The Highest Compliment

[Richard OFfill]

Someone has said that the highest compliment you can pay someone is to imitate them.
How would this apply to the text that says, Love not the world neither the things in the world and the one who does doesn't have the love of God in them? (1John 2:15). A question, what does it mean to love the world?

Does the debate since Elder Wilson's sermon have to do with the above issues? It seems like the division that has come to the surface has something to do with this text and the one:  "Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God." James 4:4

[Raven]

I think you hit on a key element in this.  Obviously when we begin to imitate the world's way of doing things, we show that we love the world's methods and approval more than we do God's.  That's a roundabout way of saying that we are worshiping idols of our own choosing. 
The members of the SDA Church have not heard plain talk from our leaders in a long time, and it is unsettling to those who have drifted along with the flow--and the flow is always down hill, of course.  And so they become defensive.  How entrenched they are in their beliefs remains to be seen.  One would hope that many among them are really interested in doing God's will, and when the dust settles, will begin to study to know what is truth.

[Richard OFfill]

But again the qestion -- what does it mean to be 'worldly'? Is this objective or is it subjective? Whatever it is it makes the love for God impossible.

[newbie]

the love of sin

[Maggie]

Posted by: Richard OFfill
But again the question -- what does it mean to be 'worldly'? Is this objective or is it subjective? Whatever it is it makes the love for God impossible.

I'm still thinking about the brain, Pastor, and how it is passively shaped by social experience (neuroplasticity), unless an active counterforce intervenes - the lesser counterforce being brute will power, and the Greater Counterforce being the Holy Spirit, it seems to me.

Romans 12:2  
And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

Strong's:

conformed: "fashioned alike" - passive neuroplasticity
transformed: "metamorphose" - like a butterfly
renewing:  "renovation" - like a house - active, cooperative neuroplasticity

I'm thinking that at the substratum of neural networks, worldliness is very objective, indeed, as is godliness.

Our very brains reflect whom we serve...

[Maggie]

...therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.

[Maggie]

The highest compliment we can pay to God is to allow Him to transform our minds and bodies into His likeness.  This goes far beyond imitation.  Who is sufficient for these things?

I'm obviously not a scholar, but I find it very interesting that the word I've made bold red in the following Scriptures is, in Strong's:

G3339
μεταμορφόω
met-am-or-fo'-o
From G3326 and G3445; to transform (literally or figuratively “metamorphose”): - change, transfigure, transform.

(cont.)

[Maggie]

Matthew 17:2 

And was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light.

II Corinthians 3:18 

But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

Romans 12:2 

And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

[Maggie]

Ellen White:
As wax takes the counterpart of the seal, so the soul receives and retains the moral image of God. We become filled and transfigured by His brightness, as the cloud--dark in itself--when filled with the light is turned to stainless whiteness.
--OHC 71.5

Wax...seal...an objective metaphor.

Sealed in forehead and in hand.  Mind and body.