Joshua speaks of “the world” many dozens of times in the four gospels and uses the phrase in very important contexts. The term could mean “the earth” or it could mean the people of the earth who do not listen to him or who don’t do what he says. The quotes above are of the latter meaning, and are the topic of this article.
In John chapter 3, Joshua provides some fundamental teachings about the world. Essentially, two critical points are made by Joshua in his teachings about “the world”.
First, that his Father, the Creator God, loves the people of the earth. That is, He very much cares about us and wants what is best for us. Being the Creator, he does know what is best for us, and He alone knows why He created us. In short, the main thing he wants for human beings is that we take care of one another with love as the basis for that caring. He is compassionate towards us and wants us to show compassion to one another with no qualifications of ‘us’ versus ‘them'…we are all human beings and there are no significant differences between us that God cares about…
Or any of the other things that people can’t change about themselves or don't matter and which they divide over and end up fearing or hating each other for.
After we are in the basic mode of caring for one another – which of course would mean there is little conflict and no harmful or violent conflict – we can use the talents he has given us to do wonderful things. It is that simple.
His second point is this – that we as human beings have a badly corrupted nature that WE choose, adopt or assimilate as we become adults. When he says, “And this is the condemnation, that the people of the earth who refuse to listen to me, love the darkness rather than the light as evidenced by the evil things they do.”; he is making the point that we human beings have a serious problem that we need to overcome in order to live out the first point above about love and caring.
Dear reader, this simple truth in the prior paragraph about humans having a corrupt nature is undeniable if you have the correct standard against which to evaluate that saying. The correct standard is Joshua and this command he gives: “be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect”. And what does “perfect” mean when Joshua uses the term?
The core of perfection is that we care about what is truth and right as the Standard Joshua teaches and thus execute/do/live out “love” towards other people.
Again, the Creator and His Messenger define what “love” is, and they define is as valuing other people manifest through selfless behavior towards them motivated by compassion and wanting to be with them.
So, how is humanity doing with living out the desire of the Creator of the human race - that we love one another? Do you deny the darkness that “the world” abides in? Do you deny that the people who don’t listen to Joshua are bound by self-pride, fear and selfishness and that is the cause of most of the human conflict and lovelessness? Let’s take a brief look at just a few of the facts in this regard.
Fact 1: The great evil and darkness of human nature that is only being willing to help each other if we receive money for doing so. This is a fundamental aspect of the behavior of people being evil. It is most evident in the medical or health care industry where the people who are able and equipped with the means to help others who are injured or ill will only do so if they get money. Here is a simple illustration to demonstrate this evil.
You are walking along a trail somewhere, and come across a person who is injured along the trail. They tripped on a stone and fell and broke their ankle and cannot walk. You have the means to help them. You encounter them and they ask for help, and you say, ‘well, I’ll help you if you give me $100 dollars’. They don’t have the money, so you walk away and leave them there. The simple truth is that the people who make up the medical or health systems of “the world” operate on that same basis. They have the means to help the sick and injured, but will only do so if they receive material benefit for doing so. This is evil…this is simple evidence of the darkness that the Light speaks of. According to the Creator’s moral or ethic principle of love that he gave through Joshua, it is wrong/evil to only help a sick or ill or injured human being if one will receive some material benefit for doing so.
Fact 2: About 25,000 children under the age of 5 die each day on the planet from preventable disease and starvation, while the people of the U.S. alone throw out/waste enough food to feed the entire planet’s population each day.
Fact 3: The world’s nations spend trillions of dollars on war machines and they do this based on the primary corruptors of human nature – pride, fear and selfishness. There are no murderous outer-space aliens invading the planet to justify such behavior. Only pride, the pride that says, 'we are better than you and thus can take from you what we want'. Fear says, 'you are different than us so we don’t trust you and you might try and hurt us so we must defend ourselves'. Selfishness says, 'we want something (perhaps what you have) and we don’t care about the impact to you of taking what we want' (or we are going to take it no matter what it does to you). These motivations and associated behaviors account for the vast majority of conflict in human history.
Fact 4: There are trillions of acts of unkindness that occur each day on the planet, all due to lovelessness. From the coldness of not helping someone with some simple task, to ignoring people who would benefit from some kind word, to outright hurting each other in millions of ways each day. Yes, there are acts of kindness as well, but sadly, they are but a ripple under the tidal wave...
Fact 5: Human sex trafficking enslaving and abusing millions of women and children for men’s sexual pleasure each day, while the people of the earth who could so something about it turn away and pretend it is not a problem...or engage in it or facilitate it.
