The Christian call is to be in the world but not of the world. The word ‘world’ is used repeatedly in the Gospel of John. Wherever it has a negative connotation it means a sinful, or evil way of life. Jesus makes it clear that “I pray not that you take them out of the world, but that you protect them from the evil one.”

In the past as well as in our times, there are many faith systems within the Christian community. Even the Catholic Church is no longer a monolith in terms of faith. Puritanism, which was not part of Catholic spirituality, has affected many reform groups within the Church today. Both implicitly and explicitly some groups teach that film, theater, literature, TV, and every entertainment is sinful. If that becomes serious, we will end up with the thinking that the whole material world as sinful. We will conveniently forget that “God so loved the world.” Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel had visions of God and heaven in the Old Testament. They saw God enthroned in glory, angels, and many other winged creatures.

The God of the New Testament is also glorious. But the glory is revealed in the New Testament in the tiny baby born and laid in a manger that smelled of cattle poop, and in the poor man who was hung crucified mangled with blood, on a cross, in between a thief and a robber.

Peter kneeling in the midst of the heap of fish in his boat, and praying, "Depart from me Lord, for I am a sinner," is the New Testament image of Isaiah of the Old Testament, who laments, "Woe is me! I am doomed, for I am a man of unclean lips." Peter's experience of God was not out of light and seraphim, but about a net full of smelly fish.

Even in the Old Testament, there is a verse in Isaiah's vision that many people don't pay attention to: "All the Earth is filled with His glory"!