Christians are territorial. Have you ever noticed this? We often walk around like we’re the *ish* and project a certain air of supremacy or snobbery.
We lay claim to our Christian-y things, like our music, our movies (which generally stink, by the way), our Bible, our worldview, our morals, our churches…
We are not very good at seeing other peoples’ boundaries. We only see our own. Often times, we only operate within our own sphere, but why? Why are we so territorial when it clearly contradicts the Gospel?
Because Jesus belongs to us…us good church going Christians. He doesn’t belong to you worldy, sinning, non-Christians. How could He?
As for church, well if you don’t belong to Jesus you shouldn’t really step inside our church. I mean, it’s ours, reserved for those of us who belong at church. We are pre-approved. You are not. Go grab a seat at the local donut shop.
Now, we would never actually articulate these things out loud. No way. But, we may quietly think them sometimes. We may think that so and so, isn’t really ready for Christ or they wouldn’t make a good Christian, whatever that means.
I am guilty of this. I admit I have looked at individuals and written them off, thinking, based on my ever wise and spiritual insight, that they are not ready to be a Christian. Likewise, I have evaluated people on my own pathetic personal scale and determined, again, in my breadth of wisdom, that they would in fact, make a great Christian. Huh? I know, I’m ashamed to admit it. It’s so lame.
I have even had the audacity to feel a slight tinge of anger or resentment when someone, who is not a Christian, is reading a Bible. “How dare they? That’s my book. They better watch their back.”
Perhaps many believers think subconsciously that they want to protect and preserve Christian-y things for well…Christians, so that they stay Christian-y. We attempt to keep our stuff, our stuff, because we falsely believe that if it was everyone’s stuff it would cease being pure, or holy, or godly.
The problem here is obvious. Nothing belongs to any of us. It’s all His. The Bible, the church, and of course His Son. We cannot and do not have the right, authority, nor ability to protect and keep things “Christian.”
In fact, we are really called to do quite the opposite. We are told to be in the world, not of the world, which requires at least some amount of stepping outside of our self-imposed boundaries and our self-protective bubbles.
Granted, the Christian bubble can be comfortable at times. It can become a cozy, crutch of a bubble and one that we are sometimes reluctant to break out of, but Jesus never had a bubble. Can you imagine? All He did was pop “territorial bubbles.” So, I’m trying to pop the bubble too. Are you?
Are you, like me, guilty of ever, living in a Christian bubble? If yes, how so? Have you ever territorial over your Christianity and your Jesus?
You said –“We cannot and do not have the right, authority, nor ability to protect and keep things “Christian.”
Then Jesus was being rude and territorial when He threw people out of The Temple, citing that it was His Father’s House. Consider that The LORD consistently keeps something of everything for Himself. Tithing, or the ‘ten percent’ mindset, is an example of this. It is not improper to keep things selfishly protected. There is a reason. Your marriage covenant is a great example of this. Will you open it up for The World to join in? Of course not. I hope you see what I am throwing down here.
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You said –“We are told to be in the world, not of the world, which requires at least some amount of stepping outside of our self-imposed boundaries and our self-protective bubbles.”
Nicole, it IS that protective bubble that allows us to be in The World without fear or doubt. Stepping into The World does not mean I stop being a Covenant Son. It simply means I interact with The World as a Kingdom Son, and a Kingdom Citizen. This is what we are, and we need to remember this. My ‘self-imposed boundaries’ include me not going into porn shops. I also do not invite porn into my House. My House is His, and there are unspoken boundaries aplenty in House Borsch. Have these actions made me into that which you are writing against?
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I do ‘get’ what you are saying. Territorial, (pardon my crassness), pissings are a symptom of churchey-church religion and denominational bondage. People can have, and are encouraged to have, free access to the King I worship, to be sure. But even then, there is a limit. There is only so far they can walk, only so much they can see, until The Spirit opens their eyes to His Truth. Once they are adopted, nothing is hidden. Until then,….they see Him but do not realize Him. Boundaries.
But the protective curtain fell when Christ died, right? Opening up God for all – sinners and non-sinners :P alike. I don’t always agree with Nicole, but I think I’m with her on this one. WE, as humans, shouldn’t put up dividers between non-Christians and God. But we, like you said, definitely need those protective bubble walls between us and temptation.
Sheridan,
You said: “WE, as humans, shouldn’t put up dividers between non-Christians and God.”
Indeed. We don’t need to put up dividers between The World and my Father. He already did that, and continues to do that daily, as He wills it. It is a mystery, to be sure.
By rending the horse-hair curtain separating the Holy of Holies from the rest of The Temple, what did my Father really mean? Did this imply that now The World was welcomed into His presence, or that The Old Covenant was now fully replaced by The New Covenant?
