Scripture shows worldliness as a gospel issue. When someone repents, he leaves the world system for a heavenly one. When salvation presents itself to someone, a worldly heart, which cares more about the accoutrements of this present world than the realities of the next one, the one of God, the eternal one, he has a choice. Does he take the world instead of Jesus Christ? The world challenges acquiescence to Jesus Christ, and the worldly heart shows its loyalty to the world with its cultural choices, ones that clash with the ways of God.
Specific Areas of Worldliness, the Things of This World
Everything that smacks of the world system is the darkness of this world, ruled by the prince of darkness himself, Satan. These things are not neutral. They are the things of the world of which John speaks in 1 John 2:15-17. Specific areas often identified as representing this spiritual darkness include:
- Dress and Appearance: Styles designed to intentionally promote immodesty, vanity, rebellion, or the glorification of the flesh rather than dignity and self-control.
- Entertainment: Media and lyrical themes that explicitly normalize occultism, violence, promiscuity, nihilism, or the glorification of evil as “creativity.”
- Music: Music itself uses aggressive rhythms, hypnotic repetition, and synthetic frequencies to directly bypass the intellect and manipulate the physical senses into a state of carnal stimulation, emotional chaos, or spiritual trance.
- Recreation: Activities that center on the pursuit of selfish excess, intense competition, drunkenness, or the idolization of personalities and pastimes above spiritual priorities.
- Philosophies: Secular worldviews—such as extreme materialism, radical moral relativism, or secular humanism—that deny absolute truth or the existence of a Creator.
- Art: Creative expressions that fundamentally mock the sacred, depict depravity as beautiful, or push the boundaries of human perversion without offering redemption.
Broader Elements of Worldly Theological and Spiritual Frameworks
Beyond the cultural and artistic realms, theological and spiritual frameworks identify several structural, institutional, and interpersonal systems that drive the “world system” (kosmos) toward spiritual darkness. The things of the world that distinguish the world system are also broader elements, such as these:
- Economic and Commerce Systems: Structures driven by systemic greed, exploitation of the poor, the commodification of human beings, and the belief that money equals worth.
- Political and Governance Power: Systems built on corruption, tyranny, the deification of leaders, and the pursuit of raw power at the expense of justice and truth.
- Technological and Digital Control: Algorithmic systems that foster digital addiction, isolate individuals, spread deception rapidly, or attempt to replace human soul-connection with artificial reality.
- Secularized Education and Academics: Institutional training that actively scoffs at spiritual realities, enforces intellectual conformity, or penalizes belief in absolute truth.
- Speech and Communication Culture: The normalization of gossip, slander, vulgarity, outrage culture, and the manipulation of language to twist the definition of good and evil.
- Corporate and Workplace Dynamics: Environments that demand total loyalty to profit, enforce ethical compromise, or require individuals to sacrifice family and faith for upward mobility.
- Family and Relationship Deconstruction: Cultural trends that redefine or dismantle the traditional covenantal family unit, promoting isolation, disposable relationships, and self-worship over sacrificial love.
Worldliness Fostered By the Worldly Church
When a church treats the gospel as a product and attendees as consumers, it adopts the spiritual darkness of the world system by replacing divine power with human marketing. The specific aspects of this philosophy that imitate worldly means include:
- Consumer-Driven Marketing: Surveying the local community to find out what unchurched people “want” in a church, then tailoring the message, music, and environment to match those preferences.
- The “Entertainment” Liturgy: Replacing traditional worship, corporate prayer, and deep reverence with high-production concerts, professional lighting, and secular media to keep audiences amused.
- Dilution of Scandalous Truths: Deliberately avoiding controversial or convicting biblical doctrines—such as sin, repentance, hell, the wrath of God, and the offense of the cross—to avoid offending the “customer.”
- Pragmatism as Truth: Evaluating the success of a ministry strictly by worldly metrics, such as attendance numbers, financial giving, and social media engagement (“if it works, it must be blessed”).
- CEO Pastoral Leadership: Viewing the pastor primarily as a chief executive officer, motivational speaker, or brand manager rather than a shepherd, theologian, or spiritual guardian.
- Therapeutic Deism: Shifting the focus of preaching from the glory and holiness of God to self-help, emotional comfort, and practical tips for a successful, stress-free life.
- The Cult of Personality: Leveraging worldly branding and celebrity culture around a lead pastor to build loyalty and draw crowds, rather than anchoring the church solely in Christ.
The Particular Iterations of the Thorny Ground in Matthew 13
In Jesus’ Parable of the Sower, the thorny ground represents individuals who hear the word, but the “cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful” (Matthew 13:22). When translated into modern-day worldly systems, these thorns are not always overt evils; instead, they are highly normalized, culturally celebrated pursuits that quietly suffocate a person’s spiritual capacity.