Fact 6: Allowing openly murderous individuals and their followers roam around the earth and rape, pillage and murder freely. Groups like Boko Haram or ISIS are paid essentially lip service while the “united nations” sits around doing nothing. With all the trillions of dollars spent on military junk, the only excuse the people of the world have for not preventing that murder is the darkness of lovelessness and selfishness…’hey, MY wife and children are not being murdered by those guys, oh well if someone else’s is…’ or 'hey, what do we get out of risking ourselves for those women and children...' or 'Someone needs to pay for it...'
Fact 7: Lying for selfish material gain is evil. The ‘sales’ and ‘marketing’ people of the earth have made lying into an art form. The standard is falling so low that it is expected that a person selling something will lie to you. The Real standard to which we will be held accountable is, if I don’t keep my word and don’t apologize for breaking it, I have lied. If I make a practice of breaking my word and apologizing for it but don’t change, I am a self-deceived liar.
Fact 8: More people in human history have died at the hands of other human beings than any other means of physical death other than ‘natural’ means of illness, disease or body function failure. Add to that “neglect” as a cause – meaning I could have saved a person but did not – and you paint an accurate picture of the human race…hundreds of millions of people killed – or allowed to die - by other people. And, for those who like to deceive themselves that humans are somehow ‘evolving’ and thus getting better, more human’s have been murdered by other humans in the last 100 years than in all of human history before that…and this doesn’t include maiming or disfiguring, etc.
Fact 9: Most people in the United States regularly show contempt and hatred for those who raised them and provided for them for the first 15 to 20 years of their life – their parents. Parent’s are ignored, disrespected and dishonored by their children and finally, put in a ‘nursing home’ to die essentially alone. This is evil even when the parents - who have forgotten or never knew what love is - say they want to be put ‘in a home’.
Do I need to list more facts? Do you, dear reader, deny these simple facts about human life on this planet each day? To believe, ‘oh, people are essentially good’ is to have a very low standard to measure what is "good"…it is, in fact, to justify evil...and the only reason we would justify evil is because, well, we are part of it.
That is one of the purposes why Joshua came. When he says, “I am the Light of the world” and “He who rejects me and does not receive my sayings, has one who judges him; the word I spoke is what will judge him at the last day.”; what he is saying is, 'I am the standard by which each human being will be held accountable and be judged'. The Creator leaves it us to us what we will choose. Joshua’s role as judge is simply to review the facts with the person being judged and affirm or reveal the true nature of the choices we made in this life. We choose our after-death destiny. We choose either Life or death. Most choose death due to self-pride, fear and selfishness which prevents us from seeing our need and finding and putting our faith in the Light.
So, to sum up, Joshua of Nazareth teaches the concept of “the world”. In many instances (and you can know by context), he is referring to the people of the planet who reject him and his Way of love.
If you ask 1,000 christians about “the world” concept, most will be clueless…meaning they will be ignorant of what Joshua means when he talks about “the world” because they are ignorant of Joshua and his teachings. If they know anything about the concept, and you ask them, “in what way are you not part of the world”, they will generally look at you with a blank stare…in other words they have no idea. Or they will start telling you how they are better than other people from a moral standpoint. One thing is for certain, if they know anything about ‘the world’ concept and you ask them if they are of the world, most will say, “no, of course not”, even though they have no idea of how they are not part of the world! There is a knowing in the human conscience regarding this topic, and it is an aspect of this truth…
“…that the people love the darkness rather than the light…”
Dear reader, we each have to ask ourselves, ‘am I still part of this world’? We can only answer that “no” with assurance IF we have allowed ourselves to be chosen out of the world by Joshua…
“If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you.”
Please ask yourself, ‘in what way have I been chosen out of the world…what are the life manifestations of that choosing?’ If you have no clear answer to that…no manifestations…then you are still part of “the world”, and thus still part of the problem.
Finally, we have to ask ourselves, ‘what am I doing to help fight the darkness?’ God expects people to listen to His Son and to do what HE says and to repeat his teachings to others. THAT is the primary way we can fight the darkness…not fight other people, but fight against the lies, the falsehood and lovelessness of the people of “the world”...fight with truth and love!
Our revolution is one of leadership, belief and behavior.
We try and help people see the superiority of our Leader, Joshua.
We help people know what he teaches and thus what God the Creator wants AND that every person will experience consequences based upon what we DO with Joshua and his truths.
We his followers/disciples live out his teachings in order to be the example of what human life ought to be according to Joshua and his Father. And the primary thing we do is live according to love as HE defines that.
Dear reader, please don’t deny the simple truths in this little article. Truly, we are either part of the problem or we are part of the solution. Please become part of the solution by joining the peaceful revolution!