Point of Reference Part II

Let me explain why I believe things aren't that much different today than they were in ancient Greece. Just like the Corinthian church we live in an overtly sexual culture with much gender confusion where broken people are telling us to do what makes us feel good. New Christians are coming out of lives lived in a way that reflects our culture. Maybe they come from homes where Godly parenting wasn't modeled, had divorced parents, or a dad who worked too much and never spent anytime showing love to his children. Or they've embraced all the sexual and gender confusion that our culture is spewing today and have decided there is more to lose by getting married than to just keep hooking up and having friends with benefits. This is why things are not so different today than they were so long ago. Unfortunately, this is what the American Church will be dealing with today and in the future.

We no longer live in an America where the majority of people live with Christian values as their foundation even if they aren't Christians. We don't live in an America where people have a pretty clear understanding of right and wrong. America used to be a place where people went to church because it was a "good thing" to do and people wanted to have those "values" instilled in their children. Today this is no longer the view and because of that the worldview and value systems of people who are coming to the Lord today are so warped that it is going to take a total reprogramming of their mind and heart. Paul speaks of this in Romans 12: 1-2.

The process of renewing your mind begins after you say "yes" to Jesus. The rest of your life is a process of maturation/sanctification as a follower of Jesus. It means putting off your old ways and embracing the Holy Spirit who is shaping and changing you into the person God wants you to be. But there is a problem, this new life and what it means to follow Christ is foreign to us. So when the going gets tough we revert back to the old us, the old me. We behave and think the way we used to before Christ. I believe one of the reasons we do this is because many Christians today have no point of reference that life can be different or better, or that they can make this choice instead of that choice. I see young Christians date non Christians because they've never been in a relationship with another Christian man or women. They don't know what it's like, so they settle for something that is less than what could be because it's the only thing they've ever known. They will settle for sub-par marriages because they don't know that it could be the safest, strongest, happiest, and most sexually passionate place imaginable. They've never seen another way modeled for them. They just see all the divorce and despair in marriage and think it's normal so their expectations aren't really high and when things get tough they jump ship like the everyone else in our culture does. They do this because they've never seen a married couple struggle through hard things in their marriage and come out the other side in better shape than before.

I pray that someday my cousin will write a book about his marriage because he and his wife spent pretty much 3 of their first 4 years of marriage separated. I'll never do their story justice, but they stuck it out, worked hard, cried, prayed, sweated, and clung to the hope that their marriage could one day work. Today it is working and they are expecting their first child this month. I hope people close to them were watching them fight for their marriage.

I consider myself fortunate to have parents who gutted out a really hard period in their marriage. When the family farm split up it split up not only the farm but entire side of my dad's family. This happened nearly 20 years ago and we're still trying to heal from the serious hurt and brokenness of that event. But my parents marriage nearly split in the process as well. I was young enough to not really know that their marriage was in trouble, but it was a few years later talking to my dad about it that he shared how hard that time was and how committed he was to his marriage to my mom even though it was painful to be around each other for long periods of time. His resolve to keep it together and model something different to his children was strong and because of that I now have a different point of reference in my life for my marriage.

Point of references are not limited to marriage, but found in all walks of life. Remember the teenage orphan boy in Florida who went to church to find a family? That kid is one in a million. Not many people who've been in the "system" all their lives have the ability to see that life could be different and better than what it is. Thankfully today more than 10,000 families have inquired about adopting him. This young man could have believed the lies that the evil one whispers in his ear, "You're not good enough, no one could love you, you'll never amount to anything". But how many of us listen to Satan telling us to bail on our marriage, compromise our sexuality, downplay our worth, or quit on our kids? The list could go on and on.

These are the lies we believe when we have no hope and when we have never seen something different modeled in our lives. It is the responsibility of every mature Jesus follower to model a Christ-like life to younger believers. They need to see strong marriages, people who are not confused sexually as our culture is, love their children, and don't just go with the flow of societal thought. We must do this because if mature Christians won't, then we'll continue to have churches full of people who are the like the Corinthian church; people who love Jesus but have no point of reference and live their lives as such.

