In or Out?

There are a lot of people in the world who are smarter than I am, or have a lot more time and motivation to search things out. Since it's been a while since I last updated, and I honestly cannot think of anything to post about - I'll share this nice little article I found tonight. Enjoy!

Are You In Or Out?
By Brian McLaren

Preachers like me sometimes mess up people like you. We do this unintentionally, believe me. We have the best of motives; we’re just trying to help you and protect you. But in spite of all our sincerity and good intentions, we do you damage nonetheless. Here’s how:

We want to protect you from getting drunk, so we tell you not to drink any alcoholic beverages. To protect you from that, we recommend you avoid establishments that serve alcohol. And just to be careful, we tell you to avoid people who drink alcohol too. In fact, we suggest you avoid excessive laughter … and discourage parties except those that tend toward the … well, boring.

We want to protect you from extramarital sex, so we create so much tension around the subject of sex that we keep you uncomfortable with your own sexuality and with the opposite sex. Maybe as a result of the sexual anxiety we create, you and your peers will become a tad uptight and overbearing, but at least you won’t get into overt sexual trouble, we hope.

We want to protect you from following the crowd and succumbing to peer pressure, so we either imply or assert that good Christians don’t go to movies, don’t listen to popular music, and don’t have non-Christian friends. We approve when you hide in safe church rabbit holes and protective Christian ghettos.

We don’t want you to become greedy, so we create a climate that suggests you shouldn’t make significant money, be extraordinarily successful, or maximize your earning potential. Middle class ambitions are OK. In fact, mediocrity of any sort is safest.

We don’t want you to lose your faith, so we say don’t read philosophy, don’t participate in culture or the arts, and don’t deal with tough questions and current issues. We suggest that you avoid the sciences (you might accept evolution), the social sciences (you might become sympathetic to criminals, homosexuals, and liberals), and the arts (you never know when you’ll have to look at nudes). Just recite easy answers and pat platitudes, even if doing so makes you feel dishonest, shallow, trite, or tortured.

In summary, we want to protect you from becoming “of the world,” so we tell you to not be in it. When it comes to the culture in which we live, we’d prefer you to be out of it than in it, into it, or with it.

…There’s just one problem: in trying to “save” you, we actually ruin you as disciples and probably damage you as human beings too. It’s amazing how patient you are with us, in light of the damage we do you. It’s amazing how patient the Lord is with us too, in light of the damage we do to His cause.

Seeing the Light
We’re right about one thing: Jesus called us to be not of the world. In other words, He wanted us to be different — like salt in the meat, not just meat; like light in the darkness, not just more darkness (see Matthew 5:13-16).

But we’re terribly wrong about the rest: Jesus did not want us to be out of the world — that’s unquestionably clear from His prayer in John 17. Like many preachers today, Jesus was concerned about our protection: “Father, protect them by the power of Your name” (vs. 11). But He didn’t try to achieve that protection by isolating His followers. He said, “My prayer is not that You take them out of the world but that You protect them from the evil one” (vs. 15).

How then are we supposed to be in the world — that is, the culture that surrounds us — without being conformed to it? There appear to be two guiding principles suggested in the next sentences of Jesus’ prayer.

Guiding Principle 1: “Sanctify them by the truth; Your word is truth” (vs. 17).
“Sanctify” means “make holy” or “make special” or “set apart.” Jesus is saying that His followers are protected not by isolation, but by identity. Their very identity as disciples means they understand themselves to be set apart, called to a special and holy purpose. They have received the truth of God’s message, and this truth has become for them a call to a higher, deeper, richer, more purposeful life.

How does this work out today? I go to a movie. In this movie there are murderers, sex addicts, thieves, and thugs. But even among these desperate and damaged characters, there are moments of tenderness, forgiveness, loyalty, honor, and honesty. As the story unfolds, I look just like everyone else sitting in the theater, eating popcorn and candy, but in my mind I am engaged in a kind of discernment that my movie-watching neighbors are largely oblivious to. Because I have been “set apart” by God’s message of truth, I evaluate all I see and hear in the movie by the grid of this understanding. The guy next to me is thinking, “Nice body on that woman … cool car … whoa, neat special effect.” But my mind is humming, comparing the action and values pictured in the movie with the message of truth I have come to believe.

Guiding Principle 2: “As you have sent Me into the world, I have sent them into the world” (vs. 18).
To understand the immense significance of the word “sent” in Jesus’ prayer, consider this scenario: There’s a seedy club downtown in a city near you. Inside the club, there’s a lot going on: illicit drugs being sold and purchased and ingested, alcohol being abused, prostitutes soliciting and being solicited, gangs tailing targets and planning violence. Let’s zoom in on four people who have just entered the club:

1. Jake is looking for a hooker. He’s lonely, desperate, and flushed with cash after succeeding at a robbery in another part of town.

