of the world but not in it

Culture is not evil, pt 2.

Way back in the summer I wrote a post on how culture is a neutral medium which may be used for redemptive or evil purposes. It was meant to be the first in a series of posts. Hah! Wishful thinking. Shortly after I published the first post, a friend asked me to clarify what it means to be “of the world” and how that differs from contextualizing to the culture in which we live. There is a vast difference between the two, so I will take a shot at identifying how we can truly be “in the world” without being “of the world.”

John 17 is perhaps the clearest glimpse into the heart of Jesus that we have in all the Bible. This passage is His “High Priestly Prayer” that He prays on the eve of His betrayal. In this earnest supplication, Jesus prays for His followers for all time: “They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world…. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” With these words, Christ expressed the reality that we are not of this world, and He issued the charge for us to be in the world as His ambassadors.The question that we face is what does it mean to be in the world, and what does it mean to be of it? In the Greek, the term for “of” is ἐκ, which Thayer explains as denoting “something with which there has been close connection.” In fact, it is used numerous times in the New Testament to speak of how a child is related to his parents. Essentially, it means to be conceived by and born out of. So we are not to be identified as children of the world. We must act as though our citizenship is in heaven, where our Father dwells.

We are not to be of the world, but we still must be in it. What does this mean? We live among the people of the world, and we participate in various activities alongside them. We are in the world, we are among the world, but we must not be of it. Participating in the culture is not necessarily being of the world, only in it. To know what it means to be of the world, we must see what Scripture says that the world is. The Apostle John gives several characteristics of the world in his 1st epistle: “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world – the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions – is not from the Father but is from the world” (1 Jn. 2.15,16). For John, the world is not the bar nor the place where sinners congregate. The world is rather the place where attitudes of selfishness, lust, and materialism are formed and fostered.

Suppose Adam had never eaten the forbidden fruit in Eden. Mankind would have still formed cultures, complete with music, customs, foods, dress, language, etc. It would have been good to engage in culture and take joy in the Lord for providing it! The difference between an unfallen world and ours is that we have sin. Because of sin, culture can be abused. It is only in the abuse – not the use – of culture that the world exists.

The world, then, is that which leads us to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and pride in possessions. Tragically, the church, in its effort to be unstained from the world, has withdrawn from the culture without separating from the world. In reality, we are only harming ministry opportunities when we refuse to engage  the culture in a redeeming manner. What good is it if we have only Christian families over for dinner and spend our time gossiping, complaining about who has been elected president, and how we would like to make just a little more money? What if we only frequent Christian-run businesses, but we buy things at those businesses only to satisfy our greed? How about if we never frequent an establishment that serves alcohol but we glut ourselves with food at home? That is being of the world but not in it.

We can go to the places where unbelievers hang out – in fact we are called to do so! How can we fulfill the Great Commission if we wait for people to walk through the doors of the church before we tell them about the glorious hope that is found in Christ? We must pursue people within our culture by going where they go. Also, we must be unstained by the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and pride in possessions. Let us be fully in the world and fully foreign to it!

 

because i like lists

This week, I have taken several things from the time back at TMC, particularly from SLS retreat. Rather than go into elaborate detail, here is a short list:

insights:

1. God is a vinedresser, and the church is His vineyard. He acts on behalf of the fruit and the life of the whole vineyard over and above the fruit and life of any one individual part.

2. God prunes us to make us more fruitful, not more acceptable.

3. Kettlebell windmillls are an excellent exercise

4. Coffee filters can double as toilet paper, should the need arise… necessity is the mother of invention.

5. The end of everything is to glorify the Father.

6. God truly is longsuffering

dangers:

1. having confidence in the position as RA, my status as student at TMC, knowledge of Scripture, or anything other than Christ alone

2. forgetting that life is about more than excelling at school

3. The black widow(s) that live outside my door, whom I have named “Ursula,” because I really hate that name and because I really hate spiders

4. sin

excitements:

1. Christ has bought me with His blood.

2. I am marrying the most wonderful woman that the world has ever known in June.

3. I can have bacon for breakfast every day.

4. I have three kettlebells.

5. I’m not in hell right now.

6. The lord has given me an amazingly lovely woman to cherish for the rest of my life.

 

i love this woman, and i’m gonna marry her

Sunday, July 26, 2009 will be a day that always holds great significance for me. On that day, I asked Diana Humphreys to marry me, and for reasons that I cannot wrap my mind around, she said ‘yes.’ Diana has been my best friend and the greatest girl I have known, and I love her with all me heart. I am the most blessed man alive, and I am so thankful that the Lord has given me this woman, whom I do not in the least deserve. I consider it a privilege to be able to love her for the rest of my life.

