That Christian Next Door

Life has many options.

There are so very many choices to be made. It is unfortunate though that many of the well-trodden choices and templates for living life that exist in our world today seek to blaze a trail of independence from God (an idea which is from the devil, whose whole thing was to be independent from God.)

Take the idea of hate. The word ‘hate’ is rampant. Crudely enough, it is also easier to hate if the type of hate you choose is of the widespread, normalized and championed kind. For example: a person being hated whether or not they were known on a personal level or not. (Notwithstanding that knowing a person on a personal level does not still allow hate to be okay.) Consider this: when was the last time that, rather than forgive a perceived wrong, we saw someone speak instead of their hate? It is so commonplace these days. It is in vogue!

Let us make this practical.

There is a world (let’s call it World A) where you could say that it is easy to love. In World A, it is “easy” to love if the type of love you choose is along the lines of the examples of love that are liked and rampant in World A. For example, in World A, two heterosexual or same-sex unmarried people of any age may be engaged in a sexual relationship. In World A, some would call this love (and in that world, there are parents, societies and governments that would not bat an eyelid but would facilitate same).

There is another world (let’s call it World B) where it’s easy to hate sexual relationships outside of marriage and all elements of independence from Big God and the message of Jesus Christ. In World B, it is understood that one cannot love or hate rightly without God and His Holy Spirit. In World B, it is easier to show love to everyone because of the understanding that no-one is morally perfect yet they are loved perfectly by the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So what if World A and B were to begin to exist in the same space and time?

Well, I would expect that whichever people (A or B) that were the majority would decide how life is lived and would dominate the conversation about what normal day to day life should look like.

As Christians, we live in a world within a world. In the world within, it is easier to choose the options that are ‘Christian’. In the outside world, it is at least a little harder. For non-Christians, it is harder to choose the options of the world within because it comes with the risk of the world they know becoming very small very quickly. So the temptation is to continue with the status quo and fit in.

This is a common struggle – one we see in the world we live in today.

There are more people who live their lives away from Jesus Christ than there are those who are live their life in Jesus Christ. The people who are in the majority exert a social pressure in our world that orders normal day to day life in devilish ways to suit their devilish tastes. They are manufacturers of devilish ideas, its consumers and also partakers – they are people of the devil – and their ideas may be carried out through various means including arts, sports or politics.

They might not think of themselves this way and may be offended to be described as such but if they do not have an everyday life of honoring God or thanking God, then they are of the devil. The choices they make, the things they like, the things they wish for and the things they say will always lean to that.

Importantly, “love” or “hate” is not all-encompassing. Love is generally more powerful but it is a certain type of love that endures through all. This enduring love is from God. It is self-sacrificial, it is holy, sacred, pure and lasts forever. The world we live in today says you can love and hate in certain ways instead of love and hate in certain other ways – what it deems acceptable is now based on people’s desires instead of on God.

It is a pathetic standard if you really think on how changeable we humans and our ideas are.

The offer of the world today is: ‘you don’t have to love the way Jesus Christ and the Bible gives meaning to love, we just have to be able to call whatever you do ‘love”. The other side of the offer is: ‘hate all you want, so long as one of the things you hate is any one thing or everything to do with Jesus Christ.’

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Social structures in the world gain strength through normalization. It is those in the majority that create the majority of the structures in this world. (For example, the majority of those who believed in God in Old Testament times were from Israel. Unsurprisingly, the patterns of our Christian faith are very Jewish at their heart, including Jesus Christ and His early church which we follow from).

In our world today, the majority of the patterns of life have removed honor and thanks to God. This is because those who live their life away from Jesus Christ are in the majority and they live lives that lack honor and thanks to God. As such, of all the options in our world, the options that are of-God are less. Even more poignantly, when it comes to crunch time for Christians, the center of God’s will is accessible through one option (which must have Jesus Christ at its heart).

For those living life in Jesus Christ or interested in it, there are very few things in which we have free rein to do whatever we want (this is not a thing to be discouraged by!) If we want to follow the will of God, we have ‘one thing‘ which we must do. I pray that God gives us the boldness and wherewithal to choose it in the face of the social pressures to not.

What is this “one thing”? The Apostle Paul speaks to it in Philippians:

“Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith — that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

Philippians 3 v 8 – 14 ESV

Be blessed.