Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
A conversation at the intersection of Christian belief and culture where we aim to find Jesus in the way we think about and respond to our world.
Hi, welcome to another episode of Found, a conversation at the intersection of Christian faith and culture, where we always aim to find Jesus in the way we react and respond to our world. My name is Linda Tokar, and I'm joined by my friend and co-host, Brandon Bathau. This is the second in our series series, Living Faithfully in the Public Sphere. And in this episode, we'll be exploring an approach we're calling separation as faithfulness. Now, this is a dominant view among American Christians as we head into this upcoming election. Consider the findings of a recent study conducted by Dr. George Bara of the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University. He found that only 51% of all faith voters are likely to vote in November. That means A full 104 million faith voters are unlikely to vote this election. The research pinpointed several reasons why Christians are stepping away from the voting booth. 68% lack interest in politics and elections. 57% dislike all major candidates. 55% feel none of the candidates reflects their most important views. 52% believe their vote will not make a difference. And 48% think the election results will be manipulated. Those stats are staggering. So, Brandon, let's unpack this approach. How would you define or explain separation as faithfulness?
All right, thanks, Linda. Yeah, welcome back to the series. Uh, and we're diving into separation as faithfulness.
Wow, those stats were staggering.
Aren't they?
I mean, they're Yeah.
52% believe their vote will not make a difference. Most of them live in California.
Yeah.
Um, 57% dislike like all major candidates. Um that one I thought would be higher. Um 68% lack interest in politics and elections. That is really interesting. So this is of Christians.
Yeah. So this was Yeah. And I think sometimes too it's like feeling like you could learn about it and even have an informed opinion,
especially since so much of the news is now suspect,
right?
People I mean I've talked to many many people who don't even watch the news anymore. which means like how are you how are you learning? Yeah. About what's going on. So getting yourself educated to feel like you could engage feels like a huge task,
right? And I could see where it's like, man, amidst, you know, one super biased viewpoint versus another super biased viewpoint.
I mean, either I have to watch like five different Yes. you know, news stations or
man, I'm just going to I'm just going to bail from this. Like it's too corrupt and it's too uh confusing and And like that that piece 48% think the election results will be manipulated. Yeah.
That's a that's not a good sign for the state of our democracy of our republic.
Um and this I think that captures well um some of the heart of the separation view. So I'm going to dive into this a little bit. Um go a little bit deeper than we did in that intro episode. Help us understand some of the um deeper thinkers behind it, some of the philosophies behind it, even some of the scripture passages that have find a lot of it and um hopefully by the end of this episode you're like, "Oh, I didn't like this at first, but wow, maybe this is an interesting view." Or on the contrary, like, "Oh, this is totally me." And then you're going, "H, maybe this doesn't totally line up as much as I would like it to."
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. So, separation view. Imagine the two circles, kingdom of God, kingdom of this world. They are super far apart. And you are a stick figure. You get to choose. one or the other
and that's it. You get to choose the kingdom of God or kingdom of this world. They are ruled by different rulers.
You have God over one and you have the powers and principalities entirely over the other and uh they are at contrast with each other. This view would say um that what we want to do is really just withdraw from the public sphere that to be faithful we need to separate. That's why we call it separation as faithfulness.
That pure and faithfulness and holiness comes from stepping outside of the corrupted, broken,
evil world with all of its mess.
Mhm.
This emphasizes a commitment to living as a distinct community. So, this is one major part of it is it's not just me individually.
I'm linking in with a subculture, a sub community, a counter community
that is living again in counter in contrary to ways of this world. And so I'm going to do this by reflecting Christ's teaching and then I'm not going to engage in secular politics, in cultural trends, in uh the entertainment of this world. Like I'm just not going to be a part of that at all. In its purest form, uh today this would be like the Amish.
Yeah.
Um but much more normally, this is your neighbor who would say, you know, I have a special streaming service that just is like certain Christian shows and programming and my kids are homeschooled and you know the world is doing its thing and it's a big mess and so we're going to remove ourselves from it.
