The passage abounds with illustrations. The picture is that the person who goes with the adulteress, loses his family, loses his goods, and is in her grasp, in her power, and dependent upon her. This is a picture of a life given to the world. Yes, the world tempts and flatters, and draws us. But what does it do? It is like a two-edged sword. It takes our mind first of all, and our powers of reason, and it draws us into a life which is mindless and illogical. This is a created world, we are here only for a time, we have everlasting souls, we have a consciousness of God, and we have God’s moral standards written in our consciences, and yet we sell our lives and our years just for this present age, as though we were animals, here today, and gone tomorrow. It means that the world has taken away our reason. Why are we dedicated to this world, and our ambitions and our lusts? We dare not ask what is life, who is the Creator, what is it all for? We dare not ask such questions. They would disturb us too much. So in a sense the world has taken away our ability to reason and to think.
It certainly takes away our character, and our morals. It tells us there is no God, and it does not matter how we behave, and we can break his laws, and do as we like. It takes away our will. The strange thing is, when we reject God, and we say, I am going to live as though there is no God, and I am going to have this life for myself, then we tell ourselves that those people who are religious have lost their freedom of will. But exactly the opposite is true. By succumbing to the world we lose our will. In what way? Well, we become the slave of the world, and of our appetites. Life is dominated by the fashions of the world and what I want, and I am driven to keep up with them in order to stay one of the crowd. Gradually at first, and then more rapidly, and your heart is taken away too. You were created to have emotional faculties that can feel and can love, that are sensitive, that are pure. But this world makes us hard and selfish, and living to please only ourselves, and it takes away the purity of our emotions and our feelings.