Making the Unclean Clean, Not the Other Way Around

Ben from live.awake left a comment on my last post that really sparked my thinking. The entire comment is well worth reading, but here’s just a snippet:

“The idea that the culture is the enemy and the Church is a sanctuary in which to hide from it is in total opposition to Jesus’ teaching….we feel this constant need to perform well, look right, act right, and never get close enough to a sinner to get stained by them.”

This stuck with me because it touches on a change that is taking place in my thinking, and in my approach to life and ministry in general.

For many years I have lived as though the world culture is something to be feared and avoided. I have grown up in the “safety” of church, and not only did I see “the world” as an unsafe, sinful place, but I have avoided contact with it for fear of being defiled. For many years, from the churchy platform of ministry, I called prophetically to non-believers who obviously weren’t anywhere around and couldn’t hear me as I called them to come into the building and give their hearts to Christ.

Kind of like calling the fish to jump out of the water onto the beach. But I was fearful that the waters would defile me. Seems kind of silly to think about it now.

I began to shift my thinking about this when I pondered how there are different degrees of holiness that are described in the Law of Moses, and how that paints a picture for us today. There were essentially three degrees of holiness described:

1. When something was ceremonially clean, it was consecrated, but it could be defiled by touching something unclean. The level of “cleanness” was fragile at best, because the item could be easily defiled.
2. When something was considered “most holy“, it was at a higher level of consecration, and instead of being defiled by unclean things, the unclean thing would become clean by touching it. The brazen altar is a good example of this; as the “unclean” blood of animals was placed on it, the unclean would become clean by touching the altar.
3. Then, of course, there was the “holiest of holy“–the pure holiness of God that simply destroys any uncleanness that comes near it.

When we Christians think of holiness in our own lives, many of us think of things in terms of being ceremonially clean. Whatever holiness we think we possess, we see it as fragile; we live in the fear of defilement. What this means is that we basically try to “keep our nose clean”; instead of seeking to redeem the environment around us, we try to keep the environment from defiling us. This way of living is pretty much about trying not to sin, and ends up being actually quite self-centered. It also keeps us out of areas where we could potentially spread Christ’s love to a lot of people.

I think what God wants for us is to aim a bit higher. I think He wants us to trust in the power of His grace to keep us, to make us “most holy”. I think instead of walking in the fear of defilement by the world around us, I think through the virtue of Christ’s presence in us, the unholy stuff around us can be made clean.

This is so simple when you think about it. When we go into a dark room, we don’t cast out the darkness; we just turn on the light. Light always dispels darkness. For many years I thought backwardly about this, trying to avoid darkness, fearing that the darkness would influence me, when all I needed to do was learn to walk in the light. That way, I become the influencer, rather than the other way around.

By pointing out this difference in thinking, I’m not suggesting that we invade the culture with some form of religious piety or spiritual pride. We can’t make a difference by being offensive. And on the other hand, we do need to act with wisdom, because we each have areas of weakness in which we can be defiled. (For example, it would probably not be a good idea for a recovering alcoholic to go witness in a bar.) But I am learning that the presence of sin or “sinners” around me does not mean I will sin. And if I stay engaged in that situation, the chances are greatly increased that what God has done in me will impact that person’s life for the better.

Jesus had a bad reputation from the religious people of His day because He regularly ate meals with disreputable people, and never once got defiled. It is the way He modeled ministry for us. It is amazing how the church (which claims to follow Jesus) actually patterns itself more like the religious leaders of Jesus’ day than it does Jesus. If we can re-think this, and go back to the mentality Jesus Himself had, we can move past protecting ourselves from the world to making a positive difference in it.