I was teaching an adult class at an area evangelical church when we fell into a discussion (diversion, rabbit trail) about how Paul was asking the Thessalonians to live counter-culturally. (See especially 1 Thes. 4:1-12.) I said that we Christians in America today may not feel this contradiction on a daily basis the way someone living in Thessalonika would.
Immediately one of the participants spoke up with, “Oh yes, we do! Why, this very Sunday a church just up the road is having a peace thing with Buddhists and Muslims and Jews and God knows who else. What kind of a witness is that? Talk about cultural compromise!”
“Yes,” I replied, “my wife and I are the greeters for it.” After the laughing died down, I tried to outline and illustrate three ways one may interact with one’s cultural setting (we were getting even farther from the Bible study, and I heard about it later):
- complete cultural compromise (you can’t tell the Christians from the pagans)
- complete cultural rejection (Christian music, Christian schools, Christian textbooks, Christian realtors, Christian yellow pages and, for Christ’s sake, no Halloween or Easter bunnies!)
- somewhere in between (where most of us live)
But my interlocutor was not finished: “When the Bible says ‘blessed are the peacemakers,’ it is talking about peace with God—not with other people!” Since the peace event was not focusing on peace with God (though I’m in favor of it), I suggested that peacemaking in the Bible might be about both God and others (even Buddhists and Muslims), while one peace event was about as significant for world peace as lighting a candle in broad daylight.
We went back to Thessalonians and finding other ways not to talk about sex. When I left, I promised to talk about something less controversial the following week: why there is no such thing as the rapture in 1 Thes. 4:13-18 . Who knew adult education could be so much fun?
3 comments:
Maybe you could talk about or avoid talking about sex with those other groups.
"When the Bible says ‘blessed are the peacemakers,’ it is talking about peace with God—not with other people!” "
Whew! Glad to have that cleared up.. Thought I was actually going to have to go around trying to work towards a more peaceful and loving society.
What a relief!
I think some of the lack of concern about peace and justice in this world has been fostered by the "left behind"/rapture mentality that the world is going to get worse and worse before Jesus comes again, so why should we row against the divinely ordained ebb-tide. TJ
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