Last week, I wrote about how if we are to live this Christian life, we must be outsiders, separate, ‘other-than’ this world. While we are in the world, but we not to be of it. Paul tells us not to conform to the pattern of this world. If we are to live holy lives, we can’t be attached to the world’s mode of operation. Jesus warned His people to come out from Babylon lest we partake in its judgment. For many of us who live in the United States, this is a very hard message to receive, because we are so entrapped into “The Matrix” that we’d almost rather have taken the Blue Pill over the Red Pill.
Jesus warned of a great “falling away,” and I can’t help but wonder if we are in such a time. Gone are the days of “social Christianity” where it was just the thing you did and society essentially frowned upon you if you were not “of the faith.” Today, there are two responses to any claim to be a Christian: either disgust due to the excessive fakes out there, or wrath due to “you are one of those fundamentalists.”
The world doesn’t like me. I’ve had people ask me if I knew what the secular scientific community thought of me as a Bible-believing Christian who believes the Bible’s account of Creation over the secular ideas of Deep Time. My response was, “Yes, I know what they think. I don’t care either.” I don’t get my value from what this world says or thinks. They don’t care for me now and they won’t care for me later. Why should I seek the approval of those who only see me for what I could give them anyway?
Yet many people, wearing the label of Christianity, have bought into the idea that if we accept what the world says about origins, they will be more likely to listen to us. Who ever thought that would be a good idea, besides Satan the deceiver? If they don’t like the Bible’s ideas about Creation, what makes you think they are going to like to what Christianity actually is and calls for? There is a reason why the gate is narrow, and the way is narrow. As one wise commentator said, the reason the way is narrow and the path to destruction is wide is due to the expected traffic on it.
We must live holy lives, which means living on the narrow path. It is not an easy path to walk. It will often be lonely. There will not be great crowds to go along with. In fact, there will be countless calls to come off the high path and join the rest. And they’ll offer cookies too. But why settle for cookies and chew toys when you can get real food of the most delectable kinds? God offers the real stuff, and the day is coming that we will get to enjoy it. Yet to get it, we must walk the narrow road, and the narrow road will make us stand out and put a target on our backs and our fronts.
Young Earth Creation is most certainly a stand-out position to take. If you hold to this model, you know what I am talking about. You suddenly become “one of them.” You suddenly lose respect among the academic circles. You suddenly find people trolling your social media accounts, searching for any possible mistake you can make. I’m not playing a “victim card” here. I’m just stating the facts of what comes with the territory. This alone is a primary reason why so many people refuse to step this way. It is why many pastors refuse to address origins and refuse to host Creationist speakers, even if they sympathize with the position. If you believe in a young earth, you are “holy.” You are separate. Unique. You stand out. That alone does not make YEC correct, but it does separate it from every other origins model, thus it is a candidate for being the only correct origins model. Since God is holy, unique, and separate, He will not do anything in mundane ways that “scientists” could figure out. So any model in which their primary mode of operation is “natural methodology” can easily be ruled out. All old earth models are of this world. They are not “holy” and thus are not of God.
But many churches operate in worldly ways too. They run like a business, where the bottom line is the number of people in pews and dollar amount of offerings. There are many churches which were founded based on polls of what people wanted. From the music to the type of sermon to the message length, to the coffee bar, and to the color of carpet, it all was determined by popularity polls. To find Christ and the message He gave is more difficult than the clichéd needle in the haystack. This is another angle of the “church-growth-movement”: appeal to the world to attract the world, then preach the Gospel. The problem is when you use carnal means to attract carnal people, you will never preach the Gospel because the moment you tell them their carnality is sin and they must repent, your church will be empty. Why not just start with the Gospel and let God built His Church His way?
Now, we are in this world. I am not saying we must abandon our homes, our cell phones, our cars, our refrigerators, etc. However, as the fear of outbreak is going on, we are starting to see who is in this world and who isn’t from another angle. I’ve seen a lot of Christians panic over this thing and I’m thinking, “My chances of dying from a crazy driver here in town is greater than the corona virus. If I am to fear death, I’d worry about that first.” But I don’t think like most do (and I mean that in more ways than one). My faith is in Christ, not the government, nor the media to tell me what is happening. Because of this, because I know that my God is sovereign over EVERYTHING, I will respond in light of that knowledge. Those in the world will operate out of fear and the unknown.
Let us live Holy lives. Lives not driven by fear nor popular opinion, nor by the ‘wise of this world.’ Let us live lives driven by the fear of God, the knowledge and love of Him, and in the pursuit of Christ. You will stand out. You will feel alone. You will be mocked and hated. But you will also be rewarded for believing God in a world that does not. And if you are faithful, you will hear the only complement worth hearing: “Well done, good and faithful servant.” How can we live holy lives? Next week, I’ll wrap up my series on holiness and get down to very practical things.
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