Lent Reflections, Day 6: World

For any of you who know me (or just stood near me in church for a second or two), chances are you’ve probably heard me talk at some point or another about how much Christianity and Christian culture baffles me.  Maybe I shouldn’t say that, seeing as I’m a pastor, but as a pastor I’m also supposed to declare the truth…sooo…sort of a rock and a hard place there.  If I can deal with it every day, I don’t imagine it’ll be too difficult for you to get through this post :-).

One of those places of Christian life that doesn’t make much sense to me is Christianity’s relationship to The World.  And when I say “doesn’t make much sense,” what I am really saying is “doesn’t seem that consistent.”  Want an example of what I mean?

I was in high school when I first started visiting churches, which meant that I was largely visiting youth groups.  Week after week, we would spend the hour or so of our time having fun–playing games, singing songs, doing something creative–and then follow it immediately with a conversation about how the world is wicked and perverse, crouching at our doorstep to pull us into spiritual death, a corrosive agent to the purity of our souls.  And that dichotomy never sat well with me: we spent the first hour of our time doing the things that I loved to do in the world–playing capture-the-flag, singing fun songs, drawing or writing–and then followed it up with a condemnation of worldly things.  Last I checked, there was no record of capture-the-flag as a biblical game (though, heaven knows, many youth pastors think it is).  So how was it that we could pick and choose what was fair game from the world, and what wasn’t?

How is it that we can quote “For God so loved the World, that he gave. his. Son” and then retract ourselves from the world almost completely in order to preserve ourselves from wickedness?

I think my confusion centers on the idea of love, coupled with the assumption that, if we are striving to conform our lives to imitate God more closely, we are to love what God loves and hate what God hates.  And if the Bible says that God loves the world, then I don’t think that we should just dismiss it as a quirky, dangerous thing that God does and then excuse ourselves from the same standard.

The truth is, love requires contact.  Sometimes love requires one to stand in the midst of someone else’s mess and help them clean it up.  Sometimes love requires sitting with something uncomfortable or awkward and accepting that it’s just not going to be fixed the way we want it to be.  Sometimes love requires us to help and guide and advise, and then resist the temptation to shake our heads when that help and guidance and advice is ignored.  And perhaps sometimes love requires us to walk away…but I don’t find that an easy pill to swallow.

Because Jesus chose not to walk away.  The only way he was going to be taken from this world that he loved was if the world killed him.  And we did.

The truth is that Christians and non-Christians alike find it equally as messy and dangerous in loving this World.  All you have to do is ask the daughter who is caring for her parent with Alzheimer’s, or the father who walks the streets at night trying to locate his addicted son, or the brother who lost his young sibling to gun violence, or the wife who sits lonely as her husband surfs endless waves of pornography: being a Christian, maintaining desire for a pure soul, doesn’t make that wicked side of the world more difficult to bear.

In fact, it’s just the opposite.

The faith of God’s hand holds us in those times that we are confronted with wickedness.  God’s love sustains us when we are so drained that we can not fathom continuing on.  God’s heart beats for us when we fear that we will be overcome with grief and oppression and evil.  At least, that’s what we tell people.

So which is it?

In each Christian community I have served, I have been startled by the great chasm that exists between Believers and the World–we do not invest in non-Christian friendships, we do not pay attention to “non-Christian” concerns, we can not send our children to non-Christian schools.  And I just don’t get it.  We can not love the world if we are not in contact with the world.  Jesus was in contact with the world, and he told us he would remain in contact with the world through us.  So what are we protecting by retreating from it?  Certainly not the gospel.  And certainly not the World.

“And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lies in wickedness.” 1 John 5:19

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!  All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins agains’t them.  And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.” 2 Corinthians 5:17-21