Yeah. And you curate an environment that just doesn't require you to engage.
Right. I'm super involved at my church. I've got my group of people I'm connected. And I'm not saying everyone who's homeschooled is in this view, but I'm just saying that's kind of the picture of somebody who
is living into this view more to say, well, there's the way of the world and then there's going to be our way. Here's our environment
um where we are living faithfully to Jesus.
So if you're trying to see like do I fit in this view or does somebody I know fit in this view, what kinds of things would they be saying?
Yeah. So this is like you're at a coffee house and you overhear somebody talking, these would be the phrases that they say. Something like uh you know, we shouldn't be of this world is Christians saying that. Or we're not here to change the world but to be faithful to Jesus or things like the world is evil. Let's protect our children and focus on our own community. Um things like let's focus on the spiritual and leave the political stuff to the world.
Um I did a poll um with just my friends on social media, Facebook and Instagram and
I basically gave uh I gave four options of what best summarizes your position, okay,
to this upcoming election.
And uh the first option was I don't vote. It means taking part in this corrupt political system.
Uh 22% of my friends said, "Yep, that's me."
Wow.
Um so yeah, that's interesting. 1/5if of my friends are saying, "I don't vote because it's all corrupt anyways
fitting your stats that you had shared at the beginning of the episode. It's like this whole thing like I can't trust it. It's a mess. It's
cynicism around it and
yeah, candidates that I don't believe in or support at all. I'm just not going to be a part of it. Mhm. Mhm. And there is this I mean like I say I've known many young families especially who just kind of create their environment so they don't have to engage and because they don't then it becomes very in confusing to even try.
Mhm.
Because like I don't even know what to do and it feels pointless.
Yeah.
Right. Because
I mean I had a conversation with one young woman and she's like I voted for this. It was voted in and I still didn't see a change. Yeah.
So there's this sense of like what is the point of investing all my time and energy in figuring this Was that about daylight savings time? Because I feel like that was something we passed and I have yet to see the change.
Precisely. And so
come on,
it is a valid point.
Give me more hours in my day. I'm pounding the table.
But yes, so that is that is a way of approaching this is just to kind of not
Yeah.
Um and the only time that people that hold this view would really probably engage is if something came directly at their way of life,
right? And then it's like, okay, then all hands on deck, but otherwise they're going to let it kind of function as long as they're able to do their thing,
right? Y
kind of side by side.
Yeah.
So, like we've said before, and it's just important because when you look at somebody holding these views, we want to remember none of these is fringe or new. So, where do we see this view kind of as we look back on Christian history? Who are the thinkers and the the people that have spoken to this view?
Yeah. So, during Jesus's time, um this would have been in the Essenes. Um Oh, sure. They're known for their separation from the mainstream of society. These were the people that wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Oh, yeah. In Kuman.
Yeah. And so the idea was like, hey, remove ourselves from society. Rome has corrupted everything and uh Jesus is Lord, which means Caesar is not. And so we're out like we're going to go out to the desert community and and do our thing. And in fact, you know, John the Baptist would have been very much this view like I'm out in the desert. I'm separated from society. y'all can come over here to experience holiness.
Yeah.
Um come and be made right because the world is a big fat mess.
Um this was a lot of the heart behind the monastic movement.
Sure.
Um in the medieval times when the church and the empire had become so intertwined that the pope was really the ruler, the political ruler. And so again, religious authority and political authority had become so
uh um grossly connected where it was like you become a bishop of this area because you paid this other person the archbishop enough to be able to get in and it's about political leadership and at that point a group of monks said we need to be faithful to Jesus. So the benedicting movement and many others that came later was this idea of let's separate from the broken world and live faithfully as a community of prayer and of service and of being shaped by scripture. Um let's separate from that. So that's like um pre-protestant reformation.
Then in the Protestant Reformation again when Luther challenged uh the the ways of the Catholic Church in history um there was this smaller movement within um Proan Reformation called the Radical Reformation.
