Thursday, December 15, 2005
Breaking The Bubble
There was a really interesting post at Common Grounds Online yesterday. Meghan Gouldin discusses her reactions upon leaving a "Christian Bubble" and entering the "secular" world.
The only difference between a Christian and a non-Christian activity is who's doing it. We do not have jobs to pay to do ministry in our spare time or, as Meghan found out, as an entree to share the gospel in our work setting. We have jobs to be the best Christian we can be at that job.
Joe Carter was fond of saying during our prep for GodBlogCon and at the conference that "God came to save the world." I agree, but the key question is "How?" The answer is by saving us. We bring salvation to the world.
All a mindset of separateness does is objectify the rest of the world. It makes it something we do ministry to, instead of a place that we love and with which we long to share the joy of our hearts.
People in such separately-minded communities generally lack, as Meghan also discovered, grace. Such places are the places that those antagonistic to Christianity so often react negatively to. You would think it would be easy to be a Christian in such a "bubble" but time after time I have seen such places fester and fetid, stewed in a faith that objectifies instead of embraces.
If God left His heaven to come here and save us, how can we but follow His example and learn how to be His people in whatever it is we do?
But there is something very real and very debilitating about the Christian bubbles that I have seen and experienced in my life. They beckon their members withdraw from the world out of fear that they will be drawn in to the world too closely. For this reason, my first experience in the corporate world shocked me.First of all, God be praised that shock was Meghan's prevalent response. I've known far too many people to collapse under the stresses such an emergence brings. Meghan's response has been to try and find what it means to be God's person in a secular world. That's a good thing. But she has a couple of sentences that are really telling to me.
I think the guilt and shame came to a head after one friend went so far as to tell me that my work was Godless and that the reward for my work would be only on earth. The underlying message, of course, if I really wanted to do something meaningful with my life and for the Lord, I should go into "ministry" like him.There is a huge fallacy here -- that the world is somehow divided into the "Christian realm" and the "secular realm." What is this, the Middle Ages where the faith of a nation is defined by its leaders? People are divided into Christians and non-Christians, but do you think that if we lived in a fully sanctified world we would cease to have science, commerce, agriculture...? I grant we would do those things very differently, but I doubt seriously we would sit around in circles singing and waiting for God to deliver dinner. God has angels to keep the singing up.
The only difference between a Christian and a non-Christian activity is who's doing it. We do not have jobs to pay to do ministry in our spare time or, as Meghan found out, as an entree to share the gospel in our work setting. We have jobs to be the best Christian we can be at that job.
Joe Carter was fond of saying during our prep for GodBlogCon and at the conference that "God came to save the world." I agree, but the key question is "How?" The answer is by saving us. We bring salvation to the world.
All a mindset of separateness does is objectify the rest of the world. It makes it something we do ministry to, instead of a place that we love and with which we long to share the joy of our hearts.
People in such separately-minded communities generally lack, as Meghan also discovered, grace. Such places are the places that those antagonistic to Christianity so often react negatively to. You would think it would be easy to be a Christian in such a "bubble" but time after time I have seen such places fester and fetid, stewed in a faith that objectifies instead of embraces.
If God left His heaven to come here and save us, how can we but follow His example and learn how to be His people in whatever it is we do?