It's a beautiful process to be part of what the Holy Spirit is doing in another person, but it is also challenging because someone's growth isn't linear it's more of a zigzag line that jumps all over the place both forward and backward and up and down. Be patient, show compassion, and love them much as they navigate their way out of their "old" life and into their new lives. Be ready to cry, celebrate, encourage,correct, and be silent when needed, as they carve out this new way of life that is foreign to them. Over time it won't be foreign but familiar. And familiar will become who they are and then they will be able to replicate it to the next generation of young believers who need a point of reference that their lives too can be different.  Paul says this is what happens to us when we face trials in life that we persevere through in Romans 5: 3-6. Small victories in character formation produce hope and that hope sustains us as we work through changing our worldview from darkness to light. These trials produce perseverance, and perseverance produces proven character and proven character produces hope and hope doesn't disappoint because while we were sinners Christ died for us. One of the signs of Christian maturity is that you're living a life that shows others that our lives can be different thus giving them a new point of reference. Modeling something different that honors God is one of the best ways to give glory to God. And when God's glory is on display for all to see lives are changed and I want to be a part of that. Don't You?

Point of Reference Part 1.

From 2002 to 2004 Jen and I were missionaries to Oradea Romania. We worked with a wonderful ministry that placed abandoned Romanian orphans into homes with house parents who became parents to those children until they graduated. We worked with the dairy farm that was across the road from the 8 or so houses that the children lived in. Our job was to teach and train the Romanian workers in modern dairy farming practices.

We encountered many challenging things as we tried to work with the workers and train them in modern dairy farming practices. What became clear to Jen and I was that the Romanians point of reference of dairy farming was having 1 or 2 cows in the back yard that you sent out to pasture everyday and in turn received about a gallon of milk that they would harvest via hand milking. So for them, using automated equipment, following a breeding program, feeding fermented forages, and working with tractors, was quite the culture shock to them. Typically Jen and I would be the only people experiencing culture shock, but the farm became a point of culture shock to the workers as well. The farm was unique and unlike anything any of them had ever seen before let alone worked on. And quite honestly there were no dairy farms like this anywhere in the area and quite possibly the country. In short they lacked a point of reference that dairy farming could be different than their 1 cow in the back yard experience afforded them.

The fledgling Corinthian church that Paul writes to in the New Testament has a point of reference problem as well. The church was full of young followers of Jesus who were living in a city that was very cosmopolitan for that day. Every kind of belief, religion, trade, sexual practice, and philosophy was present in that culture. It was a smart city with a good economy due to trade. It became a melting pot for all sorts of people with all sorts of backgrounds that blended together to form a very "enlightened" culture that lacked a clear understanding of moral rights and wrongs.

Paul addresses these new church followers who are asking him, "Look, we love Jesus and have received him as Lord and Savior, but now what?" "We've been living a certain way for so long that we don't know another way is possible and if another way is possible, we don't even know what that looks like".

So Paul spends the book of 1 Corinthians addressing some of their issues like sexual immorality, law suites against each other, pride, and Christian marriage. He instructs them because their new lives needed to now be counter cultural to the way they had been living before they became Christians.

In short, just like the Romanians we worked with, the Corinthians lacked a point of reference that life could be different than what they were used to. They had never seen or experienced a different way than the way they had always known.

Having points of reference are quite useful in everyday life. Without points of reference we guess at how things might be different than they are. What life could look like becomes more of an abstract idea as opposed to a concrete idea. If a different life stays in the abstract, real change won't happen because the concept doesn't seem like it could be real. It will remain a fantasy, a "Pie-in-the-sky" kind of thing that only exists in fantasy land. The Corinthian Christians are not that much different than people coming to faith in Christ today. Thankfully there is hope for today's new Christians, and that is what part II of this blog will be about.