But arent we supposed to die to the flesh..realize that we are not of the world......be born from above....pluck out offending eyes....walk not after the flesh but after the spirit? Have the vale removed from our eyes, as we see only as through a dark glass? Sounds like the illusion stuff you are talking about.. But I see nothing wrong with studying the world and science as well.
St. Paul uses the term "the flesh" as shorthand for human concupiscience. He's not talking about the literal skin that covers our bodies, but to the inherent problem of the sinful human condition.
In Greek the word
kosmos ("world") has the inherent meaning of "order" or "arrangement", its application to the universe comes to us through Greek philosophical usage, and so can mean things like the universe, the world (i.e. earth), or even simply the inhabited world; though the latter is also expressed with the word
oikumene. Rome, for example, ruled the world, of course this wasn't the entire planet, but referred instead to the perception of Rome's importance as the protectors of civilization (after all, from Rome's perspective all non-Romans were uncivilized barbarians).
Hence we can find, for example, John 3:16 in which Jesus says, "God so loved the kosmos" as well as James 4:4 which says "friendship with the kosmos is enmity with God". Different uses of
kosmos for different purposes. God's love for the
kosmos is the love which God has us, all of us, the world and all it contains; but James is talking about a fondness for the current way of how things are in the world. Even in English there are different shades of meaning for how we use "world", and its meaning has shifted throughout the history of the language, in archaic English translations "world" is still sometimes used to translate the Greek word aion ("age"), so for example older translations of the Nicene Creed read that Christ was begotten "before all worlds", other translations are more accurate "before all ages" while sometimes the intended meaning is translated "eternally begotten". This is because even in English "world" in its earliest sense denoted the human time, or life, or the era of human beings, from OE
weoruld, coming to carry the sense of man's time on earth, and only later coming to refer to the earth, or generically as another word for "planet". Thus it could be used in the sense of time, hence its use to mean "age" in older writings. But our modern use still includes all sorts of shades of meaning, for example "the world" can mean the planet earth, more broadly it is used to refer to the whole of physical reality aka the universe, sometimes we might speak of it as we do "the Roman world" or say that a person is living in their own world. Understanding that words can carry nuance is essential, and that nuance must be sought out by picking up on context.
This is precisely why St. Paul can say that we are in the world but not of the world. When he says we are not of the world he obviously is not saying that we aren't part of the natural order of the universe as physical beings made of the same basic matter as everything else we see; he's saying that our identity as people isn't to be with the present order of things--the way the world is ruled--where might makes right, where greed, malice, envy, war, etc are the way of things. Instead our identity is attached to Jesus who, by His death and resurrection, has overcome the world, the very world which had Him crucified, and which He ultimately makes a public spectacle of. The way we are supposed to be is to be defined by the way of Jesus, who offers Himself freely in love and kindness to all, forsaking Himself for others, this is the way of God's kingdom, where the least are greatest. We are in the world, but not of it; we are servants and ministers, called to laying down our lives for our neighbor, taking up a cross and not finding our identity in destructive power dynamics we observe. If the way of the world is the strong oppress the weak, then we are called to be weak and stand beside the weak, because God has identified Himself with the weak and the foolish in Jesus. It is precisely this which God is ultimately redeeming and rescuing the world from--sin and death--to bring the good created world into the glory of His grace, found in the resurrected Son of God. That is
precisely why we confess the resurrection of the body and the restoration of all things.
It's not the solid matter under our feet that's the problem. Or our feet for that matter. It's man's inhumanity against man, it's the broken relationships we have with God, with one another, and with the whole of creation--these disordered relationships are what God is healing, and sets to rights through the redemption and salvation in Jesus, ultimately, for the whole world when God makes all things new.
-CryptoLutheran
