Today’s reading: Ezekiel 30; Ephesians 6
Ephesians 6, this morning, is another reminder to me of what I wrote about the other day, that when I want to fit in with the culture around me, rather than standing out too much as a follower of Christ, it is with rebellious evil that I’m wanting to fit in…
For me, this isn’t a desire to not follow Christ, or a lack of concern that my life would count for the Lord, but is a desire to have my cake and eat it too; I want to follow Jesus while also not standing out too much from the culture around me. I want to follow Jesus, without taking flack for it from the people around me, and without ever suffering for it. But Jesus Himself told us that that is not how it works. Jesus is the one who told His disciples that whatever they did to Him, they will do to His followers after Him, and that when the world hates them, they should remember that it hated Him first.
The thing is, going about life in the midst of any culture desensitizes you to that culture. The more you are exposed to the evils that your culture calls good, the less you see them for the evils they are, and the easier it is to allow and excuse them in your own life. There is also the effect that the further your culture gets from the Lord and His morality, the further your own goal posts move out in comparison. Maybe you recognize the current excesses and ways of life around you as evil, but they make other things seem less bad that previous generations would never have tolerated. Parsing out what it looks like to live faithfully for the Lord in the midst of a culture that is accelerating away from Him can be really challenging.
But we can’t miss what Paul points out to us in Ephesians 6, that this is no accident, nor is it mere incident, but is intentional design. Paul says,
“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”
Our culture is not meandering slowly forward in time, sometimes wandering a littler closer to the Lord, and sometimes wandering a little further from Him. No, our culture is being led and directed by spiritual forces opposed to God, seeking to turn hearts, minds, and eternities away from Him.
When I want to be able to follow Christ without sticking out too much, it’s like saying I want to stay modest while also blending in in a nudist colony; it’s just not going to work. At some point, I have to make a choice which is more important, living faithfully for the Lord, or blending into a people and culture that are being led by malevolent spiritual powers further and further from God every day.
Lord, give me a heart that truly recognizes the state of the world around me and yearns for your goodness and righteousness far beyond any desire to fit in with a world that is far from you.
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