These ideas saw everything that was bodily or carnal as part of our imprisonment, and therefore bad. Some Gnostic ideas were easily incorporated into some Christians ones. But Gnostic Christians rejected the idea that the God of Jesus was involved in the Creation stories of Genesis. There was nothing good about earth or our bodies.
The early Church repudiated Gnosticism, but many of its ideas persist. Some Christians' discomfort with sexuality and bodily functions reflects this. And the notion that God is just itching to destroy the earth feels more Gnostic than biblical. After all the Bible speaks of a "new heaven and new earth," and Paul says that "creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay... that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now." Hardly sounds like something evil God is bent on destroying.
So what to do with today's verses in 1 John which tell us, "Do not love the world or the things in the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world." Is this telling us we should hate the world? No tree-hugging allowed?
Of course 1 John also tells us that "God is love," and it is associated with the same faith community that produced the Gospel of John with its famous line, "For God so loved the world..." So should we hate the world or not?
One of the great difficulties of the Bible is that it is written by people at home with myth, story, parable, and metaphor. We, on the other hand, are a very literal people. To us, myths are, by definition, untrue. And while we know how to use metaphors, they are not our default we or speaking, thinking or hearing. We are from a scientific age, and truth for us is literal. Debates about biblical literalism could only arise in the modern, scientific era, and even fundamentalist Christians approach the Bible from a scientific worldview.
But in John's gospel and in 1 John, "the world" is not the same thing as "the planet." We know how to think this way. We can say that someone is "worldly" and not mean to describe all people who live in the world. Yet many people hear 1 John say, "the world and its desire are passing away," and assume that speaks of the end of the world.
I think that a great gift to the Church from post-modern and emergent Christians is the rediscovery of the mystical, the recovery of truth that is located somewhere other than in "the facts," systematic theologies, or the correct meaning of a Bible passage. This post-modern faith is more comfortable with paradox, uncertainty, and ambiguity. And so it can hear that "God so loved the world" right next to "Do not love the world" and not lapse into the mental equivalent of some sci-fi computer repeating, "That does not compute!" over and over.
The world is part of God's Creation, that wonderful enterprise of love that God declares "very good." The world is a garden that the human creature is told to tend and care for. The world is an arena filled with activity very much at odds with God's hopes for Creation and humanity. The world (even the part that calls itself the Church) more often than not rejects the way of Jesus as too impractical and naive. And the world is the recipient of God's fullest expression of love, the Incarnation.
Hate the world? Love the world? Transform the world? Care for the World?.. Yes!
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