How should Christians interact with the world? Here in Lancaster County we have some unique examples of Christians who have chosen to separate themselves from the world, at least in part. Our plain neighbors have largely been successful for centuries in creating a separate culture within the larger culture.
Yes, most Lancastrians have stories about how Amish culture is incrementally changing. From my Amish neighbor girls with their handheld Nintendo game system, to the other neighbor up the street with his 20 solar panels, to the person who often drives his buggy down our road late at night with rhythmic bass pumping out of rather loud speakers. Those and other examples aside, there is no doubt that the Amish hold to a version of Christianity that is against the world.
While there is nothing wrong with speaking PA Dutch, wearing a particular kind of clothing, avoiding electricity (or at least the electrical grid), and using horse and buggies instead of cars, do the Amish have to live that way to be faithful Christians? Of course not, we would say. We have a very different viewpoint about what it means to be faithful Christians in the world.
In our continuing study of the life and ministry of Jesus in the Gospel of John, in John 15, Jesus is just hours, maybe minutes, away from being arrested and taken from his disciples. That arrest will confront them with the reality that the world around them might think about them negatively because they are Jesus’ followers. How, then, should they interact with the world? Likewise, how should we interact with our world, admitting that our world is vastly different from that which the disciples lived in?
Read John 15:18-16:4 and next week we’ll discuss it further.
Photo by Randy Fath on Unsplash
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