Have we gone too far?

One of the shared themes that Buttercup and I have discussing and working through lately is the whole idea of what it means to be a Missionary in our culture. If you put on your Sunday School hat for a moment you will remember that Jesus' life was lived by the power of the Holy Spirit as a missionary in culture. However, in my personal opinion we Christians have taken verses such as Romans 12:2 which states "And do not be conformed to this world.." or statements such as "live in the world, but not of the world" too far. I am struggling with this lately in that I seem to run into more and more Christians who are pulling either themselves or their kids out of public society and only surrounding themselves with fellow believers or those of like mindedness. Granted, a large part of the Christian life is to have community with other believers, be in relationship with them and worship communally on a regular basis. Have we forgotten we also need to be in some kind of "community" with non-believers so that we can share our faith (and sometime use words!)?

For instance, I have noticed that Churches and Christians spend a lot of time in the comfort of the "four walls" of a Church talking about how to interact with non-Christians instead of actually being the culture and loving the ones who need Jesus's love the most. We seem to have somewhere along the way forgotten that we are not to judge those who are living lives in sin or lives that we don't agree with but rather show them the love of Jesus that we have within us. The best example that we have for this and maybe have too often forgotten is how Jesus's spent his 30 years on earth. Jesus was the greatest missionary who has or will ever walk this earth and maybe we need to be reminded of how he lived in a sinful culture:

1. Jesus came into a sinful culture
2. Jesus learned firsthand about a sinful culture. As a perfect missionary, Jesus did not learn about the sinful culture from a careful or safe distance. No, Jesus built friendships with sinners, Jesus learned the language of sinners, Jesus ate food with sinners, Jesus drank wine with sinners, and Jesus participated in the parties and holidays of sinners. Of course this really pissed off the religious leaders of his day and is one of the reasons that they wanted to kill him.
3. Jesus did not condone sin, nor did he sin, himself.
(Taken from "Vintage Church" by Mark Driscoll & Gary Breshears)

We each have our own journey that we are on and we need to individually try to figure out how to live out our faith, raise our kids, educate our kids (i.e, Public, Private, Home school) be a light in a dark world, in the best way that we know how. Although, I have many times judged others for their actions or how they live or don't live out their faith in this sinful culture. The harsh reality and one that I need to be reminded of is that I can only focus on my journey and the journey of my family.

The question that remains is that if we can agree that Jesus was the perfect missionary into a sinful culture, then why do we as a community or body of Christians seem to miss the mark when it comes to how we interact with our sinful culture? Why do we tend then to remain separate from society? Why is it easier for us to judge or condone others sinful lifestyle instead of doing what Jesus did, which was to love them?

A very wise friend (lets call him "Father Dan") recently mentioned to me as we were discussing this, that maybe right now in this phase of our life, God is calling us to be in community with our non-Christian neighbors: i.e, co-workers, acquaintances, neighbors, etc.

Something for me to chew on...

The Gospel and a waterslide

I am reading a great book titled "The Blue Parakeet" by Scot McKnight that my Dad sent me. The main theme of the book is to rethink how we read the Bible. Unfortunately, most of us tend to "pick and choose" parts of the Bible that we either like, agree with, or can be obedient to. "Pick and choose" might seem harsh so it might be easier to call it "adapt and adopt" as the author states. However, they are parts that we tend to say "that was then, this is now", etc. The big idea is that we need to read the Bible as a story so that we don't fall into the "adapt and adopt" mentality.
One of the great analogies he uses in the book is about the Gospel and a water slide. I give you the following passage:
"Reading the Bible with our wise mentors is like sliding down a water slide. The gospel is the slide; the Bible is one wall, our teachers and our tradition the other wall, and the water is the Holy Spirit. The pool at the bottom of the slide is our world. If we stay on the slide and inside the walls as we slide down, we will land in our own water world. If we knock down the walls of the slide or get too careless, we can tumble out of the safety of that slide and injure ourselves. However, observe this: our life is lived in the pool. So here's my point: God asks us to listen-attention, absorption, and action- to the gospel story and to read the Bible with our wise mentors who have gone before us; if we do we will land in the pool in our day and in our way."

I have been chewing on the idea of what it means to live in the pool for quite some time. As I mentioned to Toirdhealbheach Beucail today in our phone conversation, the more I understand about the Gospel and really digest it, I realize that Christians as the light are meant to be lived out in the world or our pools and not necessarily in the comfort of the safe 4 walls of a Church. Granted that we do need to worship corporately together but we also need to worship separately which is where living in our pools come in play. I would venture to guess that we tend to focus more on our worship corporately that we do on how we can worship God in our daily lives away from the Church...Something to ponder..

I will leave you with another great nugget I have gained from this book:

"Good works are concrete responses to the needs we see in our neighbors.....This passage in Paul leads me to to the following two conclusions- and they stare at each of us:

-If we are doing good works, you are reading the Bible right
-If we are not doing good works, you are not reading the Bible right"

What can I do moving forward to make sure that I am not spending most of my time in the second group?