Why Are You Running?

Do you know any Christians who are discouraged by modern events, so they throw their hands up and dream of withdrawing from this evil age? I run into them all the time! They seem to think that society has deteriorated so far that all we can do at this point is run away and wait for the second coming. Give up on the world, for it is a lost cause. In their thinking, perhaps we should withdraw from the mess? Maybe we should try to live in our own little Christians bubbles that we create for ourselves? Then, in our last ditch efforts to have our message heard, we could speak 'truth' to the lost by shouting it from the safety of our Christian islands.

This is a completely backward and unbiblical way of thinking. I just finished reading The Challenge of Jesus by N.T. Wright. I highly recommend this book if you are looking for ways that Christians can effectively impact culture in our contemporary society. The last two chapters, in particular, are profound.

Here is a quote: "We need to articulate, for the post-postmodern world, what we might call an epistemology of love. This is at the heart of our great opportunity, here and now, for serious and joyful Christian mission to the postmodern morass; some people are still trying to put up the shutters and live in a premodern world, many are clinging to modernism for all they're worth, and many are deciding that living off the pickings of the garbage heap of postmodernity is the best option on offer. But we can do better than that. It isn't simply that the gospel of Jesus offers us a religous option that can outdo other religous options, that can fill more effectively the slot labeled 'religion' on the cultural and social smorgasbord. The gospel of Jesus points us and indeed urges us to be at the leading edge of the whole culture, articulating in story and music and art and philosophy and education and poetry and politics and theology and even, heaven help us, biblical studies, a worldview that will mount the historically rooted Christian challenge to both modernity and postmodernity, leading the way into the post-modern world with joy and humor and gentleness and good judgment and true wisdom. I believe we face the question: If not now, then when? And if we are grasped by this vision, we may also hear the question: If not us, then who? And if the gospel of Jesus is not the key to this task, then what is? 'As the Father sent me, so I send you; receive the Holy Spirit, forgive and retain sins.' (195-196)"

So, I ask those questions to you. Are you running away? Why? If not now, then when? If not us, then who? The gospel message is just as powerful now as it has ever been, but you need to live it out by realizing that you have been sent on mission by God in this culture... today... right now... for all to see... for all to hear.