I’m at a friend’s house, watching him watching a vapid and revolting movie, a movie named “The League of Extrordinary Gentlemen”, which apparently features a League, but not much Extrordinary, and certainy no Gentlemen. Oh well. You win some, you lose some. They can’t all have good taste. That’s right, Nick. You have bad taste in movies.

So how about those times when the parents of your girlfriend gather around (all two of them, but still, it’s like a flock of parents) and tell you stories of their youth and such? Interesting stuff, I tell you. I like hearing these things, mostly because they’re hilarious half the time, and also because they tend to explain why these people are the way they are.

I got pretty mad at the sermon tonight. In fact, I’ve been pretty pissed off in general at the preaching and attitudes that no one seems to challenge. This is how it goes: “Oh Lord, save us from this evil culture, this godless culture, this horrible culture. Help us not to be tainted by the world. Help us not to become like them.” Nothing particularly wrong there, except for my hyperbole, but if that’s all we ever hear, no wonder we’re so bad at evangelism. I know it’s a difficult thing to be out there but not be like the people out there, to not be motivated by the same things that they are, but we have to be. Really.

To pray the prayer of the Pharisee in the temple, complete with hand-wringing over the state of the union, is not enough: if there’s a problem, we need to change it. Is this not part of our mandate? To affect culture? We’re salt and light in the world. We’re charged with evangelizing the world. We’re charged with taking control of the earth. We have the hope, like Paul says in Romans 15. It keeps talking about hope, hope, and hope; what hope do we have? Do we act like we have hope? Do we talk and walk like we have hope? We should. I should.

Not to get didactic on anyone’s hind quarters, but frankly I’ve been wondering about the state of evangelical Christianity in Canada and the US today. It seems you have two extremes: either you’re too far in the world, or too far out of it. It’s either that people care way too much about the earth and things on it, or they just don’t care enough.

I mean, things that we do on earth are important, and they have eternal ramifications (this is sort of a new topic, but it ties in). In our worry about whether or not we’re spiritually minded, it seems that we’re forgetting this fact; it seems as if we’re dividing the physical and spiritual world up into two areas, labelling the spiritual good, and dissing the physical. I just don’t see the warrant from scripture to do that. What a person does on earth is important, not just how hard he prays, or how many people he touches, or how many good works he does; but also how he drinks his beer, and how he paints his living room, and how he goes waterskiing. All of these things are touched by spirituality, and though one may seem as if it were more important than the other, there’s a place for both.

This divide is the problem I have with John Piper. I mean, I normally agree with him, and I certainly agree with him that our primary purpose in life is glorifying God by taking pleasure in him. But that’s not to say that the only way to enjoy God is to “not waste your life” indulging in petty pleasures, and instead sacrifice all the time given you to other people. It is to say that there’s a time a place for everything, to help people, and to drink wine. To evangelize to the neighbors, and to enjoy reading a book. Life is enjoyable. God made it that way. There’s a reason for this, and that is that your life, what you enjoy, all these things, they all testify to God and about God, and enjoying them, even revelling in them, isn’t a denial of God’s purpose, but an affirmation in his existance.

I know people who beat themselves up mentally because they’re given so much when so many others around the world are given so little. Yes, help others. Do what you can with what you have, especially if that’s something weighing on your conscience. But also remember that God gave you what you have, and God gave them what they have, and in God’s plan this all makes sense. He will set the world at rights one day, but until that day there will always be inequity. Jesus himself said that there will always be poor people on the earth. They’ll always be with us. And so we have compassion, but there’s a place for that too, and it’s not all the time. There’s certainly no guilt in being rich, or richer than most. That’s what God’s given you. Use it wisely, like Abraham did. No one ever rebuked him for having too many camels for himself.

I think if we melded a holistic worldview like this into a postmillenial view of the coming end times (whenever that is), Christians would have a real chance to change the world, instead of just complaining about it. Isn’t it true? Oy with the hand-wringing already. There’s a life to live: live it the way you should. It’s the most attractive lifestyle every invented. Probably because the ruler of the entire universe made it that way.

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