Be not conformed to this world

This quote is from A Visit to Vanity Fair, by Alan Jacobs.  In fact, it is the very first sentence from the very first essay:  

"In a famous passage from Science and the Modern World, Alfred North Whitehead gives this counsel to scholars in the various historical disciplines:

"Do not chiefly direct your attention to those intellectual positions which controversialists feel it necessary explicitly to defend.  More important and more telling for the deep understanding of a culture are the fundamental assumptions which adherents of all the variant systems within the epoch unconsciously presuppose.  Such assumptions appear so obvious that people do not know what they are assuming.  Indeed, they do not know that they are assuming anything, because no other way of putting things has ever occurred to them."

This quote made me want to laugh and cry.  It is this very act of seeking to understand the assumptions that I have in common with all others in this age of the world that has been my quest for the last several years.  It is of particular importance to me as a Christian because Paul tells us in 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."

It is interesting to note that the Greek word "world" in that verse is "αἰών" or aion...meaning "age" of the world.  Insert the idea of "this world", to which we are not to be conformed, into Alfred North Whitehead's quote, where he uses the word "epoch" and you will see what I am driving at, maybe.


Citation:
Jacobs, Alan. A Visit To Vanity Fair: Moral Essays on the Present Age. Brazos Press, 2001.