And this was with a group of people called the Anabaptists. Um one really famous Anabaptist was named Menos Simons. Um he was the leader of the um Anabaptist movement now called Menanites.
Yeah.
And uh he wrote uh in his apology he wrote, "True Christians do not allow themselves to be entangled in the affairs of this world."
So that's Menos Simons. We'll dig into Menow a little bit later in this episode.
Um more recently, there's a guy named John Howard Yodar, uh who really advocates a lot of this viewpoint also is tied to a pacifist or nonviolent ent view point on things, conscientious objectors that would say,
"Hey, I guess if I have to sign up to fight in the army,
okay, I'm going to do so, but I'm going to do it as a pacifist." Um,
and so John Howard Yodar is nonviolent and would again suggest separation from the powers of this world. Uh, more recent book uh that came out um only a few years ago, a guy named Rod Dreer um wrote a book called The Benedict Option.
Okay.
That I think could be a good representation of a um a more modern view tied into this.
Check out this quote. I think it summarized this view well. He Rod says, "Could it be that the best way to fight the flood is to stop fighting the flood?"
That is to quit piling up sandbags in a doomed effort to hold back the rising waters and instead to build an ark in which to shelter until the water recedes and we can put our feet on dry land again. Rather than wasting energy and resources fighting unwinable political battles, we should instead work on building communities, institutions, and networks of resistance that can outwit, outlast, and eventually overcome the cultural pro uh forces sweeping Christianity away in the West.
It's a powerful image and when you think about it, I mean, when you've been playing tug of war with culture and you finally just drop the rope and walk away.
Yeah, that's a good image.
It's like I'm not going to pull you into the mud.
You're stronger than me in this thing. So, I'm just going to drop the rope and I'm going to turn inward to the people that I can
I'm going to take my ball and go home.
Yeah. And I'm just going to I mean, I don't have hope of changing you,
so I'm going to stop trying.
Yeah. And you being society in general.
Well, yeah. And so, hey, how do we help serve society best? Well, let's build an ark where essentially as the world is flooded and the whole world is, you know, essentially going to hell in a hand basket, we build an ark and we become the place where people can survive and live uh the way God would have designed us to be able to live.
Um, one more thinker um in this space um there's a book recently out called the world upside down by C. Cavan Rowe Um, and it's really a biblical theology around the book of Acts. But he discusses how the early Christian movement found kind of a way between the two possibilities of Roman imperial power. So on one side is like political assimilation. Hey, we just get along. We roll with Rome. Everything's cool.
But then he'd also say, you know, the other way is like violent resistance.
And neither of those worked all that well. Although the Romans would be like, hey, polit political assimilation is a good idea. Um, And see, Kevin Row kind of supported this idea of separation by saying, "Hey, the early church in the book of Acts chose faithful witness uh proclaiming that Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not, but did so in a way where again, if you read those moments with Paul and uh political authorities, it's really an interesting dynamic there because they're like,
"Hey, the the people in this town want to kill you, but you're not doing anything wrong."
Yeah.
But you're proclaiming someone else as Lord, but that's not resulting in you trying to overthrow and kill the emperor. So, like
what's your game here? You know, and Paul's like, we are a community seeking to be faithful. Um, Acts 17 is a great place to look there a little bit more.
Speaking of,
um, what does the Bible have to say that might support or undergur this approach? Like, it's not random. So, how would they support this view?
So, again, faithful followers of Jesus Some close friends of mine um at points in my journey really have been convinced of this view. And so some of the passages that they would lean into, 2 Corinthians 6:14 and 16 through 17 says, "Do not be yolked together with unbelievers.
For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God, as God has said. I will live with them and walk among them and I will be their God and they will be my people. Therefore, verse 17, come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing and I will receive you.
So, we have God there saying, "I'll be your God. You be my people. So, come out from them."
Yeah.
Don't be in the world. Separate.
