“Now therefore make confession
unto the LORD God of your fathers, and do his pleasure: and separate yourselves
from the people of the land, and from strange wives.” Ezra 10: 11
Sometime ago, I read an article
by Kay Warren where she was talking about her new book, “Choose Joy”. The
article was in the form of an interview and she told the interviewer how she
had suffered from depression and how she was different from her husband, Rick
Warren in their outlook to life. She talked about how she hoped the book would
help those that suffered from depression. The article was lovely and
enlightening. However what disturbed me were the people commenting. One and
all, they were all complaining about “the church”. Their grouse was with how
the church did not understand what it was to suffer from depression and how the
church looked down on those that suffered from depression. Their complaints
were enough to make anyone feel depressed since I assumed they were Christians
themselves to be reading an article from a Christian magazine. I might have
been wrong. One of my thoughts was that if Christians were complaining about
the church so much, why then would anyone want to become a Christian? Another
thought was that the people who were complaining about the church so much had
forgotten that they were part of the church.
I recently read another article
via a link on Michael Hyatt’s Twitter feed that got me disturbed. The link was
to an article by Joel Miller (I think). Mr. Miller was flabbergasted at the
comments by Christians who saw nothing wrong with the pornographic content of
the book, 50 Shades of Grey because according to some of them, “they got married in the
end”. There were other comments by "Christians" along the lines of how the book could help married couples with their sexual lives.
These two things got me thinking
about how there seems to be no difference between those who say they believe in
Christ and those who don’t believe in anything. Christians now swear and use
the F word because we think it cool, drink alcohol, dress provocatively in the
name of fashion and looking good, we think the Bible is a story book filled
with recommendations at best and totally old fashioned. We have as much divorce
and extra marital affairs in the church as out of it. In fact, there is
practically no difference now between those that say believe in God and those
who curse God.
I believe the problem is that
instead of letting the Word shine through us, we have allowed the world into
our hearts. Because we do not know what the Words says and we are not living
it, we have allowed the world to tell us how to live. Instead of being like
Jesus and reflecting him, we have become like the world. Because we reflect the
world and are like the world, the world sees no reason to change. Like the
verse of scripture above and several other verses of Scripture in the Bible,
God has always called us to be separate and not to be unequally yoked. We have
not done this and therefore we are not expect from the upheaval that is in the
world.
Over the next few weeks and
months, I hope to share the ways in which the church has refused to give the
world an alternative and had refused to reflect Jesus and has become like the
world around it.
In your opinion, in what ways has
the church become like the world around it?
“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting;
it has been found difficult and left untried.”
― G.K. Chesterton
― G.K. Chesterton
JC Cruz is the author of DECEPTIO, a novel published by
WestBowPress, a division of Thomas Nelson Publishers:
He is also the author of
LOST, BUT FOUND, a story of love and redemption:
