Living outside my personal integrity

Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

NIV
Full context: 1 John 2:15

"Worldliness" is a very old concept and pretty divisive by intention. It separates. "Me" from "Them" and "Us" from "Them" are the battle lines.

If I am not emotionally and spiritually secure it can divide "Me" from "Me" as I struggle with my compulsions and easy self-gratification and then get captive to guilt. That spirals into more self-gratification to escape the guilt and on and on down the spiral.

When I am feeling insecure I can derive pleasure from labeling others and feel superior--but of course that is in itself, you guessed it, worldly.

In looking at the text again the second statement helps to define for me what worldliness truly is and also how to revive from condemnation. I can know I am loving the world when the fruit of spirit is absent, the mark of God-in-me is missing. The second statement is more about recognition than condemnation. It is a fact, known by observation, that the love of God is not in me when I am filled with the non-God.

Jesus was self-differentiated and centred on the love of God and he is the model. He didn't get angry or judgmental at those who he saw as lost in the world. He had compassion. He got angry when his followers or the religious of the day stood on the spirits of others to feel good themselves. He called truth as he saw it without requiring self-gratification in separation OR accommodation with the world.