Aelred recently wrote:
"There is no 'Christian' answer to the problems of the world. Christians have no moral high ground which enables them to treat the world of politics as a 'secular', and therefore as a sort of low grade, form of life as distinct from that led by Christians".
I can't think how to put that better. When people speak disparagingly about the 'world' I am puzzled as to exactly what they are referring to. It can only be that huge interconnected world of billions of people, of which I am one. Ironically it is only because of this world that there can be such things as monasteries. We are completely dependent on others for buildings, warmth, food, health, transport, education, technology ... the list goes on!
Those who disparage the world also proclaim a very small gospel. It becomes little more than a proclaimed 'cure' for all those woes which we see around us. This has little if anything to do with the proclamation of the one living Lord of all, who stands not as a cure for problems but as a transforming new life which embraces everything.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer noted the tendency that religious people have of making efforts to prove that the world needs 'God'. He described the attempt as ignoble: "it amounts to an attempt to exploit man's weakness for purposes that are alien to him and to which he has not freely assented" (Letters and Papers from Prison). It is telling to remember that he wrote that when by any standards the world was terrifyingly full of problems and evil.
And when we reflect on the new life of the Gospel we find that it doesn't give us any platform to criticize others from. The challenge of forgiveness where there is hate - surely one of the deepest characteristics of the kingdom - bears down upon all of us to equal degree, and perhaps most of us fail in equal degree. From any common sense point of view the Gospel sayings on forgiveness are quite unacceptable, far more disturbing than most people commonly realize. The demand seems almost unjust - yet we do find, all over the world, ordinary men and women forgiving to an extent which can only be described as a wonderful manifestation of the kingdom of God.

There is only one world and we are all part of it. That's good news!