Worldliness; Resisting the Seduction of a Fallen World, edited by C J Mahaney, has been sitting on my desk for a few weeks. I decided that since it’s a collection from a number of authors, I’d take it chapter by chapter, rather than review the whole thing. Chapter 1, Is This Verse In Your Bible, by C J Mahaney establishes the premise for the entire book.
“Today, the greatest challenge facing American (read “Western”) evangelicals is not persecution from the world, but seduction by the world.”
Quoting a Charles Spurgeon sermon from 1860, Mahaney demonstrates that the greater the distinctiveness between the church and the world, the greater the church’s witness. When the church and the world are indistinguishable, the church tends to fail in its mission.