Am I an alien?

Am I an alien? Sometimes people regard Christians as being well a bit odd. And we are meant to be different but all too often we are not regarded as odd because we are different but because we are odd - because we are not engaged in the real world.

I was at a conference last summer and heard John Piper speak, I've been reviewing my notes again and came across this phrase in my notes; "Nobody is too heavenly minded. We are just not engaged in the world." Driscoll, whose books I have mentioned, suggests that holiness is not removing yourself from the culture around you but striving to be different whilst engaged in the culture around you.

That is what taking gospel risks is. Its all too easy to withdraw from the culture in order to strive to be holy. But how much more radical to strive to be holy whilst engage with the culture. How much more would people take note of us if our holiness was seen in the pub or club or in the workplace. The New Testament seems to envisage holiness to be a struggle and also to be obvious to the world around us, it certainly was in the early church as they stopped idol worship (1 Thess 1:9) as they changed their eating patterns (1 Cor 10) and tried to live a life worthy of the gospel not in monastic terms but whilst engaged in the culture.

No divide of sacred or secular just God's redeemed people living out the call to be holy as I am holy whilst going about their daily life.