Not of This World

Not of This World
11-27-10

Oswald Chambers said in My Utmost for His Highest today that we are to be separated from the world fundamentally and not functionally. Any dissimilarity we have with the world needs to come from our similarity to something else. That Something Else is opposed to the world and stands in naked contrast to it. If we are going to conform to the image of Christ, that image is going to chafe the world.

Here is where so many Christians go wrong, they realize that they are not supposed to be like the world, they observe the radical lives of those who are infatuated with Christ, they just finished reading Jesus Freaks, and they might even have heard Jesus say 'take up your cross'. But in their attempts to make a stand for Christ, they do not hold fast to Him as their head. They know that they are to be different, they desire to be a peculiar people, but somewhere along the way they forgot the second part of what Christ said: "take up your cross and follow me".

The Christian is not called to persecution, he is called to live in such a way that persecution is inevitable. The Christian is not called to suffer, only to go through suffering in such a way as to draw closer to God. The Christian is not to cut themselves off from all contact with the world, but to make sure that they have more contact with Christ. Too many people have locked themselves in monasteries only to find that their vices are amplified with silence. So much effort can be spent in trying to eliminate similarity to the world that no effort is spent on figuring out what we are supposed to look like. While legalists bind the scriptures to the hands and foreheads, God is blessing those who have hidden it in their heart.

The problem comes because nature abhors a vacuum. We are like a child in a hole at the beach trying to bail out water as it flows from every corner. What we really need to do is fill the hole with sand. So many times I have struggled and struggled to the point of utter exhaustion trying to pick off one shortcoming after another. When I focus on smaller sins, my whole life would crumple under the consequences of the larger ones I was blind to. All along we have needed more than surgery, we need a new body. We don't need medicine, we need to be reborn.

This is the very reason that we must focus on Christ rather than our sins. As long as we are focused on self improvement we will never be successful, our only hope is to pay more attention to Christ and His desire for us than our own idea of what we need to get rid of. When we say that we are not of this world, just as Christ was not of this world, we must also identify ourselves with that World or we will leave ourselves open to be identified with so many lesser anti-Worlds.

There is definitely to be a marked difference between Christ's followers and the devil's followers, but that difference is one of mania, not cosmetics. That is to say, that the difference goes beyond merely external appearances, but down to the very core of what we are consumed with. The world is occupied with itself and by being thus occupied has found the painful gut wrenching dissatisfaction of chronic myopia. The Christian is occupied with Christ and by being thus occupied has found the freeing significance of not caring about themselves as much as God does.

Unfortunately many Christians today have tried to reach Christ while still holding to the world's mania. The focus of the worldly Christian is still on themselves. They desire to know the Bible that they may be a scholar. They desire to pray that they may be blessed. They will carry out the will of God in direct proportion that it brings them praise or raises their self esteem.

In contrast, the Christ centered Christian has let go of themselves to be found in Christ. They can truly say with Paul that they have counted everything garbage compared to knowing Christ. They study not to show themselves approved, but to truly know. They pray not to impress a group, but to communicate out of love for God. They seek out spiritual things not for the image it creates, but for the relationship it cultivates. Self esteem and worldly praise are all sacrificed at the throne of one who laid down his life for them. They are moved to follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ, who laid His own desires aside to do the will of His Father.

The point is, as long as we are seeking to separate ourselves from worldliness, we will always fail; what we need is to unite ourselves with Christ. Do not try to burn out every flaw in your life, rather let the Living Water flow through you until sins are just memories.

Looking Down the Nose

Usually people are radicals because they have taken something good to an unhealthy extreme. The one place you can't be a radical is in your love and devotion to Jesus Christ, because he is always deserving of more than we can give. However, there are certain convictions that we love and defend to such an extreme that we misrepresent the underlying truth. When we represent a certain manner of living as the only way instead of a better way, we are becoming those who look down the nose.

Those who look down the nose are many. There are those who look down on people who wear bonnets, those who look down on people who use bio-diesel, those who look down on people who home-school their children, those who look down on those who do not home-school their children, those who look down on people with nice cars, those who look down on people who hold cardboard signs, those who look down on split homes, those who look down on those who look down on split homes, those who look down on those who raise their hands, those who look down on those who sing hymns, those who look down accents or tattoos or clothes or teeth or shoes, even those who look down their noses at noses.

You can be a level one nose looker and only despise people for their actions, or you can move up to merit badge eagle scout nose looker and actually hate the people who do the despising. Some people have even moved to the top of the list where they loathe themselves for hating the despisers.

Among the many drawbacks to looking down your nose at someone is the fact that you usually can't tell where you are going. As you focus intently on the way someone else needs to change their life, you miss out on actually living out the right choices you claim to have made. Consider Kayla, who knows what a great show The Office is, but instead spends all of her time trying to convince her friends that it is better than the books they read. She has effectually cut herself off from both worlds because she is not willing to take the time to enjoy the thing she so adamantly lobbies.

Of course we need people to defend the faith with reason and argument, but one of the greatest means of convincing someone that your position is true is to live out its reality. If Tokyo really is the greatest city in the world then move there and write a blog, but don't try to convince me all day long of something that you have not personally experienced. Furthermore, if you live in Tokyo, don't spend all your time talking about how horrible Brooklyn is. Why not rather enjoy where you are at?

Can you stand in the rain and say “I am right and I will stand here alone if need be because this truth is more important to me than even my friends?” (The color of your trim is not as important as your relation to Mrs. Maggins.) If you can, then you will probably find people standing with you because they understand that it is important. But woe to those who stand in the rain over passing whims, personal tastes, or the faults of others. If God doesn't send a little acid rain their way, they will still punish themselves by spending half a day waiting on the phone so they can explain to a supervisor how long they had to wait to get service.

Do not spend your life fighting people on the best way to live life, instead go live it and let them watch. What good is it to write forty five page thesis papers about the bridge but never cross it? Bridges, streets, cars, and ideas are tools to get us somewhere. Standing beside a bicycle and lauding its glories on the road is futility. None of your hypothetical reasonings hold any water unless they are fleshed out in real, everyday experiences. Put some meet on the bones of your ideas by putting them into action. Truth has to do more than just make sense, it also has to correspond to reality. Many people are secretly afraid of standing on the bridge they so confidently defend with reason and logic.

So do not be quick to judge judges, and try to keep your eyes one where you are going instead of where people have been. Because there is a mob of people running around holding up big signs that say 'You are wrong'. They can't see each-other's faces and they are missing out on a lot of good tanning weather.