I came across this statement from Samuel Balentine that stirred my soul this week.
“What if we do not
exercise our God-given responsibility as a community of faith? What if we do not pray to keep ourselves and
our world in God? What if we do not pray
and fight to keep God in the world? I submit
that if we do not, either the church will become a den of robbers where thieves
congregate to count their loot and hide out from God, or it will become a
shining, splendid edifice, pointing to the heavens but counting for nothing on
earth. In either case, God is anguished
and the world is impoverished.”
The phrase that caught my attention was, "fight to keep God in the world." I never really thought about this before but as I watched Bill Nye the Science Guy trash Christianity and Richard Dawkins once again call us foolish for such primitive needs, I can't help but think that the world system's goal is to push God completely out. But this actually goes against the goal of Satan himself. For one day he will desire to be called "God." Atheism is not in keeping with Satanism but merely removes a potential enemy, a potential convert to the one true God.
Balentine was actually advocating for an integrated mission; one where evangelism and social responsibility are not cousins but actually a part of a whole. We need to be pure, holy and set apart but we also need to be the preserving agents of salt and light as well. The question is, "How do we do that effectively and in balance, especially in the secular arena?'
As I was studying this week, I listened to the two and half hour worship creation of Handel (Messiah). I was reminded of the brilliance of a work whose sole purpose was to tell the story of God becoming a man, being despised by this world yet loving it to death, and triumphantly rising in victory. This work, accomplished in twenty-four days, was a fight to keep God in the world. I'm not sure that is how Handel viewed it in his commissioning but it is a profound and subversive way of doing it. It was and is performed in the public arena. The earthly kings rise at its chorus.
I wonder, as a soldier of the King, if am I fighting to keep God in the world or just playing with the other religious kids? Is the church that I serve under the condemnation of being a den of thieves or a shining religious pointer? Or is it a beacon of the light of salvation, a constant advancement of God in this world? Is the world a little less impoverished because of my actions and the actions of my church family? Are we waiting for the world to find us or are we taking the fight to the world? Are we encouraging the gospel to go out in those who have a passion for a cleaner earth? Are we supporting those who want to design and build a better and safer building or car or drug or whatever will bless this world? Are we taking what is Good, what is God, to our world and proclaiming him through our efforts, through our creativity, through our conversations?
Something to think about....