Touch no unclean thing. Purity, holiness, separateness.
Um Romans 12:2, 'D don't conform any longer to the patterns of this world. Well, how do we make sure we're not going to conform to the patterns of this world?
Separate out of it.
Distance. Yeah,
that's absolutely right.
Um James 4:4, you adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world means emnity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Now, that moves on to talk about well, God gives grace uh God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. So, I think that passage specifically is about um being in the way of the world because we know John 3:16, right? It says, "For God so loved
loved the world,
right? So, it's not that we're supposed to hate the world, but
Jesus didn't God."
But there's this real there's this reality and we know this because we when we spend time in the world just doing our lives, living our lives, we are impacted. We are shaped by every interaction. Y
sometimes just becoming aware of that helps us mitigate it a little bit better.
Y
but everything we listen to, everything we read, every conversation we have is shaping us, is having an impact on us.
And so I can see sort of the logic here, the less we interact, the less impacted we will be by things that are driving us away from Jesus.
Yeah. We are always being discipled.
That's right.
By someone or something into someone or or something.
That's right.
And the loudest voices and the voice the things that we fill our minds with are going to be the things that are shaping us.
Right.
Um and so you're right like out of that view. It really is this like well how do we live more faithfully? Get away from it all. Separate from it.
And I mean I can see the logical progression from I don't want to be shaped that way. I want my life to reflect Jesus and none of this out here does.
Yep. Yeah. So um I think the key verse that we'll do in each of these views is Matthew 22.
Mhm.
Um Jesus uh the uh this group of people are trying to basically trap Jesus and so they give him an eitheror.
Yep.
A right or left
um type of question. Here's where it goes. Linda, would you read for us?
Sure.
Then tell us what is your opinion? Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not? But Jesus knowing their evil intent said, "You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? Show me the coin used for paying the tax." They brought him a dinarius. And he asked them, "Whose image is this and whose inscription?" "Caesars," they replied. Then he said to them, "So give back to Caesar what is Caesars's and to God what is God's." When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away.
I'm going to take my B. and go home. There it is again.
There it is.
So this view again the uh transformationalist view would say hey you know what this is Jesus subverting the whole system and saying look you carry the image of God on you.
Um and so Jesus should be king not Caesar. Um the two kingdoms view would be saying the secular sacred is like see pay taxes you know yep you got Caesar's world over here you got god's world over here. view would really lean into the phrase give back to Caesar what is Caesar's. So it's this idea of like get your hands free of all that corrupting junk of um of empire.
Yeah.
The way that there's always got to be some power at play in the world that's kind of shaping all things with power and authority.
Um get away from empire. And so our solution is to get our hands clean by just giving it back.
Yeah.
Um and so yeah, it's kind Interesting, huh? Rid yourself of what is Caesars's.
Dispossess yourself of all that belongs to that world and just focus on
Yeah.
on the good and the glory of the Lord.
So with these passages of scripture in mind, what is the thinking that flows out of them? Like how does that shape like a philosophy or a theology?
Yeah. So um again the if I were to summarize this in one word, it would be holiness. So being set apart, that's the goal I want. to be as um untouched by the corruption of the world.
Um this viewpoint sees uh the end of things a certain way.
Sure.
It would say, well, the world ends with uh the world going to hell in a hand basket and we're kind of on this life raft.
Uh you know, you could hear it in Dreer, right? We have this this arc and our job is to get as many people in the boat as we possibly can while this whole thing is going to burn. Yep.
Um and if you listen to episode two of found, we dig into this uh the world is broken. What do we do about this?
Yeah.
And we dig into that view a little bit.
Um
now I think to understand this, it's always helpful to understand it in its historical context.
Yeah.
Um I find that this view usually emerges throughout history in one of two settings. Either when there's massive persecution
of the faithful or massive corruption of the faithful.
