (that is covetous desire). It is this type of worldly desire that leads to conflict, violence and murder – and unfortunately the structures of human civilisation are often patterned after this form of desire. So we need to desire differently.

All the best

Dick :slight_smile:

#4

i’m with Sobornost on this one.

James is pretty clear what he means by “world”, with that summary of mimetic desire, subsequent rivalry and the murder that inevitably follows. these are what culture and civilisation are built on. they are the world systems that control us, give rise to our most hideous evil, and then provide false cures for that evil that merely keep them in check temporarily.

friendship with that system is enmity with God, who desires peace between us and love, and that our desires are modelled after Him, not after each other.

we’re both heavily referencing Rene Girard on this subject. i have only read one book of his, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, but i recommend it strongly.

#5

Dear Dick and CL,

Thanks for your replies. Yes, the passage seems to be referring to ungodly worldly desires and a pursuit of selfish pleasure that leads a person away from love of others. What I am interested in is how does one practically walk that out as a Christian in a world system that is set up to promote rivalry and covetousness? I am mostly interested in pleasing God, not out of fear but out of appreciation and obedience. As I am typing out this I am just realizing that the answer seems to be discerning and listening to the “still small voice within.” Jesus always said that He never did anything on His own initiative but what He saw His Father do. I am going to have to learn how to trust and follow the Spirit in my everyday life, and I am sure that will look different for everybody who does that. We all are so unique and wonderfully made!

As for the book recommendation CL, even though I am very hopeful that God will reconcile all, I am not very hopeful that He will gift me with the comprehension of many academic books :laughing:. I do appeciate your thoughtfulness though and I am glad God has blessed you with that capacity. But if the Spirit leads you, I wonder if you could explain “mimetic desire” as if you were explaining it to a child? I promise I won’t feel like I am being condescended. :slight_smile: If not, that’s OK. Grace and Peace to you.

Cheers,
Michelle

#6

Hi Michelle,
It’s not that academic a book: i’m able to grasp at least some it, so it can’t be :laughing:

sorry i shouldn’t have used that term. mimetic desire, which i’m sure Sobornost could explain better, is imitated desire.

your neighbour gets a new car, so you want that car too, etc. such things can escalate into bloodshed surprisingly fast, when nothing is there to check it.
basically we model ourselves after those around us, that we admire/loathe for some reason or other, and the way that plays out is that we desire what they desire, and it turns into rivalry.
it starts with envy and works its way up to murder.
when it gets really bad, ie everyone rivalrously fighting against everyone, they suddenly synchronise and turn on someone weak and vulnerable that is likely innocent, but gets the blame for everything going wrong (ie the Jews in Germany). the murder/expulsion of that person/people has such a trancendant affect of seeming to remove all conflict and trouble, that often the victims get turned into gods, whose sacrifice is venerated in years to come.
it’s a cycle we play out again and again. over time actual murder gets replaced by ritual that re-enacts it to some degree. through this and other means, we hide from ourselves the fact that ritual murder has taken place, and doubly monstrous in that it’s a weak, vulnerable victim.
God is having none of that: He takes the side of the innocent victim and breaks the cycle in pieces through Christ. He says don’t go that way, don’t love the World. love God, love your neighbour. model yourselves after God and seek what He seeks. do not covet your neighbour’s possessions because all treasure rusts. seek treasure in Heaven instead.
so God replaces this world system, with its hidden (or overt) murder, with a system that causes us to desire good things for each other, and not selfishly model others for our own gain or affirmation. we are affirmed as we affirm others.
hope that’s a bit clearer. sorry it’s so long.

#7

Point taken Michelle – but you should see the sort of convoluted stuff some people start talking here when they get onto the really hot topics!!! ‘Mimetic’ is a mere peccadillo :laughing: !

I’ll just back up what CL has said by giving my take on the mimetic desire stuff.

Girard talks a lot about desire and how desire operates – and he thinks he can see the conclusions he has reached independently there in the Bible.

The problem with human desire is that a lot of the time it is based on rivalry – which leads to both envy (the desire to have what someone else has already got), and jealousy (the fear that someone will take what is ours from us). Cain is the primeval rival of Abel.

