Being Culturally Savvy

Our Pastor gave a wonderful sermon last Sunday on being culturally savvy. God expects us to be IN the world but not of it and we can do this by practicing selective enculturation. Christians are to be engaged with non-Christians. He said that through the years Christian's attitudes have tended to polarize between being strict separationist from the world or by being totally permissive. Today Christians tend to lean more toward permissiveness. Sometimes the answer to this problem is to make rules, rules, and more rules. He said there is really only one rule we are to live by: LOVE GOD and do what you want. The key is in what it means to love God….in loving God we will always want to honor Him and love our neighbor….not exploit them, because our neighbors also bear his image. All people are created in his image. He said if we persist in choosing sin, patterns develop and we become callous, losing any distinction between godliness and ungodliness and we wind up only keeping half of that one rule…...the half that is about doing what WE want and we become totally selfish people….then we wind up dishonoring God and exploiting our neighbors. God wants us to be salt and light, faithful Christians (Christ bearers) IN the culture in which we live.