How should we behave in God’s world?

It is a sad thing that this question doesn’t come naturally to our minds. The challenge we face is that all of us are born into a world in motion—all that the people before us valued and lived by surrounds us. We’re born in whole societies and cultures that are rooted in their ways of living. The attitudes, ways, values, and thinking are taken for granted as being what life is. Yet the sad truth is that very few are stopping in the midst of all their activities and truly looking to “walk before [God] and be blameless” (Gen 17:1).

We generally live in this world however we choose. We reach down and take what we want, do what we want, live however we want. And it is a general condition in us that we have no real regard for the effect we have on the world around us, nor to question if what we do in God’s world is approved by Him or not.

We expect that the effect we have is minimal, but very few truly face the actual effect they are having. We can see this clearly in the physical things we face today—the effect of industrial waste, polluted water, cancers caused by radiation or chemicals, and many such things. But this is equally true of the way we live our own lives spiritually. We choose philosophies and values to live by like they’re a game. We live in believing whatever we feel like, we choose ways to live, expecting them to be good (Ez 13:6). We have the relationships we desire, pursue and long after whatever seems best to us, make plans according to whatever we think best, and so on. Always failing to see how we pay no mind to the God of all creation, as well as denying or ignoring the effect all of these things have in His world.

Just the same as the “greedy corporation” that secretly poisons some small town by the by-product of their enterprises, so we poison the world around us with our beliefs and values, choices and works.

This is because we generally do not understand the spiritual effect we have upon the world. That every idea and belief we join with puts strength to that spiritual weight, arms I like a sword. The world slowly becomes the outcome of our ways, whatever they be. Selfishness, pride, lies, ignorance, godlessness—they spread like cancer.

And this is what we are all born into—we are born in the midst of generation upon generation of beliefs and values and their outcomes. Born in the midst of all the ways people have reached out their hands and taken what they wanted or thought best. And while we may grow up and see the fallout and flaws in previous generations and their systems, yet we often do not learn the lesson of the issue of self-will, nor see how we walk in the very same attitude—but in different ideas.

But if all of this was removed, if we were born alone, in a garden, before the Living God? In this pure world. What would we think? How would we think to direct our lives? How would we think to treat God and His creation? How would we act here? When there were more people around us, how would we think to treat another human, equally created in the image of God? Would we live so quickly in ambition and pride? Run to greed and self-seeking? Would we date people the way we do? Would we watch half of the things we do? How would we think about pursuing meaning and what to live for?

One of the things God tries to teach us about the world/worldliness is that it is living by the world’s mere system of values, ambitions, and ideas of good or meaning. All of us are created to follow, and we can never escape this nature in us. We either follow God, or we will follow something of the world.

I think many people are trying in some way to “live alone in the garden”, trying to reach out in some way to get past the influence of the world and into something pure. But very few think of the garden, alone, with God. They do not see that the only way to have the purity of the garden is through God.

Sadly, we are quite far away from seeing our responsibility to God in how we live. Many brush upon this when they see how we can live selfishly, just taking and taking and giving nothing back to the world around us. Seeing how much we harm nature and animals. But without God, we cannot see the true form of this humility, nor truly find it.

In God, we learn this true humility. To bear the right weight of how we live. To think about how we live in God’s world. Not just the physical world, but that alongside how we spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically live. All of this forming right faith in us. “Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.” (2 Cor 7:1)

Many today cry out for the ocean, trees, and animals, but how sad that they don’t cry out to God—how we treat God! And they don’t cry out against sin and worldliness. All of us are responsible to God, to walk before Him and be blameless, and the great difference between this earth and Paradise is that we do not regard the will of God here (Mt 6:10).

We are responsible before God in how we treat Him, how we treat His Word, how we treat His Son, how we treat His world, how we treat our fellow human beings, how we treat the animals, and how we go about our lives; what we believe and value, if our ways are just and fair, wise and good, or they’re born of a corrupt mind, ideas coming merely from the world, from pride and selfish ambition, and of foolish imaginations of the heart.

This is the heart of idolatry. Idolatry is not just that people worshipped false gods (though, of course, yes) but it was the epitome of this sort of issue; where people lived out their own ideas and imaginations, doing whatever they wished. They set their lives by these things, ignoring the great poison it filled the world with. The great evil of how they lived in vain and in great harm by these false notions of what they thought.

The sad condition of our lives is that we too easily live by whatever gets a hold of us first. And we often think we’re so enlightened and unique, not seeing how it is merely the ideas of the world. We are desperate to find the way to a meaningful life, yet people do not see how God is the true answer to this need.

People live their lives merely for rage baiting, strife, ambition, some idea of “success”, fame, experiences, fitness/sports, sexual desires, and other enjoyments. Some idea gets us hooked, and we follow after it. This is what God is showing us is the world, and speaking to us to follow after Him rather than to follow after these things.

Now, to be very clear, the church is often no better here. Though the world has its cultures and idols, the church often has just as many. So many ideas and traditions come from generation after generation of people in their ways of walking after God, their imaginations about the things of God, lessons of His Scriptures, and traditions of these things.

These things have just as terrible an effect as anything in the world. By this, so many have poisoned the world around them. And just as we are born into the world in all its outcomes, so we are often born again into a similar mess. If we are not careful, we can take as “doctrine” the mere ideas of man about God. Living by the ideas and ambitions in the church, the very same way people follow ideas and ambitions in the world.

Therefore we must be very careful here to understand that to find life in God is not to come out of one error just to fall into another in God’s name. We must see how the world can exist in the church and in the very ideas of what people call “doctrine”. Life is found only in truly following God. We must be alone with God in the garden, and allow Him alone to teach us. Not our own minds and desires, but equally, not the minds and hearts of others.

To come back to God is not to follow what mere generations of “culture” in the church teach. It is to come to the pure and good God, and to truly listen to Him. In fact, it is often learning to step beyond “the traditions of our fathers” (Gal 1:14) into what is truly of God. So often people are willing to turn to God, and yet they are so quickly presented with these idols, cultures, traditions in God’s name that they are led only into a different misery. So we must be very clear that our responsibility to God is only found when we shun all idols and traditions and cultures of mankind, to find the true religion of God.

(This is an excerpt from the Genesis 1 commentary.)