HOW WHAT IS GOOD TURNS SOUR

Are you ever shocked by evening news broadcasts, specially to see that Armstrong used rugs. Some programmer blew it. Yet truthfully, perhaps when watching news, you are genuinely saddened by the repeating citation of deceit, dishonesty, thoughtlessness, selfishness, greed, immorality, anger, hatred, hostility, violence? All of this bad news comes to us after several thousand years of humanity learning how to be bad and mad and evil. But I am still thinking about God’s creation of first man and first woman and wondering how it could happen that humans brand new to life, would do such bad stuff?

Well, God wasn’t surprised. We cannot surprise God because he knows all things, but you and I still process information temporally and gradually, so consider this.

Within hours of the creation, what had been “good”, turned sour. The first man and first woman disobeyed an express commandment of God and as a result of that they were sentenced with eventual death and immediate separation from God. They now would surely die and humanity now forfeited the privilege of dwelling in the paradise known as Eden where everything was supplied. Their disobedience was called sin and understandably, God’s holiness was hypersensitive to sin. God would not dwell with sinners. Now forced to live outside the garden, humanity would find that it had to toil in order to obtain food yet the land and the climate would not easily cooperate. More distressing than that was the sense of abandonment that the first humans experienced, because they were effectively cut off from God, yet they wanted relationship with him, because relationship with God defines who you are.

ENGAGING THE WORLD LIKE JESUS DID

Pharisees by James Tissot

Today, Christians tend to relate to the world either as separatist Christians or as cultural Christians. Neither way works well and these approaches have been seen before.
Pharisees insistently enforced rigid obedience to God’s Law and developed additional traditions in order to protect Judaism against the impact of Greek culture. Pharisees held on to their Jewish identity at the expense of relevancy, (Matthew 15:8-14).
Sadducees contrarily clutched relevancy at the expense of their identity, seeking to assimilate with culture, even if it meant surrendering some doctrine. Resurrection was objectionable to the Greeks so the book of Acts reveals that Sadducees threw it out, Acts 17:3; Acts 23:7-8; Matthew 22:23. Into this religious climate Jesus came.

CHRISTIANS AND CULTURE

CHRISTIANS AND THE CULTURE AROUND THEM

How well are Christians engaging with the culture outside the protected church environs? It has been common for churchgoers to view culture as “secular,” evil, and something to be avoided. The former group of Christians whom we may term as ‘legalists’ has categorized believers who have not made the secular/sacred distinction as ‘liberal’ or ‘libertine.’ This dichotomy is not uncommon to Christian conversation and Christians have stereotypically opted for one or the other of these approaches to engaging culture.