We
Just Don’t Fit – Part II
So
why am I so concerned about this idea about fitting in. First,
over my lifetime, I have observed that we as Christians are easily
obsessed with fitting in. I remember when Christian Rock Music
was in its early years, we were all excited about being “cool”
and “up to date”. And so it is that in the world of music,
we continue this trend. The latest rage is Christian hip-hop,
spoken word artists, and such. Now please understand that I’m
not saying that this is inherently wrong. It’s not.
Some of it is simply that these are the cultural forms that these
people have grown up with, it is a familiar expression, and so when
they become skilled artists, they naturally express themselves in
these forms. That’s great. What troubles me is our
obsession with the idea of being cool, acceptable, and relevant, and
music is one illustration.
In
reality, I’m much more concerned with other issues.
Continually, I find myself more convinced that we blindly accept the
idolatry of sports, material possessions, entertainment, personal
amusement, man’s approval, and more, without even a thought to it.
Over and over again, scripture is abundantly clear that God is a
jealous God. He wants all of us, with no competing loves.
So
how does this relate to not fitting in? If we truly know the
Father and abide in the Father and the Son, then I think we will
start to look drastically different. Will material possessions
hold us the same way? I think not. Will we care about the
Super Bowl? To be honest, likely we will not nearly as much,
unless God has specifically called us to be a Christian witness in
the sphere of sports. On the other hand, we will likely give a
lot more, spend a lot less on ourselves, talk about different things,
and care a lot about the poor and oppressed.
Consider
this: “Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and
Father is this, to visit widows and orphans in their distress and to
keep oneself unstained by the world” (James 1:27). Or
consider this, “Then I will be a swift witness against the
sorcerers and against the adulterers and against those
who oppress the
wage earner in his wages, the widow and the orphan, and those who
turn aside the alien and do not fear Me, says the LORD of hosts”
(Malachi 3:6). These are not isolated verses. These are
major themes of whole books of the Bible, for instance I Corinthians,
James, Isaiah, Micah, etc. Psalm after Psalm deals with justice
and purity. The whole reason that Israel and Judah were judged
was because of impurity (idolatry and sexual sins) and injustice by
the powerful against the poor and downtrodden. This may be an
oversimplification, but we cannot get around it.
When
it comes down to it, if I’m going to live out scripture, then I
will just be different. I will find myself thinking about
things like “Do the people who harvest cocoa get paid fairly?”,
or “Who makes my clothes, and how much do they get paid?”, or “Is
this really ‘pure, lovely, noble’ entertainment?” When I
start to ask those questions, I end up not fitting in really fast.
I fit in even less when I start talking with other people about what
I’m thinking. Something tells me that if we talked about
these things and acted on them, we wouldn’t fit in very well.
But maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be.
