Top five reasons why its hard to be a Christian in a bush camp:
1) If your the only one, there's no one to sit down with and discuss your faith, pray with, or identify with
2) You live with, play with, eat with, work with your 30 'best friends' (or, by mid-August, worst enemies) and your every action is documented.
3) There's too much work and too little time
4) The topic of conversation is sex and drugs and drugs and sex, and if we get a weekend off, its drinking time.
So your looking at this post and thinking "man, that's rough" or, if your completely honest with yourself, your thinking that the five reasons its hard to be a Christian in a trailer by Eldorado Creek are the same reasons its hard to be a Christian in an apartment by the North Saskatchewan river.
The following five points, while I was living in Edmonton, simply looked as follows:
1) If your the only person in your church with a certain take on any issue, it may be hard to start a discussion. If your slightly shy, it might be hard to seek out another person to pray with, and if your going through rough times and feel like no one gets you, even the most well-meaning small group can feel like you just don't relate to anyone else.
2) We often look at the actions of our roommates, classmates, co-workers, friends and family; we contrast these actions with their words and best intentions, and use this to determine where they are in their walk with God, as they are doing to us. I recall a conversation in Winnipeg where, at 4 in the morning, after a discussion on pride, a friend mentioned that I "must be farther ahead in my spiritual walk than he had thought by my lifestyle." Another friend wrote in my yearbook that I was impressive in my ability to "be a good Christian and a rediculous drunk at the same time." Our actions are always being used to determine the extent to which we are actually following Christ.
3) Once a month, I think about this blog. Most of the time I think about Klondike Schist, thrust faults, and diamond drill core. Last December, I thought about the life of David once or twice, but most of the time I thought about my grades, a large tile mosaic, Arrested Development, and McDonalds.
4) "Well, Jesus turned water into wine didn't he? That means there's nothing wrong with a good party. I'll settle down and do the goody goody family values thing when I'm thirty. Right now, I'm ______." And really, where is the line? Is it where you are controlled by drinking that you aren't obeying God? Is premarital sex just an archaeic tradition meant to repress us? Is Focus on the Family brainwashing us into choosing a lifestyle that may not even be ideal?
So really, what do we do about it?
1) If your the only one, there's no one to sit down with and discuss your faith, pray with, or identify with
2) You live with, play with, eat with, work with your 30 'best friends' (or, by mid-August, worst enemies) and your every action is documented.
3) There's too much work and too little time
4) The topic of conversation is sex and drugs and drugs and sex, and if we get a weekend off, its drinking time.
So your looking at this post and thinking "man, that's rough" or, if your completely honest with yourself, your thinking that the five reasons its hard to be a Christian in a trailer by Eldorado Creek are the same reasons its hard to be a Christian in an apartment by the North Saskatchewan river.
The following five points, while I was living in Edmonton, simply looked as follows:
1) If your the only person in your church with a certain take on any issue, it may be hard to start a discussion. If your slightly shy, it might be hard to seek out another person to pray with, and if your going through rough times and feel like no one gets you, even the most well-meaning small group can feel like you just don't relate to anyone else.
2) We often look at the actions of our roommates, classmates, co-workers, friends and family; we contrast these actions with their words and best intentions, and use this to determine where they are in their walk with God, as they are doing to us. I recall a conversation in Winnipeg where, at 4 in the morning, after a discussion on pride, a friend mentioned that I "must be farther ahead in my spiritual walk than he had thought by my lifestyle." Another friend wrote in my yearbook that I was impressive in my ability to "be a good Christian and a rediculous drunk at the same time." Our actions are always being used to determine the extent to which we are actually following Christ.
3) Once a month, I think about this blog. Most of the time I think about Klondike Schist, thrust faults, and diamond drill core. Last December, I thought about the life of David once or twice, but most of the time I thought about my grades, a large tile mosaic, Arrested Development, and McDonalds.
4) "Well, Jesus turned water into wine didn't he? That means there's nothing wrong with a good party. I'll settle down and do the goody goody family values thing when I'm thirty. Right now, I'm ______." And really, where is the line? Is it where you are controlled by drinking that you aren't obeying God? Is premarital sex just an archaeic tradition meant to repress us? Is Focus on the Family brainwashing us into choosing a lifestyle that may not even be ideal?
So really, what do we do about it?
posted by Polliegenesis at 10:08 PM
4 Comments:
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Your last point reminds me of some questions I've been wondering about lately. For example, how much impairment is considered "drunk"? And then I get to the more important, more "unorthodox" questions. For example, isn't it possible that the Bible isn't all innerrant and divinely inspired, even if Jesus truly is the son of God? And if so, how important is it to avoid fornication (sex before marriage), which is only mentioned very briefly a handful of times in the Bible.
On the other hand, even if the Bible isn't totally divinely inspired, it seems to be written largely by people who God spoke to directly and people who knew Jesus personally or knew some of Jesus' closest followers. So that seems to make it a higher authority than any feeling I have or any modern-day book I read.
Waiting for marriage still seems like a pretty good idea, and it seems to have been the norm in Jewish society, but is it as important as my church said it was when I was in junior high school?
And kind of like your first comment about living in Edmonton, how do I express these "unorthodox" opinions and questions around supposedly more orthodox Christians? My church could probably handle that better than a lot of evangelical churches, but maybe my comments could turn some people against me.
I have a theory that premarital sex and drinking are kind of like lying, gossipping, and the accquisition of wealth. Bad, yes, but still part of human nature. I like boys, I like money, and I also kinda like to talk about co-workers, roommates, and family members behind their back and not all that nicely. Should I focus on these things? probably not. If I'm committed to living like Christ and for Christ should I change these things? yes. Do I think I have been "permanently defiled, de-valued, and am about to burn in hell and dishonour my husband and family?" yeah right.
I have good friends that disagree with me and tell me I have it all wrong, I have Christian friends that pray for me because I "have a drinking problem"; but there's still respect from them. The antagonist in me says bring up anything and everything with people at church. Scare away the uptight ones. The very very small part of me that has some discretion says anonymously suggest a college and career boys bible study find a couple of contrasting books on the subject and have a study.
On the other hand, Jesus draws a pretty hard line in Matthew 5 and 6. One thing that actually kinda stung the liberal in me is "Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven" Matthew 5:19 (with regards to the theory that he came to abolish the law) I have issues with that stuff. With that question in general. This comment will become a post on its own shortly. But for the moment, take those words as slightly better advise than my theory about how bad of a sin sex and drugs aren't.
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