The Relationship between Truth and Unity pt. 6

            So far, in our series on truth and how it relates to finding world-wide unity between believers all over the world, we have discussed five main points. These are:

1. Always diligently search for the truth in everything
2. The Bible comes before any opinion or interpretation – practice what we preach
3. If God says to do something we must do it – if he says not to, we must not – the Bible is divinely inspired
4. It is our fault that evil exists and we must follow the Bible “as it is written” in order to change the world
5. Divisions occur when someone is convicted that their opinion is truth – we must be willing to see things in light of the 4 points above in order to prevent any more division

In this post, we will conclude our series on truth and unity by discussing modern Christianity. Most of Christianity today revolves around how the teachings make people feel. For example, if someone doesn’t like the type of music that is used in the worship service, they can rally some friends together and try to change it or drift to another church where they like the music more. If the atmosphere in a church is displeasing to someone, it’s easy to just go find a church that gives off that “feel-good” vibe instead of hanging around and working to improve things where they are.

You know what I mean. This stuff is so common today.

I daresay that people rarely leave a church, switch denominations, etc. because they are in earnest pursuit of the unadulterated truth. Most people seem to decide where to worship on Sundays and how to live their lives based on how it makes them feel with no thought of “absolute truth” or “serving.”

          One time, after visiting a small congregation full of older people, a guy I know told me that “yeah, the people are nice and they’re teaching truth, but I just don’t…feel good…when I’m in there. I don’t…feel…like…uplifted ya know?” I understand, believe me, but since when was worshipping God about you? I’ve been a Christian for years, and it’s definitely never been about me. Sometimes, being a Christian means that we have to do things we don’t want to do. Other times we have to choose not to do things that we do want to do. That’s just the way it is. That’s part of it.

That’s life. Sometimes things don’t go your way.

The man who told me that he didn’t “feel good” when he was at church doesn’t attend services while he’s at college. He looked at a few different places and he gave up. He goes on Easter and on Christmas, and that’s it.

“How could he? I would never do that.”

Some of us might have already done exactly that. When we place our own wants before Christ, we have completely nullified the purpose of the church. The purpose of the church is to 1. Save souls, 2. Provide us with a way to worship God and please him. That’s it. Everything else comes after that. Being a Christian is a selfless act, and when we choose to do or not to do things – we choose to ignore parts of the Bible or add things to it – we are living a contradiction. We have changed the ultimate example of absolute selflessness into a social event.

At that point, it’s no longer about worshipping God “as it is written,” it’s about filling an addiction to a feeling. When the good feeling is strong, we’ll be at church and we’ll be living right with God outside of church too. When it’s gone – we’ll stop.

If someone starts coming to church to play basketball, have church lunch on Sunday afternoons in the fellowship hall, and hear the up and coming local praise-band, what happens if you take all of those things away? When the emotional saturation of the social setting is removed from the equation, and all that’s left is the bare-bones of the Bible, that individual will most likely move on to another church or give up altogether. As that “good feeling” wanes, living a Christian lifestyle becomes harder and harder, and eventually the person isn’t even going to church at all or ends up leading a double life.

          I know a woman who is the perfect person at church, and she guards her reputation like nothing I’ve ever seen – if you ask anyone at church about her life, it’s perfect with a capital P. They can’t see her doing anything wrong. However…

On the weekends, she’s sleeping with her boyfriend. Or, she’s getting wasted and occasionally doing drugs. Her iPod is full of songs that are full of curse words and profanity. She curses like a sailor when she’s with her friends. The list goes on and on.

I'll put it bluntly: her lifestyle shows an obvious lack of respect for God and for the church. If she was trying to change, it would be different, but I know her and she’s straight up told me that she’s not. The guy I talked about earlier who tried a few different churches and just decided not to go anymore – his lifestyle is the same. Life has become a chase for the next “feel good”, the next high – whether it’s sex, alcohol, drugs, a bigger paycheck, or a new toy like a car or TV.

The point I’m trying to make here is simply this: Christianity is radical in 2014. We have to actually do things that we don’t feel like doing. We have to actually choose not to do things that we do feel like doing. That’s just the way it is. Christianity has always been, and will always be radical in the cultures that coexist with it. Christianity is a sub-culture all its own – it’s a culture of selflessness, doing the right thing even when nobody’s around, and constantly pursuing personal perfection. Christianity changes you by permeating your social life, your family life, and your personal “thought bubble.” It makes us different from everyone else who’s not a Christian, whether we like it or not.

          When Christianity was born, it was groundbreaking. God came to Earth to deliver His word? Wow. The belief in a monotheistic God that would come to Earth and die without a fight in order to save people’s souls, well, that was definitely new. Gentiles and Jews could both be saved? That was unheard of. You can see what I’m saying – at any given point in time, Christianity calls its followers to step outside of the culture that they live in and rally together under a shared set of beliefs and practices to live differently than they used to.

Even though modern culture has taken many of the things condemned as sin in the Bible and removed most of the physical consequences (birth control, for example, makes pre-marital relations much easier to get away with), we are called to rise above that. That’s how its radical for us. Christianity calls us to not live the modern “American” lifestyle.

America says “if it feels good, do it at any cost. If it’s illegal, we’ll legalize it. No such thing as consequences, as long as you’re happy.”
Christianity says “if it’s spiritually based and scripturally correct, do it at any cost. It doesn’t matter what the laws say or don’t say, you do what God says and you'll be happy.”

          There’s a huge difference, and it’s time for us to realize that. Christianity is radical, whether we like it or not. That means that we’re called to be radically different from the world around us. Let’s stop chasing that next “feel-good” feeling and buckle down to worship God, in everything we do, in spirit and in truth. Only once we choose, as a Christian nation, to rise above the carpe-diem culture that holds us down and live lifestyles based in divinely-inspired truth will we ever be able to find unity. Only then can we change the world.

Thanks for reading! This concludes the series on truth and unity. I’ve really enjoyed creating it and I have appreciated your support and suggestions. We’ll pick up a new topic next weekend.

- Ethan