against the heretical nature of the christian sub-culture

If you go to a local Christian bookstore, you may be able to pick up the “Blue Pages,” a directory of Christian-owned and operated businesses. This is an excellent idea, because now we can pull ourselves deeper and deeper into our Christian bubbles, completely detached from the world. If having Christian t-shirts, Christian music, Christian fiction, Christian comic-books, Christian toys, Christian cartoons, Christian movies, Christian jewelry, Christian schools, Christian gymnasiums, Christian video games, Christian board games, and Christian t elevision shows aren’t satisfactory enough to make us feel safe in our hedonistic, anti-God, anti-morals world, now we ca n climb even deeper into the Christian culture so that we will not have to even see the faces of non-Christians on simple runs to the grocery, car shop, or video retailer. Now we will not have to worry about associating with those pagans and being contaminated by their wickedness. We can shake hands with other Christians in our exclusive Christianity and not have to make even small-talk with those liberal-minded, pleasure-seeking cretins. As good Christians, we need to follow St. Paul’s advice in 1 Corinthians 5.9: “I have written to you in my previous letter not to associate with the sexually immoral people.” The next thing we need to do, and I’m trying to get a committee together to do this, is move to Salt Lake City and form our own little commune with 10-foot-tall concrete walls ringed with barbed-wire to keep those ungodly atheists away from us and our families. Once we do that, we’ll be totally safe from the outside world.

Right now I just want to smack some Christians across the face.

St. Paul writes, in context (proof-texting, such as what I did above, should be a sin in itself): “I have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave the world.” (1 Cor 5.9-10) What Paul is saying is that Christians are not to leave this world. We are not to form our protective Christian bubbles or form communes to escape from the world. St. Paul would find such an action laughable and completely heretical and contrary to the gospel message (didn’t the Messiah spend most of his time with “the world”, completely ticking off the religious high-rollers of his day?). And yet we see Christians secluding and isolating themselves from the world all the time! Maybe they aren’t as drastic as the Amish or the Puritans (but, let us note, their case is slightly different, for they abandoned society for the sake of fleeing and escaping persecution, and this is something Jesus advised us to do in Luke 21. Sometimes I go to Family Christian Bookstores, just up the road from my house, and I find it almost sickening at all the Christian apparel they have for sell. Apparently it’s sinful to be a part of the world, so the duty of the good Christian is to take everything that has any connotations with the “anti-Christian, liberal-minded, pleasure-seeking world” and to replace it with Christian knock-offs (and this is sad, because the copies are never as great as the original, and I would much rather laugh to Dane Cook than a Christian comedian, or listen to Pink Floyd rather than a cheap Christian band). I think that if St. Paul were here, he would be outraged. He’d enter our mega-churches and our Christian bubbles and start tearing things to bit. We can speculate from the scriptures that St. Paul had quite the temper, and I can easily see him entering Family Christian Bookstores and completely ransacking the place.

I am a Christian. I seek to honor and please God with my lifestyle. I have gone to parties where there has been beer and pot. I have befriended those people whom many Christians would be appalled to even look in the eye, and these friendships are some of the best friendships I’ve ever had. I’ve gone to bars and clubs. I’ve talked theology in the aisles of a liquor outlet. I’ve smoked cigarettes at Starbucks and had great conversations on the grace and mercy given to us by God. Perhaps I am too worldly. Or maybe I just have too heretical of a grasp on grace. I don’t know. But what I do know is that I am honoring the gospel message more than those who are isolating themselves and drinking their Christian-coffee in their Creation Museum coffee mugs.