Hiding Behind the Mask, Part 1

"If we lived a life where all we saw was the glory of God, would we ever need anything else?"

The Christian church--the body of Christ--is under attack.  The world looks on us as if we're crazy, offering us little solace in a temporary world where we are strangers to those around us.  Biblical standards and morals are falling more and more by the wayside, and we're fighting with every breath within us to regain the ground that we've lost, if not for the world, but for ourselves.  The voice of God's unending and holy love is being drowned out amidst the screams of this world that cry for war, greed, and lust.  Within the faith of what we believe we have all that we need, but we live in a completely opposite way.  We have an eternal savior and a loving friend, yet we continue to look towards the world for our hope and sense of security.  Relationships with others are put on a pedestal higher than a relationship with Christ.  We forget the strength that God is offering us and the help he has promised to give us in times of temptation, and we fall victim to our vices--lust, greed, jealousy, vanity.  We live in a world that screams, "More!  More!  More!" yet live with a faith that declares, "Less!  Less!  Less!"  It's in this paradox that we find the Church struggling to recover it's breath in a whirlwind of despair that is wrought out of selfish initiative. 

It's plain to see the damage that the world has done to the Church.  In the media, Christians are portrayed as judgmental, homosexuality-hating pigs, "holier than thou", and old-fashioned.  These are stereotypes that have been placed on us for so long that the rest of the world has succumbed to their beliefs.  Now not only the media sees us like this, but the rest of the world is looking on the church through filthy lenses that have been crafted by media.  The Church is placed in a stigma where all is perfect inside, and everything's wrong on the outside.  It has torn us away from the world and separated us further from the ministry that we've been given to helping those around us. 

There are two worlds battling for dominance within the global earth:  The Church--those within the Christian faith--and the rest of the world.  The world unabashedly sings its songs about greed, contempt, individualism, lust, idolatry, and selfishness, while the church is trying to sing louder about love, selflessness, faith, purity, and hope. 

"The problem is when the two worlds try to mix, and like two paints that have mixed the original is lost and a new product is born"

In God's perfect and loving wisdom and mercy, he chose to make us with free will.  It's with free will that we can choose to love him and live for him or forget him and live for the world.  Two choices, you're either with God or you're against Him.  While free will can become our saving grace when we embrace the love that he has poured out for us on the cross, it can also be our damnation when we choose to live enticed by the desires of the world and living for the materials that the world has to offer.  What we see in the modern church is a new breed of people rising, and these people are more dangerous to the church than anything the world could birth. 

These people live within the church, yet spend their lives in the world.  To the world they look like the church with hints of the world, but to the church they look like the world with hints of the church.  Their most dangerous when they've been raised in the church, but as they grew older bowed to the pressures of the world.  They know the Bible, they have all the answers, and they know how to lie convincingly enough to make the rest of the Church believe that all is well, yet behind closed doors and in the public eye all is not well.  While trying to dupe their Christian peers into believing that they are just like them, they have tricked themselves into believing their own lies--sometimes without even knowing it.  While the church is trying to be set apart and different, without any traces of the world within its veins, these people are muddying the crystal clear waters with the filth that they carry with them.  Jesus Himself speaks out against hypocrites.  The Bible speaks out against hypocrisy.  We as the Church need to cast them out in the name of Christ and set a new standard of 100% purity.