So um I mentioned a little bit the monastic movement and how you had massive corruption where the church had become so corrupted by the ways of the world
that the monks are like we have to separate and be different the monks and the nuns and just like we're out. Same thing happened with the Essenes. They saw what was happening with the Sadducees and the way that the Jewish leaders were so in line with Rome utilizing the power and money that came from Rome and they're like we can't do this anymore. We're out.
Um the other part is massive persecution. So Anabaptist coming back to um the Menanites um John Menow I mean sorry men Menow Simons um at the time of the Radical Reformation it was uh pretty intense for these nonviolent um seeking to be faithful to Jesus people.
Mhm.
Um both Catholic and mainline Protestants. So John Calvin in Geneva, uh Martin Luther in Germany, Olrich Zwingley in Switzerland. Um there's a bit of a history lesson, but they were all against the radical reformation largely because people like Menow Simons said, "We believe that uh we believe in believers baptism that being baptized as a baby uh isn't the mark of salvation.
In fact, it is a step you take after after you commit your life to following Jesus. And you can't do that as a baby. So you have to do that a little bit later when you make this decision on your own. And uh the Catholics and the mainline Protestants uh were known of as offering third baptism where they would drown these people um who were baptized because they were baptized as an infant then they were baptized later on. They would be drowned. Um they were murdered, they were killed, they were sought out and um imprisoned. And so So Men of Simons along with many other Anabaptists spent much of their time
seeking to live faithfully as fugitives all out Europe
um trying to say man we we want to live faithfully as other Christians were trying to kill them.
Yeah.
And this is a guy who is nonviolent. He's a pacifist. So it's not like he's trying to overthrow anything. It's like I want to be faithful to Jesus in a nonviolent pacifist way. Yeah. And you're all trying to kill me.
And it's in those situations I'm like, I think I know who Jesus would side with on this one. You know, um that level of persecution um is brutal. And you can see this in the early church as well. Um this tendency even in Revelation where it was talking about Nero and you have this passage of come out of her, come out of her.
Yeah. Yeah.
Um this idea even uh in the Olivet discourse in Matthew 23 and 24 where Jesus is like, hey, get out of Jerusalem.
Yeah. there's going to be a day and that day came in 70
AD
um when you had a group of people who tried to rise up against Rome and uh man Jerusalem got destroyed along with so many Jewish people and Jesus' call was like get out of here separate don't be caught up in this battle
yeah I think one of the phrases we've been playing with is the you know the clock determines the play
right
and in these situations and circumstances withdraw and separation ation was survival.
So it makes sense.
Yeah.
I mean absolutely. So you can see how it would it would evolve or develop during a time like that.
Yep. And it's survival sometimes not only of um the people but also survival of the church. Like if we didn't have the monastic movement
uh where would the church be,
right?
Like Martin Luther came out of an Augustinian monastic tradition which is one of the reasons the Protestant Reformation happened,
right?
That if we just allowed corruption to go on
um when it couldn't be confronted because there was too much power behind it. Sometimes you got to be the ark and you have to separate and carry the little bit of faithfulness that seed.
Yeah.
Um you know, this is the idea of an exiled community or like a a remnant, right? Like this view really views themselves as we are the remnant, the faithful remnant left over. while the world is, you know, falling into complete disrepair.
Yep. Yep. So, what does this look like? How does this view play out during an election season?
Yeah. So, uh people uh within this view during election season generally are going to be withdrawal from it. Like they're not going to be thinking about it. They're not going to be caught up in it. There's not going to be a lot of emotions of like the hair pulling and the tension and the anxiety. It's just like well there There they are doing their big old mess, you know,
flip the channel.
Yeah, exactly. So, have fun with that. There's definitely not going to be campaigning or voting or anything necessarily like that. It's going to be faithfulness, prayer. I'm going to continue to love the people in my community and love other people through my community.
Um, there's going to be a lot of skepticism about political engagement. Um, you know, it's an interesting thing right now. Uh, during this election cycle, the number of votes in Pennsylvania that can that can uh
turn that state red or blue is um uh is actually connected to the Amish community there. And so there are people trying to get the Amish community to get out and vote for one candidate or the other. And it's like, oh man, I think that's an uphill battle when you think aboutundred hundreds of years of a certain political view.
