In or Out?

So how do you be in the world and not of it? What does that mean? I have the feeling very few people in the church have any clue what this means. I don’t think it means you can check out from mainstream culture. I don’t think it’s a ticket to say hey, I live here, but I don’t interact with this sinful world. I think it means we’re supposed to be in the world, interacting with the world, but not stooping to the sin of the world. What’s the difference? One definition is content to reside in a ghetto of Christianity. They listen to Christian music, read Christian books, watch Christian movies. They turn to Christian alternatives to anything the secular world provides. It’s a way of being in the world, not of the world, a way that certainly keeps you safe from the sins of the world. It’s also a way of living that keeps you safe from ever having to love someone in the real world. I don’t quite understand the people who are so immersed in their Christian culture that they can’t relate to real people who live in the real world outside of the church. I was one of those people once. I related fairly well to people at school and I had a decent impact. People knew I was a Christian. And that’s about it. I rarely took the time to actually hang out with people from school and relate to them. Instead I hung up with my youth group friends. Perhaps that fortified my faith and allowed me to keep believing in God. Perhaps it also kept me from really relating to a lot of my school friends and being able to tell them what Christianity was all about. I think the church today is not nearly as effective as it could be simply because of this issue. Christians have chosen to not relate to the mainstream world and have thus removed their voice from society. I’m not saying the church isn’t effective right now. I’m a fine example of a bubble believing Christian. I practiced bubble Christianity for a number of years. Sometimes I wonder if God’s really in this bubble like we want to think. My impression is that he won’t fit in our bubble. He’s out there, and that’s where he expects us to be. Jesus ate with the tax collectors and sinners, not at the church potluck.

He also probably knows how to use paragraphs better than me.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *