Separation and The World as God's Sanctuary

This past Sunday I talked about the fact that God thru his word: 1. Separated to form a world that is hospitable to life. 2. granted and filled the world with life. Separation is key to life with God. So we as Christians are to live separated from the world. Now I grew up in a conservative Baptist church. They took this too far--don't wear shorts, women wear skirts, men no hair on collar, no cards...etc. What does it mean to be separate? What is too separate? What is not separate enough?


Another point I made is that the entire world is God's Sanctuary. We need to be separate or different in our whole lives not just at church (or in the sanctuary) on Sunday morning. In fact when we do things different on Sunday morning but not during the rest of the week, we give the church a bad name. People think the church is irrelevant---because it doesn’t make a difference in their everyday lives. Further people think the church is full of hypocrites because people act different on Sunday than they do the rest of the week. Does our church have a problem with this? If it does explain why you think so? Have you met people that feel this way about the church in general in the US? Can or should the church do something to change this perception that the church is full of hypocrites and doesn't make a difference in everyday life?

Why Do They Hate Us--From Mikle Spencer's Blog (AKA Internetmonk)

Mike Spencer a Southern Baptist Lists Reason's the World Dislikes (Evangelicals) Christians So Much. It's rough--true of me in many areas--and true of many churches I have been a part of. What do you think?

1. We endorse a high standard of conduct for others and then largely excuse ourselves from a serious persuit of such a life.

2. Our piety is mostly public. We love others to see what God is doing in our lives.

3. Many of us relate to others with and obvious--or thinly disguised--agenda. In other words, those who work with us or go to school with us think we are "up to something."

4. Many of us are bizarrely shallow and legalistic about minute matters. We are not as healthy and happy as we portray ourselves.

5. We may deny that we have made God into a political, financial or cultural commodity, but the world knows better.

6. We are too slow to seperate ourselves from what's wrong. It's clear to many that we no longer have the cutting-edge moral sense of Martin Luther King Jr. or William Wilberforce.

7. We take ourselves far to seriously and appear to be opposed to normal life. What normal, healthy people find laughable, we find threatening and often labe with the ridiculous label "of the devil."

What do you think--is he right?

The Shack, Church History, and The World

A quote from The Shack--Jesus talking to Mack:


"Mack, the world system is what it is. Institutions, systems, ideologies, and all the vain, futile efforts of humanity that go with them are everywhere, and interaction with all of it is unavoidable. But, I can give you freedom to overcome a system of power in which you find yourself, be it religious, economic, social, or political. You will grow in the freedom to be inside or outside all kinds of systems and to move freely between and among them. Together, you and I can be in it and not of it."

There are many people that are knocking this book because the way it represents God's disdain for worldly institutions including the church that developed power structures for institutional gain. I wonder if these critics are so caught up in these institutions and power structures because they use them for personal gain. In Wiliston Walker's A History of the Christian Church, he writes:

"...Christian writers from Hermas to Origen and Tertullian, make it plain that the churches of the second and third centuries continued to see themselves as a society some how "set apart"--governed by a Spirit other than the spirits that ruled the world at large. The original source of this attitude can no doubt be sought in the world-view of the Jewish apocalyptic [The Jewish Prophets]. Repudiating the political, moral, and religious corruption of a world trapped in the nets of evil, the apocalyptist had looked to the future for that world's overthrow--to a new age when God would punish evil, reward suffering for righteousness, and so set the creation right [looked forward to Jesus]. Since, however, those who had believed the message of Jesus' resurrection and had entered, by baptism, upon his new life knew themselves to have a share even now in the good things of the age to come, they also knew that it was their business to live as people "crucified...to the world."

It seems to be me The Shack is calling the church back to its original perspective and Christ's directive to be in the world and not of it. Are we so much a part of our world's institutions that we can't see we are a part of them? Do we not see that God has called us out from them? I grew up in Baptist circles and my extremely conservative Baptist church emphasized being different from the world. The problem: They only wanted us to be different in our private morality--don't drink, don't chew, don't go to movies, don't have sex out of marriage...etc. Granted they were right about some things in which we are a called to be different--sex out of marriage. They were legalists about others--don't go to movies. INSTEAD of focusing on private morality the church must focus on being different from corporate morality as well, it must be different from the world's systems and institutions, it and its members must act differently from them. We, the church, have to look at ourselves, both individually and corporately, to see how presuppositions are are based upon this world's understanding and way of doing things and not God's way revealed in Scripture. We have to know that we are so a part of these systems and institutions a part of us that we will have to work extremely hard not to twist the Bible to support our way of doing these, but rather use the Bible to examine how we have been co-opted by these institutions.