Yeah, I don't think so.
I don't think it's going to happen. But, uh, such an interesting moment in our American history.
Oh, for sure. What does this do to the to thinking like what would be the psychological impacts of this way of thinking?
Yeah. So, like on the positive side, um, while everybody else is going through a lot, this group of people can kind of feel peace in their own heart. There's hope uh for how they're living in their own community.
Um, There's honestly can be a sweet gentleness of just like I'm sorry that your world is a complete disaster, but the world I'm living in over here is one of faithfulness and warmth and peace.
Um I think uh there can also be a sense of isolation of feeling disconnected from all the social conversations and decisions. You know, even when it comes to culture and certain movies that come out, you know, it's just like, well, we have no idea, you know, what's going on there. Um, I think on the negative there can be a level of like apathy or even smuggness. There can be a certain pride
like they've risen above and you guys are all down in the fray, but we've risen above and separated ourselves.
That's right. We have this special view. Um, you know, we're kind of like monastic that way. We have this, you know, we have it figured out. And, um, that could kind of sound like the Pharisees. I think that Jesus would have been challenging
um, that pride and judgment that can come from this view would be something to be careful about.
Got it. Got it. I think I understand this view even as much as we've studied. Like right now, I understand it probably better than I have this whole time. So since no approach is perfect, let's start with what would be the weaknesses or the challenges or maybe the blind spots that might happen if you when you adhere to this approach and this view.
Yeah. So, two different verses that come to mind. First one is just John 3:16 through17. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son. Not because God so hated the world that he destroyed it, but
loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through him. Yeah.
And John keeps using that world, that word world, not just individual people. He's talking about the whole world.
Yeah.
Um all the systems and processes and all of that that's involved in the world.
Mhm.
God is so much loving that stuff that he's sending his son into it.
Yeah.
Um I think uh this view doesn't view things that way.
Yeah.
Um or at least would say, "Well, I have no part in that. Maybe someday God will restore that stuff, but I don't have any part to play in it.
Right. Right.
Um, a really special passage for me is always 2 Corinthians 5:17-21. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, new creation has come. The old is gone, the new is here. And so, uh, we are, Paul uses the language, we've been given, um, the ministry of reconciliation, that we are ambassadors of God who's reconciling all things back to himself. And so, we glor you be reconciled to God. And so you have this picture that Paul's painting of
um faithful Christians are ambassadors of the kingdom of God
into the kingdom of this world calling for reconciliation and redemption of all things.
Um
it would be really hard to read that passage and really wrestle with am I doing that?
Yeah.
Um in this view, am I being an ambassador of reconciliation? Not just saying leave that world, it's terrible, and come on over here. But am I actually saying this is what it looks like when God is in charge and seeking the good?
But I'm wondering how you would even do the great commission to be really honest
to go into all the world.
Yeah. That whole make disciples of the other nations, you know, I mean, like I don't understand how if you separate yourself completely, how you're going to be able to live out that commission. Yeah, I I think a a person in this view would say, well, if salt loses its saltiness, it's should be thrown underfoot is what Jesus said. And so, how are we even supposed to disciple all nations if we are not being even faithful to Jesus?
But then I'd wonder if the salt isn't in the world to season it in the first place, is it even Yeah. I mean, if you put salt back in the cupboard,
Yeah.
then it won't lose its saltiness, but it also won't serve as salt.
Yeah, there's there's the rub.
So, there's that.
The rub. Okay, that was a good joke.
Okay. Yeah.
Um, that's great.
Wow.
Um, I mean, look at Jesus' model. Jesus's way was table fellowship
with the prostitute and the tax collector.
Um, and it didn't seem that he said, "Well, this is just for me. All the rest of y'all will be corrupted, but because I'm God incarnate,
I won't be corrupted, but you guys still shouldn't do the No, he's like, "Come follow me and do what I'm doing."
