to keep oneself unstained from the world

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

Upon the rock foundation of this verse, the Devil has built a towering, gaudily-ornamented shanty that has lasted for centuries. It is, in this believer’s opinion, his most impressive work. Though people often feel tenderly for ugly guerrilla art projects, my heart has remained hard toward them. I therefore confess that, though it might make me a villain, I will relish demolishing this alien structure and expediting the construction of something more practical in its place, like a boring chain supermarket. When in ten years I overhear talk about how the “neighborhood used to have character,” I will probably feel a little dopamine rush.

The Devil is at his worst when he tugs upon believers’ sincere desires to do the will of God, when he gently and gradually pulls until they are completely turned around without realizing it. He has won the battle when they simultaneously sing praises of the Lord Jesus while violently digging in their heels against His plans, when they joyously resist God’s yoke because they think it is the Devil’s. Once he’s duped one generation, then respect for traditional wisdom can float them along in the wrong direction for many generations more.

His deceptionwork is particularly impressive here because of its subtlety. “To keep oneself unstained from the world”: okay, let’s do it! What is the safest way to keep oneself unstained from anything? To stay away from That Thing, of course. How can it stain us if we don’t touch it? The solution is simple, then: we won’t bother with the world. We won’t even look at it. We have an eternal treasure in the skies. We’ll spread the Good News; we’ll encourage people to stare patiently up into Heaven Eternal with us. We’ll welcome laws that allow us to stare undisturbed. But we won’t commit the Christian faux pas of getting mixed up in their muck, in their seeking bread that perishes when the Bread of Life is available to them. We’ll pray for them and pity them, the pathetic fools with tennis-match eyes trying to focus on an ever-changing world. May they one day join us in serene stillness. Stat crux dum volvitur orbis.

The serious Christians all look skyward in prayer, then, unconcerned with the trouble happening around them. The Devil must be terrified! The Devil must be gnashing his teeth! How, oh how, will he be able to work effectively in the world if his enemy’s most committed soldiers are not doing anything? How, oh how, will he be able to maintain control of the thrones of this world when he is completely unchallenged?

How, oh how, do Christians not understand that they have been scammed into inaction by the Father of Kidnapped Nigerian Princes, the Father of Fake Amazon Customer Service Reps? How do we not understand that at this point in history, when the Body of Christ is mighty, the Devil loves the withdrawal of Christians from combat in the world, that this is exactly what he wants? How do we not understand that Our King came down from Heaven and became Man and walked here and touched the sick and dined with sinners, that He Himself spent more time looking at fleshy creatures than He spent looking heavenward to the Father and His angels, and that He would have done none of this if His plan for our salvation was exclusively sky-focused?

Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven?

The genius of the Devil is that he has stained the Body with worldliness by encouraging it to flee from the World. He encourages the Body’s members to untie the binds that keep them attached to the ground, but when the string is undone, they don’t make a tranquil, picturesque flight out of orbit. Rather, they emit a squeaky flatulence sound and shoot every which way for a second or two before falling stretched out and wrinkly upon the grass. A couple kids laugh and start making flatulence noises in imitation; a third kid cries.

The Church’s Heaven Obsession serves the powers of the World. It is just artificial Heaven-flavored Worldliness.

What is it, then, to be Truly Heavenly? It is to follow the plan of Heaven, which is to bring the New Jerusalem down to Earth. It is to make the Kingdom of Heaven come here. It is to actively participate, as a member of the Body of Christ, in the conquest of this world for the Almighty God. The hands sticky with dirt and sweat from fighting and breaking and building, that have fought and succeeded in completely taking over and rearranging the world’s polities so that orphans are raised in love and widows are not left in loneliness and poverty: these are Heaven hands and spiritual hands. The soft, clean, pristine-fingernailed hands that spend their days in prayer, turning the pages of breviaries and theology tomes, typing new treatises and Twitter posts, maybe putting on maniples: these are hands stained with worldliness.

I have not taken over any political structure for the Lord today. I have typed this and will type a Twitter post afterward. I will turn a breviary page later. My hands reek of the World as yours do. I am tired of the stench; I am feverish with the desire to be clean of it. But the Lord did His work in a community of friends, and it is only in Him that we can be made clean. We can only rid ourselves of worldliness within a Heavenly community, a community obsessively pursuing the political Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. Please, do not linger, then, in reaching out to me, in letting me join with you in the struggle. Do not let me type many more of these. Let us wash each others’ feet of the world’s stain. Let us lie side by side on the range and purify our hands in the pistol grip.