Church and Society
Well, I got mocked the other day for changing the time of our evening worship service on Superbowl Sunday... Something like, "Oh, I see Jesus isn't more important than football." Yeah, yeah... So, it's better to have people just not come to worship - or if they're there to be thinking about the game instead of God? Whatever... I won't appologize.
We live in a difficult tension between our culture and our faith. It has always been there - Augustine wrote about it - Luther - Wesley - heck, Paul wrote about it... But how do we resolve it? How can we be "in the world but not of it?"
Wish I knew. It's not easy - nothing important is, of course. The tension has caused the church to create an entire sub-society that is "sanctified." Like screaming, growling rock music? Here's Demon Hunter (and a thousand others) Like horror books? Here's "The Oath" (Peretti). We can have Christian: schools, music, movies, books - heck, restaurants, theme parks and on and on and on. We can do everything the world does, and not get "stained..." Um...
Now, don't get me wrong. I want to protect my daughters from the really bad stuff in the world - and I want them to have a continuing and real relationship with Jesus for their whole lives - but I think they need to have continuing and real relationships with people, too. Not just church people... But there's the tension again... Where do I draw the line? Dunno...
Grace...
We live in a difficult tension between our culture and our faith. It has always been there - Augustine wrote about it - Luther - Wesley - heck, Paul wrote about it... But how do we resolve it? How can we be "in the world but not of it?"
Wish I knew. It's not easy - nothing important is, of course. The tension has caused the church to create an entire sub-society that is "sanctified." Like screaming, growling rock music? Here's Demon Hunter (and a thousand others) Like horror books? Here's "The Oath" (Peretti). We can have Christian: schools, music, movies, books - heck, restaurants, theme parks and on and on and on. We can do everything the world does, and not get "stained..." Um...
Now, don't get me wrong. I want to protect my daughters from the really bad stuff in the world - and I want them to have a continuing and real relationship with Jesus for their whole lives - but I think they need to have continuing and real relationships with people, too. Not just church people... But there's the tension again... Where do I draw the line? Dunno...
Grace...
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