So the emphasis at CCU this year is to be on holiness and what it means to be holy. I very much have mixed emotions about this, primarily because I think that on a whole, when an institution focuses on something it tends to, well, institutionalize what they are focusing on. Whether it be churches, business, or schools, I think this is the norm and not the exception (when a school or the military focuses on decreasing dui's, guess what almost inevitably rises... dui's). To do this with holiness would be a travesty as the very real danger is to turn holiness into a list of dos and don'ts. On the flip side, this is something that very much needs to be emphasized for several reasons I will expound on.
First, our culture does not understand holiness at all. And worst of all, the lack of understanding is not ignorance but rather wrong thinking. Ignorance would be easier. It is always easier to explain and demonstrate a principle to someone who is a proverbial blank slate. If they did not have a pre conceived idea of what holiness was, it would be easier to explain. No, the lack of understanding is rather a misunderstanding, and that misunderstanding stems largely from an unholy church. The stat's don't lie. You are just as likely, if not more likely, to divorce in the church as you are out of it. And divorce is just the easy one to pick on. If you took any moral statistic, from divorce to abortion to sleeping with your significant other before marriage to lying (in any setting from white lies to lying for a promotion, etc) to stealing to raising kids, the statistics don't lie: the church is no different than the world. I use the word different on purpose. Because the fact of the matter is, the church has bought into the lie that says the world needs more of what it has, only with a Christian spin. The reality is, the world needs Christ and they are getting Him from the church because His bride, the church, is too infatuated with the world. So the emphasis on holy living is a good emphasis, a necessary emphasis, as a Christian who is not radically different than when he or she was not a Christian has reason to worry that they may just be giving mental assent to a set of creeds while denying the very savior they profess to believe in. We have become chameleon's. We blend in so well that no one can tell the difference.
This leads to my second reason, which is more of a hope. It is my hope is that this emphasis will change hearts. My hope is that this emphasis on holy living will awaken in people a realization that not only are they not holy (none of us are apart from Christ) but that a complete lack of holiness in one's life is indicative of a deeper, more serious problem. Namely, that they never meet Jesus to begin with. The best example of this I ever heard was this (and I am straight ripping this from a dude named Paul Washer). Suppose I was late to a very important meeting and as I walked in I was confronted by a very angry boss who demanded to know why I was late. Suppose further that I told him I was late because on my way to the meeting I got a flat tire on the highway and as I was changing the tire, I fumbled the lug nuts. They rolled out into the highway and I completely lost track of where I was and ran out into the highway to get them. As I picked them up, I looked up and right in front of me was a semi. It all happened so fast there was no time for him to put his brakes on and he hit me going about 70 mph. So I am late because I got hit by a semi on the highway going 70 mph. My boss would look at me and there would be only two logical conclusions. One, I was lying to him. Or two, I was certifiably nuts. Why? Because you don't have an encounter 10,000 pounds of steel going 70 mph without being radically altered. And the question then is, what is bigger, God or a truck? And why are so many people claiming to have had an encounter with the living God without being radically altered? The logical conclusion: they haven't, and they have deceived themselves with the help of our society and worst of all our churches, patting them on the back for it. We have become chameleons. Ask yourself this: if Christians in America vanished would the world even notice? The statistics say no.
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