Bobzammel

One of the more troublesome Christian doctrines is that of the Christian relationship with the world. Basically it's dualism that states that Satan controls the entire world and therefore the Christian should have extremely limited contact with it. They are to "come out of it" "be unspotted" not to be "Friends" with that, and to "Not Love" it.
The "world" apparentally referred to is mainly the people in the world and teir morals; not the physical world, although some-the Gnostics-state the physical world is also evil. The Anti-World Christian philosophy is not really stated in the Old Testament, however it is mentioned in the New Testament, especially the Gospel and Epistles of John.
This doctrine of seperation seems to be the one no Christian can reasonably follow. The closest bearing to this doctrine is probably Catholic monks and nuns; interestingly there is no equavilent in Protestant or Fundamentalist circles, which take the bible even more literally than the Catholics do.
Christians who claim that they are "not of the world" interestingly still use computers, and apparentally still read the news and so on. Those who think there are seperated are pretty much deluding themselves-common among many Christians.

Any thoughts on this doctrine?

ManM

Bobzammel,
If you want to understand the Christian relationship with the world, why not look at how Jesus related to the world?

Amazon

Bobzammel,

What an interesting concept - the evil world doctrine. I haven't spent much time considering the reasons why nuns and monks would intentionally dedicate themselves to lives of discomfort or why some people think that suffering brings people closer to god. This would help explain that attitude.

This disparity seems like another casualty of buffet-style religion. Some Christians that have been exposed to this concept may have decided that this is one of those parts of the bible that is "less true" than the others. Or maybe they are confident that their god won't really mind, as long as they behave themselves in general and don't take inappropriate advantage of the evil world. Of course, this would lead into the question:

Who do they think they are that they can determine what their god is serious about and what he is not?

I'm sorry - it just doesn't sound like they take the god-concept seriously if they just pick and choose from the rule book as they go along. And I feel confident that a Christian who knows of this doctrine and has freely chosen to ignore it will tell you that they decided for themselves that that part wasn't important (or was taken out of context!)

Dargo

At a fundie church I used to attend I would often hear how evil liberal Christians ignored parts of the Bible that they didn't like. Fundies never will admit they do the same thing. Of course, it's impossible for any reasonably sane Christian who wants to live a mostly normal life not to ignore large portions of the Bible.