Love of the World: Unresolved Parental Issues

In my last post I wrote about the love of the world and how it can gain our focus and attention. I showed that the Lord has to direct what we focus on as our Shepherd. Anything that gains our attention, which is not directed by the Spirit of God, can be a noxious weed in our lovely green pasture. Today I want to share with you an insight I have on what often fuels our love of the world—unresolved parental issues.

Unresolved Parental Issues: Focus on the World

I don’t know about you, but I can see a direct correlation between my focus and love of the world and my unresolved parental issues. Hypothetically, let’s try a few “If’s” on for size. The inevitable problems continually erupting from the volcanic core of humanity needs our fixing hand; if we can just fix this problem in the world, maybe it would fix the unresolved issues that I never could mend. If I can’t put right these problems, then maybe knowing about them will make me safe and able to avoid my unresolved issues. Or lastly, a real heart one: my parents didn’t love me. Maybe if I stroke the love-of-the-world genie, then I can get the love I so desperately deserve.

Love of the world is primal. It isn’t just random world lovin’. It draws from deep wells in the soul. If you’ve noticed, love of the world always carries an element of mania. And why? Because it is not a simple, surface pursuit. Love of the world reaches deep into the heart of man, grasping to fix, redo, and gain something primal.

If you’re fixated on every breath that the talking heads exhale, because you want to hear what’s coming, is there any doubt that the source is primal? If you search every tabloid to hear the latest news, might it not be primal? Could not our Facebook obsession be a search for that love we missed? I’m not casting any stones here! I wouldn’t have this revelation unless the Lord was pointing it directly at me. I’m just sharing it with you in hopes that it could possibly help you, too.

Another’s Voice Calling to My Unresolved Parental Issues

In a world where everything garners my attention and gaze, I have to be led by the Spirit or I am doomed. In this age, we have just amplified and electrified the volume of “another’s voice.” Everything is calling me to gain my attention. And the strings those voices hope to pull are on my interior not exterior. Without a wound or fear, who would listen to its nonsense?

I don’t know if I have sufficiently proven my point here. I just know my Shepherd doesn’t call me to auction my heart off to the highest bidder. It isn’t the loudest or most desperate voice that I am called to follow. It’s God’s still small voice, as He leads me through this world to another Kingdom.

The reason it is love of the world is because what we love is what we listen to. The Lord is looking for the ear, the heart and the gaze—these are proof of our love. I am called to love the Lord my God, with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my mind, and all my strength. As we resolve our unresolved parental issues with Him, the draw and tug of the world won’t have nearly as much pull.

Love of the World

Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world. And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever.
1 John 2:15-17 NLT

If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own. However, because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of it, the world hates you.
John 15:19 HCSB