2. Shannelle is looking for a dealer. She’s addicted to heroin and badly wants a hit. She was in treatment until yesterday, when she fled the treatment center for the streets. She has no money and is asking herself just what she’s willing to do for a hit.

3. Bruce is looking for a chance to show off. He’s got a lot of pent up inferiority and aggression and needs to impress somebody to feel good about himself. Maybe he can start a fight tonight.

4. Donna simply hopes to hook up with someone. I doesn’t matter if it’s a friend or stranger. She’s just lonely.

Entering the club, stepping over empty bottles and litter, are four others. They look no different from the rest of the crowd milling around on the dirty sidewalk:

1. Marcus is an undercover agent. He’s actually looking for Jake, hoping to make an arrest.

2. Charice is Shannelle’s sister. She’s trying to find her sister and convince her to go back into treatment.

3. Leshawn is an AIDS activist. He’s there to distribute literature to urge people to avoid high-risk behaviors.

4. Marie is a journalist, writing a story on the band playing on the stage.

What’s the difference between the first four and the second? The second group are there on a mission, and that mission makes them “in” the club without being “of” it.

Similarly, with our minds transformed by this sense of identity and mission, followers of Jesus can fully enter the world and fully live in it without being conformed to it. After all, we don’t enter the world alone; we enter and engage it with Jesus.

Consider Jesus
He was sent into the world as a seeker of lost treasures, a doctor to sick people, a friend to the friendless. Do we share His mission? He was an expression of God’s love for the world. Could we be called the same? He wants to redeem the cultures of the world (as is made clear in passages like Revelation 5:9, where cultural distinctives are maintained in heaven). Do we similarly respect and love the world’s diverse cultures? He attended parties and was accused of being a drunkard, a glutton, and a companion of tax collectors and other sinners. Are we too isolated to be similarly accused?

The Light Under a Bucket
In a way, we preachers are right: it’s dangerous out there. It’s easy to be conformed to the world, to lose our distinctive identity and mission. But we preachers are dead wrong when, instead of using all our powers and gifts to infuse people with a sense of Christian identity and mission, we opt for isolation. Whenever we offer the lesser option — and whenever you take it — we fail Jesus. We work against Him instead of for Him.

I am reminded of a story Jesus told in Luke 10:30-36. The story included nudity, violence, compassion, and kindness. It was about a robber who beat up a traveler, stripped him, and left him dead in the gutter. There were two highly religious people in the story who took the isolation option. They couldn’t bring themselves to come near the beaten traveler (whose bloody and naked condition would be rated neither G nor even PG). If we told the story, that religious pair would be good guys. Not in Jesus’ version.

In the Scriptures, there are two ways we can go wrong — one of them more obviously dangerous; the other more subtly. We can acclimate to the culture around us, be infected with its evil, and forget our unique identity, thus becoming “of” it as we’re “in” it. That’s obviously tragic. But we can also slide into another more subtle tragedy: we can isolate ourselves. Like the two religious men in Jesus’ story, we can isolate ourselves in our holy huddle, our Christian ghetto (which, by denying our mission, becomes anti-Christian). Rather than being servants in our culture — doctors healing the sick, seekers after lost sheep, coins, and sons — we can become an elitist clique, a frightened minority, angry critics, snobs standing above culture, and nerds cringing outside it.

Basking in the Son
But Jesus invites us to remember our identity and mission — to join Him in entering the world to celebrate all that’s good and to seek to transform all that’s not. That means that whenever we hear a good song or see a good scene in a movie, when we enjoy good art or good cooking, or when we find ourselves in good architecture or read a good paragraph in literature, we celebrate the goodness, enjoy it, savor it, thank God for it.

As Paul said, Christians aren’t to be sourpusses and faultfinders, because after all, “God has given us all things to enjoy” (1 Timothy 6:17), and “to the pure, all things are pure” (Titus 1:15). And where we see evil, corruption, dangerous philosophies, and destructive values, we call a spade a spade, because as Paul said, God wants us to learn to “discern what is best” (Philippians 1:10).

If we live with this sense of identity and mission, knowing who we are in the world and what we’re about, we will be truly alive. If we don’t — if we try to avoid sinful passions by extinguishing passion altogether; if we try to isolate rather than engage the world as followers and agents of Jesus — we’ll give further evidence to the world that although we throw around the name of Jesus, we don’t truly follow Him. Because His followers are not to be isolated avoiders, passionless nerds, or snooty critics. They’re to be in the world, into it, with it, engaged, alive, and passionate — not out of it.

Here’s how John put it: “Whoever claims to live in Him must walk as Jesus did” (1 John 2:6). Jesus was in the world, engaged, alive, involved, making a difference. To follow Him, we must do the same.