Christian Standards?

My apologies for the poor standards of writing in this post, I have struggled to get the matters down in a coherent and logical manner but I trust tht you will read and know my heart as you read, my desire for holiness and purity but not to condemn or criticise.

I realise that the blog post that follows could be seen as me being super spiritual but I want you to know that is not the case, I am all too aware of my own failings and struggles and am writing out of weakness myself but out of a desire to move on and move into a true and better relationship with God, to now Christ more and more, to know his love and a  real encounter from him to enable me to live more pure and holy a life before him butt he following post is one that I have felt I need to write in order to address a growing concern I have with the standards being set within the church in this age, perhaps I am of a previous generation but I do believe that the way we act, the way we speak, the things we do and the things we call ‘entertainment’ matter, they matter to God, they should matter to us, and they affect our relationship with him as well as our witness to those who are around us.

Leaders of the church in particular should be setting examples of holiness and purity, and teaching those standards clearly to the church, so that they challenge the believers to live purer and holier lives, we can no longer rely on peoples own understanding of right and wrong, or of expected standards, people coming to faith now have come from a background where they have not known anything of Christian standards, where anything goes and there is no black and white, no right and wrong, therefore we need to teach, and keep on teaching, the standards we believe to be right.

One of my concerns over the ‘seeker sensitive’ models of church is that there seems to be a far greater emphasis on forgiveness and grace than on holiness and purity, it seems that we are so keen to get people into the church that we are prepared to overlook some serious moral failures in an effort to make them feel welcome.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not for one minute suggesting that we should expect people to have it all sorted before they become a part of the church, we all sin and fail, but what I am suggesting is that we do need to challenge moral standards that fall bellow the standards expected of Christians, whether in our own lives or in the lives of other believers, however long they have been walking with God.

This lack of desire to challenge difficult areas of peoples lives actually does them no favour, they don’t know how they should live because we don’t extol the virtues of a Godly lifestyle.

For example, there are a good number of Christians who don’t realise any more that it is wrong, and against the laws of scripture to live with your girlfriend or have sex outside of marriage, the world says its fine, go on it doesn’t matter and therefore when they come to faith new Christians continue lifestyles that are ungodly simply because no one has told them that it is wrong and it grieves the spirit, that there is another way to live and they should, indeed MUST maintain a different standard from the worlds standard.

As a parent, how can I teach my children the basics of Christian living when the example they see in the church is so far from that standard, when those who my children look up to in church are living by the worlds standards.

I am not suggesting that it is wrong for us to mix with the world, I am not advocating a separatist or elitist attitude or a holier than thou way of living I am not suggesting that we should leave people under condemnation and judgement, but we do need to point to the right and godly standards that we hold dear, or do we hold them dear? I am not so sure about that some times.

In John 8, when the Pharisees brought the woman caught in adultery to him he said ‘let those who are without sin cast the first stone’ as we know the people left one by one, what did Jesus do? he was the one without sin so he could have stoned her but he says ‘they have not condemned you and neither do I’ he could have condemned her but he didn’t he was the one who was holy enough to condemn her but choose, in his love and grace not to, we are in no position to condemn however he does go on to say ‘Go and sin no more’ so we are not to condemn but we are to teach standards and expect that people will be challenged by the spirit.

Neither am I advocating a simple compliance to rules and regulations or following moral standards alone, what people need more than anything is an encounter with the living God, he will bring about life changing  transformation in their lives, but along with praying for that encounter with the living God, for both ourselves and others, we do still need to teach right from wrong, in a world where anything goes and there are all shades of grey but no black and white we need to stand up and say NO there is a right and we will maintain the line.

I think that one of the things I find saddest is the way that Christians seem content these days to lower their standards to the levels of the world, particularly in the world of entertainment,  a few months ago I watch a few minutes, I think about 10-15 minutes tops, of a comedian, I had heard a couple of Christians rave about this particular comedian, so decided to watch his TV programme, what I was ‘treated’ to was a barrage of swearing and crude jokes and innuendo, including blasphemy, we will come back to blasphemy in a minute, I watched as much as I could cope with and switched off!

Similarly we bought a few DVD’s before Christmas, got some cheapies so some of them were block busters in their day but were pretty old hat, one of these, 4 weddings and a funeral, was so full of people jumping in and out of bed with each other and having affairs etc, we had to turn it off! now I am aware that a good many Christians have watched and enjoyed that film but since when has sin been entertainment to us? does Paul not talk about this in Romans 1:32: Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them. in the context of listing sexual sins and impurities that the people of the generation are given over to he then condemns those who are in effect giving assent to those sins and approving of them, I think that in this generation we are in danger of just this, in fact worse, not only do we approve we find it entertainment!!

Getting back to blasphemy, it seems that it has actually become acceptable for blasphemy to be used in every day language, even on TV and radio programmes before watersheds no one stops to think when someone says ‘Oh my God’ do they not realise this is blasphemy? and why not? because we as Christian s have not told them.

On Facebook and Twitter one of the abbreviations used regularly is ‘OMG’ which is basically an abbreviation of the blasphemous comment above, I have even seen it written by Christians! so since when did it become acceptable for Christians to use blasphemous remarks on their Facebook and Twitter status updates?

Please Christian Brothers and sister, consider how you live and try to maintain a lifestyle that is pure and holy, we don’t, make our faith more attractive just by ignoring moral failure and lowering our standards we just make our faith mean less, we loose our distinctive if we water down our standards and morals to match those of the world.

I emphasise again, I am not suggesting that we  should be elitist or separatist or that we should condemn the world but that we should live in the world, amongst unbelievers and that our lives should be lives of holiness and purity that challenges their standards and morals.