Girard calls the stuff going on behind this rivalrous desire ‘mimetic’ arguing that we human beings often desire things because someone else already desires them. We do this without thinking – hence Girard has opted for the jargon term ‘mimetic desire’ rather than the everyday ‘desire motivated by imitation’.

We learn mimetic desire as children – look at how children at a party will all of a sudden want the same thing that someone else has just shown a preference for (the famous battle over the red mini jelly over the other colours available springs to mind – and it could also be over the green jelly or the orange jelly). Indeed perhaps we are actually born desiring in this way.

Desiring what another already desires is not a problem if the element of rivalry does not enter in. But once rivalry is there – which it often is – the problems start.

God is not our rival – God is pure non-rivalrous, impartial love. Jesus shows us how to live according to God’s non-rivalrous desire rather than according to or own rivalrous desires.

Ermmm – that’s the best I can do

#8

Thanks Dick and CL for your kind explanation. It seems that mimetic desire is just a fancy name for sin but perhaps it goes into more detail about the mechanism of it. That sin distorts perception so that your neighbour is not someone to love but someone to compete with. It reminds me of a story when I was younger. I hung out alot with my best friend and my sister came to town to visit me. I noticed my best friend acting a little strange…I intuited that she was insecure about my relationship with my sister. We all went out shopping and my sister was looking at a beautiful skirt and admiring it. I heard her say she could not afford it ( being a single mom and all). My friend went and bought the skirt for herself after she saw my sister look at it. So you have jealousy and envy at play here. I remember being really upset at my friend. I went back to the store and bought the skirt for my sister. My sister was the only Christian out of the three of us at the time…interestingly she never said anything about my friend’s acting out.

Here is another thing I came across tonight that reminds me of wordliness. It is a quote by J. Preston Eby:

“Everything in modern civilization, everything in the scientific, educational, medical, industrial and social institutions of the world is calculated against heaven, against eternity, against SPIRIT. They want to delude the masses of mankind to believe that this is it — this temporal, spacial, physical and visible world is the sum and substance of REALITY. That is the wisdom of the world, the wisdom of this age that undergirds and permeates the entire kingdom of corruption and death. The world operates on the supposition and premise that everything of value is now, in time, material, the things that are seen, tangible, felt and held, and that when this life passes it is over. Therefore, eat, drink and be merry; therefore fornicate; therefore agrandize; therefore grasp; therefore get all you can get and enjoy all you can enjoy, for this is all there is. And that is a LIE! The world is living in a lie. And the church world is living in another (and just as serious) LIE. The churches tell us that heaven is a future hope — beyond the grave. They understand not that heaven and spirit are synonymous — you cannot have SPIRIT without having HEAVEN. And the KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS WITHIN YOU!”

Grace and Love to you both,
Michelle

#9

Hi Michelle -

Yes that’s exactly it :smiley: – mimetic desire when it becomes rivalrous is ‘sin’ – but the concept does lay bare the mechanism of sin.

Regarding the quotation from Eby – from my perspective this is far too world denying.

.

This is the pessimism that rejects human culture out of hand. I see the ‘world’ and the ‘kingdom’ as mixed up together – rather like Augustine argued in The City of God Augustine. when he elaborated Christ’s parable of the Wheat and the Tares. There are two cities in this world; the City of Man, governed by ‘cupiditas’ (self regarding desire); and the City of God governed by ‘caritas’ (disinterested desire directed towards God). In this world the two interpenetrate each other and they interpenetrate in the soul of each one of us; only at the Judgement will the two be separated. So I see human culture as something mixed rather than something rotten to the core. And I see many things in modern civilisation as very good, while other things are very bad.

Blessings

Dick :slight_smile:

#10

Thanks Dick,

You are a gentleman and a scholar. :slight_smile:

Maybe some day I wll check out Augustine. Thanks for sharing. I know that Eby is not everyone’s cup of tea but I am being blessed by his writings lately.