For those of you who do not know Diana, she is loving, compassionate, joyful, fun, gentle, a servant, slow to anger, wise, and beautiful. She is adorned with an inward beauty that radiates through her countenance, and she is also drop-dead beautiful. For those of you who do know Diana, you will know that no two sentences, no matter how extolling, can truly express the lovely woman that she is.

Diana, I love you, and will never tire of showing you my affection. You have my heart and will always be the most important human relationship in my life. You are my first love, my lilly among the thorns.

 

culture is not evil…

…People are.

Recently, the Lord has been teaching me that the culture that we live in is not — in and of itself — sinful. Clarification is needed: The culture is not a living, breathing being with a soul and personality. It is the name we give to the network of the exchange of goods, services, information, and relationship. Culture is the way that we interact with one another. It includes language, art, medicine, architecture, clothing, music, the way we form friendships, the way we end friendships, the way we talk. It is everything that governs our day-to-day interaction with ourselves and eneryone else in our society.

Like most things, culture can be used for good or for evil:
For instance, medicine is not evil. Those who murder children (yes, I am talking about abortion) are.
Food is not evil. Those who are gluttonous are.
Alcohol is not evil. Those who indulge in drunkenness are.
Rap music is not evil. Those who use it to express anger, sadistic desires, or perverse sexual fantasies are.
Smoking is not evil. Those who are mastered by it are.
Clothing is not evil. Those who use it — or a lack of it — to attract attention to their bodies are.
The list goes on. Culture never sent anyone to hell; but people who use aspects of culture in sinful ways condemn themselves. We can live in our society in such a way that uses the culture for either redemption or condemnation.  There is one way to use the culture for redemption: When we see it as a tool to reach the lost for the sake of the Kingdom, we are free to engage the culture. This is what it means to be in the world but not of it, and the end of this mindset is a life lived within society to the glory of Christ. On the other hand, there are two ways to use the culture for condemnation: First, we can dismiss sinful practices as “merely cultural” and use that as an excuse for license to do evil. Second, we can see the culture itself as evil and so fail to meet the people who live within it on terms that they understand and can relate to. Both of these mindsets fail to maintain the integrity of the Gospel while evangelizing the lost.

The basic principle that we must understand is that our mission in life is not to isolate ourselves from the culture, but to see sinners come to repentance and faith in the One True God. It is the  people in our society that need saving, not the music industry, the clothing industry, the Internet, or the English language. The Gospel is unchanging, but the way in which we communicate that timeless message and the way we validate it by our actions changes from era to era, from nation to nation, from generation to generation, from region to region. We must keep in mind that God is not impressed if we don’t frequent the coffeeshops where gay couples hang out, if we don’t play cards, or if we only listen to classical music and hymns written before 1880. The brutal fact of the matter is that everyone is entirely ugly and evil before a holy God, and the only thing that makes us at all worthy is His love for us!

The church, in an effort to keep itself unstained from the world, has failed to engage the culture, and it has instead created its own subculture — or, more accurately, subcultures. From within these subcultures, it has become ingrown and isolated. The seeker-sensitive church may be very relevant to the suburban upper middle-class married boomers, but it has absolutely no point of connection to a younger, more community-oriented generation. Furthermore, in an effort to “market” the Gospel to a certain demographic, some of these churches have lost the content of the Gospel. The Gospel is always relevant, but churches are not. The church must realize that there is a way to maintain the content of the Gospel within the context of the culture — and this is just what Jesus and the Apostles did in the First Century. They understood that sinners had to come to salvation, and that salvation was by grace alone through faith alone, and it was found in Christ alone. They took that core message and preached it boldly within the context of their cultures. Jesus spoke in a very Hebrew way to the Jewish people; Paul, likeways, spoke in a very Greek way to the philosophers on Mars Hill. However, both of them preached the exact same Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The mission of every Christian individually and of the church collectively is to draw sinners to faith and repentance. We must engage the culture to reach sinners who condemn themselves by using the culture sinfully. We must be in the world but not of it to save those who are of the world and not in the church’s culture. May we live our lives to the glory of God alone!