Worldliness

Worldliness is departing from God. It is a man-centred way of thinking; it proposes objectives which demand no radical breach with man's fallen nature; it judges the importance of things by the present and material results; it weighs success by numbers; it covets human esteem and wants no unpopularity; it knows no truth for which it is worth suffering; it declines to be a 'fool for Christ's sake'. Worldliness is the mind-set of the unregenerate. It adopts idols and is at war with God...

No Christian deliberately gives way to the spirit of the world but we all may do so unwittingly and unconsciously. That this has happened on a large scale in the later-twentieth century is to be seen in the way in which the interests and priorities of contemporary culture have come to be mirrored in the churches. The antipathy to authority and to discipline; the cry for entertainment by the visual image rather than by the words of Scripture; the appeal of the spectacular; the rise of feminism; the readiness to identify power with numbers; all these features so evident in the world's agenda are now also to be found in the Christian scene. Instead of the churches revolutionizing the culture, the reverse has happened. Churches have been converted to the world.

Evangelicalism Divided by Iain H. Murray, Banner of Truth Trust, pgs. 255-256.