Christianity and Culture, pt. 4

(I feel like these posts are slightly improving in quality...as I hash through things)

The church cannot hide from culture. We need to be equipped to reach those in the culture.

You can either saturate yourself with what the culture says, or you can "take this world with a grain of salt" (if that's what the context of those lyrics actually is) and take all your cues from Christ, but still being aware of the culture. Basically, have a healthy perspective.

I need to read the gospel of John again. And the letters too. And Hebrews and Acts and Romans. And Proverbs. I want to do a study on Acts 1:8 and what each of the places represents.

Lately, I've been thinking about the passage from Hebrews about solid food being for the mature, having been feeding a 6 month old a combination of formula and a rice thing (basically, it's dried flaky rice with water added). "In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil." (Hebrews 6:12-14) The last verse just got me--"constant use". Does that mean that we become mature by things happening to us that we have to distinguish good from evil? Something like that?

"I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one." (John 17:14-15)

"Do not love the world or anything in the world; The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever." (1 John 2:15, 17)

"Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing, and perfect will." (Romans 12:2)

"See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ." (Colossians 2:8)

"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." (James 1:27) This is striking me as two-pronged: keep yourself from being TOO influenced by the world, but also reach out to the ones that the world rejects.

...more Relevant magazine quotes, this time from an article about the book "The Irresistible Revolution"....

"The Gospel is not comfortable, says Claiborne, and it is precisely our comfort inside church walls, inside our own homes, inside our own prejudices that has kept Christians immobile and ineffective as agents of social change." I kinda feel like this is what it's like at my church. Sure, we have a strong missions focus, but that focus is on international stuff like banana boxes of clothes, Crisis Care Kits, and child sponsorship. We don't hear much about doing things for others in our communities. Our youth group is focused on, when we do fundraisers for youth events, using that money for the ones that come regularly. What about the people that really need to hear the Gospel lived out in our lives? Not that we do such a hot job about it all the time, but still.

"We are not transformed by staying at a safe distance, he says, no matter how much we tithe or how many times we drop off our clothes at the local shelter. “When the poor meet the rich, riches will have no meaning,” he writes. “And when the rich meet the poor, we will see poverty come to an end.” It is “falling in love with each other across class lines” that will make the revolution irresistible." Some "rich" have met some "poor," but it has been in the context of a short term missions trip, and then possibly dismissed and then used to guilt people into being charitable and such. I'm not knocking short term missions by any means; I have participated in one myself. It's just that sometimes the hype overrides the truth, the truth that requires action.