Exactly.
And so much so that his disciples were being called out by the religious rulers that of the day for being too in it with the world.
Yep. Y
So if we are meant to be followers of Jesus,
we should look at this reality. I mean, even him with the Roman centurion, um, he celebrated the faith of this Roman soldier leader.
Yep.
And he didn't apparently call him to lay down his sword. or to say come out from that world. It was like
hey man you got great faith and then left it there meaning that Roman centurion seemingly kept being a Roman centurion.
Yeah.
While faithfully following Jesus which really has a huge challenge to this view deeply.
Absolutely. So what about I mean we know that these views again they have pros and cons. So what would be the strengths of this view? What would be How does this view help people?
Yeah. So, before we throw it all away and say I've got nothing to learn from this view, um I hope you've heard so far like, "Oh, actually, yeah, I am a little bit involved with this view and maybe I have some ways I can learn from it." I think first off, it rightly calls out the corruption of our political landscape, of our public sphere. Like, it's a mess, y'all. And the more you dig into it, the more you see the powers and principalities of darkness that have shaped and bent and broken our systems of this world. Um, it holds the way of Jesus in radical contrast to the way of this world. I think that's really good. And it rightfully understands the way that the world can corrupt us.
Yeah.
It's easy to jump into those things and think, I'm going to change things. I mean, think about the whole like missionary dating, right? Like, I'm going to change them.
And what do we normally what normally happens is the person gets pulled And so this view says, you can say you want to go and do all this stuff, but you're going to get pulled down. You're going to be corrupted.
Um, and I think there's wisdom in that.
Um, I think also it rightly positions the community of Jesus followers as a prophetic voice against the ways of empire. And by that I mean remember when Jesus says like don't do as the gent s do where they lord authority over each other.
Think about that to the extreme. That's empire. Um saying people as just pawns on a chessboard and we're going to use other humans. All the mess of empire. Um I think this view has a really cool subversive understanding of okay well the church stands as a prophetic voice.
The followers of Jesus are the called out ones. Ekklesia means called out ones. Um we don't do this and this is what's beautiful. We don't do this through violent revolution,
right?
"This is not in hurting others. It's actually in living faithfully that we stand as a prophetic challenge to the ways of this world, the ways of empire."
"I think that's really beautiful because so often what we can easily fall into as Americans is this view of like I can change it all myself,"
"right?"
"And I can change it through just shifting this policy or that policy. And this view says, you know what? What if the way you changed and served the world was by simply being more faithful to Jesus."
"Now, what faithfulness to Jesus looks like exactly, we'll dig into that in some other episodes, but"
"um I think that's really really beautiful. And"
"you know, it calls out, it lays it out really clearly. Who are you allegiant to?"
"Yep."
"It is Jesus Lord or is Caesar Lord? It's the way of empire, the way of the world."
"Who is Lord? of your life and we really should wrestle with that question regularly. Um and then I you know the last thing is politics won't solve all of our problems and it gets that it gets that politics"
"won't do much in the world. What we do is we live as faithful witnesses."
"Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. So speaking of what does it look like to live faithfully as a follower of Jesus who embraces separation as faithfulness? Yeah. I think for somebody who's in this world, let me just give a few words."
"Yeah."
"Um, and if you're like thinking about this, let me just challenge some of what it means to be faithful. I think"
"the question we have to ask is how are we living as ambassadors of reconciliation within this view?"
"Are we remember that whole thing of uh hide it under a bushell? No, I'm gonna let it shine. So like are we hiding our light under a bushel? or are we actually illuminating the darkness around us?"
"Um, you know, a major question is like how can we be the salt and light if we refuse to engage with the world, right? Like salt"
"is meant to infuse,"
"right?"
"Like that's the point. You rub that salt into that meat and that's actually what does the work and so"
"um salt sitting away somewhere."
"It is not being it is not doing the purpose for which it was created"
"right now. Jesus says, "If salt loses its saltiness, what good is it?"
