Know that the world is passing
The Wise Man: Of course, I know and believe that you are God’s creature and also a garden of flowers; yet, as far as I can tell, your flowers wither quickly and never regain their former beauty. As for your trees and the fruits of your trees, I fear they may be like that tree from which God commanded Adam not to eat, and he, breaking the command of his God and Creator, ate and died by death. The riches of your treasury are unstable and scatter like dust. Your fellowship with people, and theirs with you, is vanity and deception. And as for the length of your years, I greatly marvel that God endures you, when you are so deceptive, so false, and so murderous, and does not destroy you an hour sooner. But by the fact that He bears with you, He shows His exceedingly rich mercy and His long‑suffering patience.
Do not be deceived by the beauties of the world
The World: Woe to you, ignorant and vain man, how can you say that I am deceitful and false? Do you not look and see my beauties, and know them? Do you not see my noble bearing? Do you not perceive my goodness? Do you not take heed of my delights and my charms?
The Wise Man does not deny what is plain: the world is “God’s creature,” a garden of flowers, made good from the beginning — “And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). But his fear is not about beauty itself; it is about what has happened to it — flowers wither and never regain their first splendor. This is the image of corruption entering creation with sin: “the creation was subjected to futility… and waits with eager hope to be set free from its bondage to corruption” (Romans 8:20-21). And when he speaks of that tree “from which He commanded,” he does not fear the tree as such — the tree of knowledge was itself “pleasant to the sight and good for food” (Genesis 2:9) — but the disobedience its beauty can awaken in an unguarded heart, exactly as happened with Eve.
The World, for her part, does not lie when she shows her “noble bearing,” her “goodness,” her “delights.” The beauty of creation is not a deception — “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1). The problem is not what the world offers, but how man approaches her gift. And here the three praises the World gives herself — goodness, beauty, delight — are precisely the three doors through which Eve fell: “the woman saw that the tree was good for food [lust of the flesh], and that it was a delight to the eyes [lust of the eyes], and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise [pride of life]… so she took of its fruit and ate” (Genesis 3:6). The Apostle John names this very triad: “the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not from the Father but is from the world” (1 John 2:16).
So the disagreement between the two is resolved: the World is right that her gifts are real and good, for they come from the Creator. The Wise Man is right to fear — not the tree, but the hand that reaches for it without obedience. Both are held within a single truth that never withers: “the world is passing away, and the lust of it, but whoever does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:17).
