Sonspot

This past Sunday our pastor preached about Christians making an effort to not be, or even appear, "worldly" i.e. one should be able to see a difference in a Christian and the society they're a part of, that the Christian should strive for a higher moral standard.

Our pastor made the statement that it was becoming harder and harder to see a difference between Christians and non-Christians. His conclusion, of course, was that this was a bad thing. However, it got me to thinking about why Christians seem to melt into the scenery now instead of sticking out like they apparently did in the past. Although I'm probably the last person on the planet to have noticed this, I want to share my thinking anyway.

When Christianity first appeared on the scene the world was a very different place. Humans have always been, and still are, cruel but the world of the first centuries A.D. was particularly ugly. No one could vote, slavery was the norm, there were no civil rights, women's rights, child labor laws, OSHO, no concept of cruel and unusual punishment, and no real charities.

Suddenly you have this group of people show-up, who by no means are perfect, but who are dedicated to following the teachings of Christ. The suddenly active philosophies of "Loving your Neighbor" and "treating others as you would have them treat you" must have been quite unusual to the pagans of the time. Add the adherence to the biblical moral codes (commandments) and you have yourself a whole new creature walking around.

Fast-forward 2,000 years and ask yourself, "what has changed?" Are Christians really that much worse, or has the world changed around us?

Now instead of an angel and a devil, I have an atheist and a fundamentalist on my shoulders. The atheist points to the inquisitions, the crusades, the Christians the supported slavery, the Christians that didn't support civil rights/women's rights and concludes that, far from being a positive, Christians are part of the problem in the world. But this is like describing Achilles as "a guy with a bum foot." Sure, some Christians have done evil things, but over all we have transformed the world for the better.

The fundamentalist disagrees for a different set of reasons. He points to the high Christian divorce rate, decreasing church attendance, abortion, the outlawing of prayer in schools, removal of the 10 commandments from public arenas and concludes that both Christians and the world are "slouching towards Gomorrah." But this is like burning down your house because the roof leaks and the fridge is on the blink. Sure, there are problems, some quite severe, but it's far from a hopeless situation.

So yeah, we seem to be moving in the right direction. Certainly, there is still much work to be done, but look at where we came from. Now if we can just keep from blowing ourselves up, we'll be cooking with gas.