"Throw it on the ground, trample underfoot." So, I get the thing of like, great, you can be all rubbed up into that meat, but like if you aren't salty, it's not going to do anything,"
"right?"
"So, uh, salt infuses."
"Mhm."
"My next question is, are we building walls to protect ourselves or bridges to connect with those that God loves, which is everyone in the world?"
"Yeah."
"See, by not voting, by not engaging by separating I'm saying to hell with it about the world"
"um about my country about my community about around about those around me and and look I know that that's an extreme statement and you may say no I'm not saying to hell with it about the world I just believe that my vote itself is um I'm supporting a corrupt system so I don't want to do that but I do want to care okay"
"then we're working in the right direction"
"yeah But it's easy in the separation view to just be like, I'm building walls. I'm not building bridges."
"And I think at that point, we're missing out on the heart of Jesus."
"There's this bit in Romans 8:1 19-23."
"Mhm."
"Where we hear about all of creation being subjected to futility, not of its own will, but by the will of the one who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its enslavement to decay. and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. So the whole creation is groaning. Part of this separation view says we separate out. We get a few individual souls that we're saving on our little life raft and then we leave. And there's something about this passage in Romans that says, I think God's restorative work is about more than only the souls on earth."
"Yeah."
"I think God is about a full restoration of all things. Now, that's going to mean going through the fire and the flames and God restoring and redeeming and refining."
"But if you look at the end of the story, yes, we have redeemed souls. So deeply important,"
"but we also have redeemed heaven and earth unity."
"Yeah."
"And I think that that view, this this separation view can belittle that reality."
"Well, Why don't you why don't you close us up with a thought, Linda?"
"Yeah. As I was studying preparing for this, I came across I mean, I've read it before, but just in context where in Jeremiah 29, it talks about these are people who are living in a land that you know they have been brought to forcibly. And God doesn't say to them, well, just build walls and keep to yourself and in 70 years you can go back to living your real life."
"He says to them, no, you got to engage, he actually says, "Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you." Which probably felt like, "Are you serious?""
"Yeah. Right."
"These are your enemies."
"And yet God calls them through the prophet Jeremiah to be like, "No, you need to plant your gardens, have your children, raise your families in this mess.""
"Yeah."
"And to seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which And so that speaks of in our modern context being engaged even though the world is a messy broken place."
"Everything in us wants to protect and be safe."
"Yes."
"We pray for safety for our kids. We pray for safety for our"
"of protection."
"Hedge of protection that I can safely hide behind."
"Yes."
"And yet it's the bridge to the unbeliever."
"That's right."
"Where God's work happens."
"That's right. So hopefully this was challenging. Hopefully this was uh stretching and helpful. and good and you can understand this view a little bit more. This is the lowest percentage of the polls that I did on how people's views. So, this is the most niche of the views,"
"but I hope you heard something that was really challenging and like, oh, that's really cool or encouraging."
"Um, as you go on from here, just a question, uh, a question or two for you to wrestle with. The first one is, um, where Is culture corrupting you?"
"Just take a like think about this view gives us that question."
"Yeah."
"And ask yourself where is your identity more tied to something of this world than of Jesus."
"That's good."
"Let's let this viewpoint challenge us in that way. I think also what would it look like if we didn't hold this the um impact of our politics, the results of our voting um the direction that some proposition goes or something. What if we didn't hold that as as deeply important"
"as living faithfully in a world that we know is going to carry corruption and decay?"
"What if that allowed us to live a bit more open-handedly about things we don't have control over"
"and maybe a hold with greater uh intention the things we do have control over which is our own obedience and our own faithfulness to the ways of Jesus. So with that, thanks so much for joining us for this uh second episode in our series. Uh we hope you enjoy diving into the other episodes. Please share your thoughts. Reach out to us at maturity@saddleback.com and uh we'd love to hear from you. We'll see you on the next one. This is a Saddleback Church podcast."