Do not love the world or the things in the world. (1 John 2:15a)

All of us have been the butt of a joke at sometime. Many times, it is all in good fun. I remember when I was in the military and was new to a unit, I became the butt of a very funny joke. It was a unit that parachuted out of airplanes. When I first got to the unit, a sergeant told me that since we often jumped at night I needed to get lights for my parachute canopy. These lights would help me see where I was going as I descended to the earth.

The unit had me going all over the place asking many different soldiers for these lights. After visiting a number of different places trying to find these lights they let me in on the joke: there was no such thing as lights for a parachute canopy. For three years people in the unit reminded me how stupid I was to believe that such lights actually existed.

I didn’t mind what they did to me. While some may say that they made me look like a fool, I didn’t take it that way at all. In fact, I thought it was funny myself. I still laugh at myself today when I think about it.

But sometimes, people play us for fools and it is not funny at all. In 1 John 2:15 John tells us to beware of the world. In the New Testament, the world is an organized system that is opposed to God. Satan, of course, is a part of this system.

It is not surprising that such a system would want Christians to believe certain lies. All we have to do is look around and see that the world we live in does not conduct itself in accordance with God’s Word. Most people readily accept what the world has to say.

Unfortunately, Christians are not immune to these things. We can accept the lies that the world says. If we are not careful that is what will happen and we will find ourselves at odds with what God has said. The world will make fools of us and we will become the butt of the joke.

A glaring example of this involves the issue of creation. The world is relentless in telling us that we evolved from monkeys. Of course, this goes against the word of God. To accept it is to be fooled by the lies the world says and to deny what God has said.

Recently, a book pointed out to me how the issue of creation involves many other things. One of them is the issue of early man. The world tells us that early man (however long man has been on earth) was an ignorant brute that drug his knuckles on the ground and was not much smarter than the monkey he evolved from. However, a chapter in the book Searching for Adam (Masters Books: Green Forest, AR, 2016) points out that the Bible tells us that our first ancestors were extremely intelligent. Adam, for example, had the ability to name all the animals and was given the task of ruling over all of God’s creation. His immediate descendants built cities, manufactured tools of iron and bronze, and made musical instruments. One can easily see the intelligence of a man like Noah who built the ark that survived a world-wide flood. These were clearly men who were a far cry from the picture of Neanderthal men that the world puts forth as our ancestors.

But how many Christians accept this view of the world without realizing it? Whether it is in this case or some other, I think we can all admit we are susceptible to what the world teaches us and our children. When we do, it makes us out as fools. Let us be on guard. Being the butt of such jokes is not funny.