Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

- James 4.4

How shall we shun the world, which we ought not to love, when we are in the world and are taught to die to it, and yet on the contrary fold to our breasts with a sort of envious lust that world which we ought to have spurned as it were beneath our feet?

- Columbanus, Sermon III, Irish, 7th century

Of course, neither Columbanus nor James meant to suggest that we should avoid, reject, eschew, repudiate, or otherwise distance ourselves from everything in the world. We do, after all, live here, and are on a mission here to reconcile all things back to God through Jesus Christ.

At the same time, we must be always mindful and on guard against the world’s tendency to want to be our god. Its things, successes, experiences, knowledge, and so forth will, from time to time, suggest that, in themselves, they are the good we seek. When we seek anything other than God as our highest source of joy, satisfaction, fullness, and delight, we make an idol of it.

It is in this sense that we must practice the discipline of “shunning” the world. The idea of “shunning” is related to the practice of church discipline. When someone is put out of the church because he refuses to repent of a known sin, then it is the duty of the rest of the church to “shun” that person – as Paul puts it, not even to eat or drink or have any fellowship at all with him (1 Cor. 5.11).

This is the sense in which Columbanus, echoing James, urges us to shun the world. Ignore its allurements. Steer clear of its traps and pitfalls. Give no place in our time or hands for that which insists it is more to be desired than God.

As Luther is reported to have said concerning temptation, we can’t stop the world from flying over our heads, but we can keep it from building a nest in our hair. And so we must; the love of God requires it, and the love of our neighbors will not proceed as freely where we are too busy loving ourselves with the enticements of the idolatrous age.

Today, brethren, be careful what you fold into your breast. If you fold Jesus deeply enough there, nothing else will find a place.

Psalm 48.9-11 (Cwm Rhondda: “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah”)
For Your grace and lovingkindness we proclaim Your matchless worth!
As Your Name is, great and boundless, let Your praise fill all the earth.
Let Your people sing rejoicing for the judgment of Your truth,
For the judgment of Your truth.

Lord, let me be concerned more the health and goodness of my soul than of my body, so that I look always to You and never merely to things. Adapted from The Rule of Ailbe