The Deceitfulness of Riches (The Lie of Security & Status)
The “deceitfulness” of wealth lies in its false promise that peace, security, and identity can be bought. Today, this manifests as:
- The Lifestyle Creep Trap: The unceasing desire for a larger home, a newer vehicle, or luxury upgrades, which locks individuals into a cycle of high expenses, requiring total devotion to career advancement over spiritual service.
- The Myth of Financial Independence: An obsession with early retirement, investment portfolios, and “passive income” that shifts a person’s trust from divine provision to a financial spreadsheet.
- Curated Flex Culture: Social media algorithms designed to trigger envy, pressuring people to buy high-end brands, luxury vacations, and aesthetic experiences to project an image of success.
- Commoditizing Time: Viewing every spare hour through the lens of monetization (the “side hustle” culture), leaving no unmonetized time for prayer, rest, or serving others.
The Cares of This World (The Tyranny of the Urgent)
The “cares” are the anxieties, distractions, and demands of daily life that absorb all available mental and emotional bandwidth. Today, they are weaponized by modern infrastructure through:
- The Notification Economy: Smartphones and apps specifically engineered to fragment human attention, keeping the mind in a perpetual state of low-level anxiety and digital noise that chokes out deep, quiet meditation.
- Hyper-Parenting Obsession: A culturally enforced standard that requires parents to enroll children in endless sports, tutoring, and extracurricular activities, effectively destroying family rest and consistent church community life.
- The Performative Workplace: Remote work boundaries dissolving and corporate cultures demanding constant availability via Slack or email, turning career survival into an all-consuming mental idol.
- Incessant News and Political Doomscrolling: The 24-hour cycle of outrage and geopolitical anxiety that feeds chronic fear, shifting a believer’s focus from an eternal kingdom to immediate, worldly chaos.
The Resulting “Thorny Ground” Character
In today’s world, the individual choked by thorns is rarely a blatant apostate or a hostile critic of faith. Instead, they are characterized by:
- Spiritual Paralysis: They still attend services or hold beliefs, but their spiritual life has no outward impact, no missional sacrifice, and no transformed character traits (the fruit of the Spirit).
- Chronic Exhaustion: They are perpetually “too busy” or “too tired” for spiritual disciplines, treating their relationship with God as a low-priority hobby rather than the source of life.
- Double-Mindedness: They attempt to serve two masters, trying to fully participate in the consumerist American Dream while simultaneously trying to follow a crucified Savior.
Visible Marks of Worldliness in the Present Age
The world system expresses itself in concrete behaviors, habits, dress, entertainments, and attitudes. Only internal wordliness is, in fact, another worldly myth. When these things appear in the church without rebuke, without resistance, and without the inward conflict that characterizes genuine regeneration, they constitute evidence of the same worldliness the apostle John warned against, raising the same question about the genuineness of the profession of faith that underlies them.
Dress of Women
The Worldly Display of the Female Body
An obvious manifestation concerns the dress of women. The world system is committed to the display of the female body. It has been so from ancient times — Proverbs 7:10 describes the harlot by her attire — but the present age has pressed this commitment to an extreme that would have been unthinkable to prior generations of Christians. Women go to beaches, to pools, to public recreation in garments that cover almost nothing — the bikini in particular being, by any honest description, underwear worn in public.
The so-called one-piece swimsuit affords only marginally greater covering and is still form-displaying to a degree that would have scandalized any serious Christian community before the mid-twentieth century. Women attend gyms in tights that leave the entire form of the lower body exposed. They wear shorts in public — and in some cases to church itself — that expose the thigh. They wear blouses and tops designed to draw the eye to the bosom.
In Contradiction to the Biblical Standard
The New Testament’s standard is not ambiguous. Paul commands women to adorn themselves “in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety” (1 Timothy 2:9). The word translated “modest” in the Greek (kosmios) refers to that which is orderly, well-arranged, and becoming — in direct contrast to the disordered, the provocative, and the exhibitionist. The word translated “shamefacedness” (aidōs) refers to an internal sense of shame at the prospect of impropriety — a sense of modesty that is not merely external compliance but inward orientation.
Peter commands wives to adorn themselves not with outward things but with “the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit” (1 Peter 3:4). The implicit assumption of both apostles is that true Christian women would understand that the body is not an instrument of public display.
When professing Christian women dress indistinguishably from the world — when they wear what the world wears to the beach, to the gym, and to social occasions — they demonstrate, at minimum, that the world’s values regarding the body and its display have not been displaced by the gospel’s values regarding modesty, chastity, and the dignity of the female form. Bunyan’s test applies: does the love of the world, expressed in the desire to appear as the world appears and to be approved as the world approves, still reign in the heart? If it does, the love of the Father is, on John’s account, not in that person.
More to Come