A verse explained

Recently I asked the Lord, as I was reading the book of 1 John, what exactly He means when He says: "Do not love the world or the things in the world" (1 John 2:15).

Then that night I had a dream that I was in a poetry contest with another woman, and the winner would be the one who finished her poem first. It so happened that we put our pens down at the same time, so it was a tie. The judges were not on site (come on, it was a dream), so we needed to notify them by phone of the outcome.

The other woman said she would make the phone call for us while I tended to my chores. I agreed to it, but then started to wonder, "What is she going to say on the phone? Maybe she will tell them she finished her poem before I did!" For the remainder of the dream I was worrying about what the woman may be scheming and how I might find out.

Then I woke up and I thought to myself: That's what loving the world and the things in the world is. Here is my personalized answer. It is a mind set on the acclaim of men and tied up in knots about it. (To another person, God might have sent a dream about gold coins or pirate's treasure, but money has never been my issue.)

Loving the world is also the absence of something---of a spirit of trusting God for outcomes, of trusting God to be in control and to work all things for one's good. The spiritually minded woman would not waste precious mental real estate in worry over her reputation. She would be at peace, knowing that God ferrets out all lies in the end and proclaims them from the rooftops. The spiritual mind concurs with the apostle Paul: "But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court" (1 Corinthians 4:3).

1 John 2:15 makes the two mutually exclusive, and I have found it to be true existentially: It is impossible to hold love for the world and love for God in the same breast. Your brain just isn't big enough.

To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.