In the World, Not of It: Staying True to Timeless Truths

Sitting with a cup of coffee, I recall – maybe you do too – that our Savior Jesus Christ spoke of being “in the world but not of it,” a goal He places before us still. The challenge seems to get bigger every day. Sometimes you have to just take stock.

What does that timeless guidance mean? My simplistic view is this: Be kind, be engaged, be a problem solver, be observant, recognize others’ needs and how you might help meet them, but do not feel the need to conform to what does not fit your understanding of truth.

Do not be hurried when being unhurried is who you are, what keeps your peace and stills your soul. Be conscious of the modern traps, how they undermine that goal, how incitement to excitement takes its toll.

Do not imagine, when all the world goes mad and says the sun surely rises in the west, that your knowledge of its origins in the east is wrong. Stay strong.

Try to recall, when you are invited to a tiff, the opening lines of Rudyard Kipling’s epic poem, “If.”

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired of waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise…

In short, do not undervalue your own judgment, built on a lifetime of learning. Do not stop thinking. Rely on that judgement in the Storm, under pressure to conform.

Do not forsake your understanding that physics and biology do not change. Thus, water becomes steam at 212 degrees, freezes at 32; boys will be boys, girls will be girls, and you will be you.

The world around us changes, but constants do not. Laws of nature are timeless, especially those that elude the eye. We know what gravity is; no one can say why.

The eminent physicist Albert Einstein observed – after noting most of the universe is invisible – “Only those who can see the invisible can do them impossible.”

Do not imagine that man will ever be or beat God, or that power asserted is anything more than mortal, or that you will win a fight by stepping away from what is right.

Be wary of those taxing your conscience, liberties, and earnings for utopian ideas. As Ronald Reagan warned, “Concentrated power is always the enemy of liberty.”

Do not let the “chattering class,” the “nattering nabobs of negativism,” convince you they know better than you what is true. Poorly taught, they do not.

Do not let the beguiling world talk you off your foundation, out of what you know, what your parents and their parents knew as true. It was then and still is now.

Do not indulge the modern practice of scoffing at the past, demeaning history, the men and women of faith who gave us what we enjoy, who sacrificed all for us.

So, coffee in hand today, I set aside the world’s worries, took a deliberate break, and reminded myself that the world’s cynics, actors, and wooly detractors come and go.

Critics of all persuasions, many these days profane, unable to be silent, rude, raucous, and violent, do me no harm if – at the end of the day – I live my way.

“Let not your heart be troubled,” says The Good Book. On this journey, there will be turbulence and buffeting. But the flight becomes smooth if you are “in it, not of it.”