Peace and Grace to you,
Michelle

#11

you have summed up Dick well. an excellent fellow all round!

#12

Hi Michelle and James –

:blush: :blush: :blush: :blush: :blush: That’s very kind of you to pay me such compliments – and you are a very, very good eggs too :smiley: .

Yes I guess Christian Universalists often come from different perspectives – a big difference on this site is between the Armenian and the Calvinist Universalists. Another difference – not given as much attention – is between the Augustinians and the semi-Pelagians (forget the pompous labels and let’s call them the ‘Augies’ and the ‘Semis’). For the Augies human beings come into this world totally depraved because of the sin of Adam. For the Semis human beings come into the world broken by the sin of Adam, but the Image of God is still there albeit in a cracked and obscured form. For the Augies God’s grace completely replaces our fallen nature – some would even say it destroys our fallen nature and then gives us a new one. For the Semis God’s grace heals and completes our fallen nature.

I’m a bit of a Semi myself. I see that Preston Eby is obviously in the Augie camp – inasmuch as he believes in human depravity (I’ve been reading a sermon of his in which he speaks much of the depravity of fallen human beings). It was actually St Augustine who first formulated the doctrine of the total depravity of human beings (although his doctrine of the two Cities softened some of the radical implications that world rejection has for others – for example some think it implies that once saved we need to completely separate ourselves from worldly culture, while others have drawn the conclusion that the saved/godly must impose the will of God on an ungodly world through political might and force). St Augustine was also the foremost of the ‘severe’ Doctors of the Church, preaching that only the few, elect are saved, and the rest are predestined to ECT.

Now here’s something a bit quizzical. I think Universalism changes Augustinianism – by not imagining a final separation of the elect from the damned. Even if we come into the world depraved, God still loves us all and therefore we can love all people without being terrified of contamination. A Universalist Semi will be at one with a Universalist Augie in general outlook but will have a slightly less pessimistic view of human culture. So I think a Universalist Augie has far more in common with a Universalist Semi than an ECT Augie or an ECT Semi.

Finally I’ll give a couple for examples about attitudes to culture –

When chloroform was first invented (and therefore resulted in the substantial reduction of deaths from trauma when people had operations) some ECT Augies argued that it was a wicked thing because God wants us to suffer and feel pain because we are sinners. Now I don’t think a Universalist Augie would argue this even if they do see modern medicine as ungodly. As for me I see medicine as a mixed – the women and men who give their best to alleviate human suffering and give comfort are for me reflecting the image of God even if this is a broken image. The multinational drug companies competing for profits are reflecting the distorted and mucky bits in human nature that need to be healed through grace.
I reckon a lot of people on this site are Universalist Augies – but hey, there is a very popular thread here entitled ‘The Gospel According to the Movies’ where contributors discern the Gospel in modern cinema (often in secular films) – so I reckon at least on this particular thread even the Augies are acting like Semis. On the other hand I think as a Semi I often say more mournful things about human nature than some of the Augies here. So I guess we Augies and Semis can live very happily together because we are also Universalists.

love to you both

Dick

#13

A final note:

If my ramblings in the last post mean anything coherent to anyone you may well be asking – ‘If you Dick do not follow Augustine on depravity, ECT or predestination, why are you so keen on the doctrine of the two cities? Surely you are being inconsistent here :angry: ? ‘And that’s a fair point’, I say (arguing quite pottily with myself and thinking, ‘I must get out more!!!’ :unamused: ).

My answer is that Augustine’s gloss on the Parable of the Wheat and Tares when used by later thinkers who did not share his views on depravity and hard ECT (for example, the Anglican Richard Hooker) has been used in benign and liberating ways to enable the development of a free society without religious compulsion.

But I’m basically a historian – so that sort of detail interests me :unamused: .

Enough said from My Saddo :laughing:

Dick :slight_smile:

#14

Thanks Dick for the historic perspective.
You have given me alot to chew on. You certainly exposed how putting labels on people is insufficient to explain what is really going on spiritually for people. I will let these thoughts marinate for awhile. Life’s pressures are calling me now.

Cheers,
Michelle