Please do not misunderstand me: Jesus is totally approachable! He is! But that comes from Him towards us, not from us towards Him. Like Salvation, my Father sent His Son to die for the whole of mankind, but this is not a guarantee of mankind’s total Salvation. And unless The Spirit calls, then how can a person hear His voice? Our Father Himself keeps His Holiness intact in His own ways, and we simply will not grasp it until we are indeed face-to-face with Him.
Thanks for the dialogue.
Donald,
Did Jesus throw out the vendors out of the Temple in order to keep the Temple “Christian”? I don’t think so.
We, as believers, must certainly act out of righteous anger at times when God’s name or reputation is being damaged. But that is not the same thing as keeping things “Christian” which I see many Christians try to do.
I know it may sound like I’m mincing words, but I’m really not.
I agree that certain aspects of our lives in Christ must remain protected and that in those areas, yes we do have a right to do so. That being said, I suppose the first sentence of mine you quoted can be a bit misleading. But again, there is a difference between santification and trying to protect our flimsy Christian worlds–I didn’t go into the differences in this post, however.
Also, I never suggested that just because we should act like territorial people does not mean that everything we have is open for all. That was a jump in logic, which again, perhaps I should have addressed in the post but didn’t feel it necessary at the time.
As for us having a protective bubble “that allows us to be in The World without fear or doubt” I have to disagree. We have the Holy Spirit living inside of us, yes, but we are never told that we have anything even close to a bubble around us. Jesus very life showed the exact opposite.
It is the Holy Spirit living within us, taking up residence in us that allows us to be in the world but not of it. It is this same Spirit that allows us to see and hear what the Father is doing so that we might impact His Kingdom and not from the comfort of a plastic bubble.
Boundaries is something quite different. I agree with you that boundaries are necessary.The Bible talks about boundaries (Psalm 16:6 is one of my faves), but again that is not the same thing as living in a territorial and/or isolated way. One is done out of obedience to God, the other is done out of fear of man.
Nicole,
And if I said that to me the word holiness means “other than”, would my words make more sense to you? The Holy Spirit in me makes me ‘other than’ The World. Just like He does with you.
We are cautioned against throwing pearls before swine. We are told to not let yeast into our lives. Being in The World is understandable, of course we all must be in The World. Definitely. But being in The World calls for wisdom that The Spirit imparts and which may very well be construed as isolationism at first glance.
Ball is in your court.
Oh yes I see myself in this! Definitely have been guilty of judging whether others will become Christians or not. Mostly however, I find myself judging Christians which is totally stupid and I constantly think to myself ‘hypocrite!’.
Louise,
We are all guilty of judging one time or another. Thank you for confessing it here. God’s grace is sufficient and He can allow your eyes and heart to see what He sees when He looks at His people.
1 Corinthians 2:15 springs to mind, with the Greek word for judge being ‘anakrino’, which means: careful study, measurement, investigate, judge. Paul tells us also that it is not ours to judge those outside The Body, but only those within. (1 Corinthians 5:12)
The word JUDGE has a bad rap these days since it has been so ignorantly wielded by lesser men and women throughout the ages. But it is a covenant word, a brotherhood word, a family word, a Kingdom word.
If we are guilty of anything, it is simply being hypocrites, not being judgmental. And even then, one must ask: Does my not being able to uphold the totality of His commandments render me impotent and unable to speak of them to The World, lest I be labelled as a hypocrite myself?
Exactly.
I, sometimes, wish I didn’t think christian movies were stinky. I love the thrill of a car chase and the glimpse of six-pack abs, but I really love watching a movie that splashes the values I wish I demonstrated more often on the wide screen. I really wish it didn’t seem sappy to me. I wish I wasn’t so saturated in the world. But, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. :)
@happygirl, yea… some christian movies can be really stinky. I know we try to portray things the ‘holy’ way and all that. But sometimes, it just gets all too unreal. Many christian movies lack real people, real places and other real things. There are some new christian movies now that have broken away from that old ‘territory’ like Nicole would put it.
God bless u Nicole. Thank you so much for this! You know this territorial thing is what you see in many Christians who suddenly feel so irked when a secular musician features on a gospel track. Like ‘what is that sinner doing on a worship song?’. I used to be like this but the Spirit has taught me to see the world through the eyes of Jesus. He was definitely NOT territorial and there’s a whole lot that we can learn from Him. Maybe that’s why we are not ‘fishing’ in enough souls these days. God help us.
I confess that I am in a bubble, too; not because I think I am better than non-Christians, but because I have four kids at an age where they want to be involved in things and we are very involved in our church. I homeschool. These things take up a majority of my time. I do these things because I feel that this is what God has called me to do. I interact with non-Christians in my kid’s activities, at the park (though park time is non-existent during summer when living in the desert), shopping and during my knitting classes. Everyone tells me that this is a very short time in my life and to enjoy it. I am trying to do that and trying not to get too out of touch with culture.
First off, do you know that the phrase “in the world and not of the world” doesn’t actually exist anywhere in the bible? The sentiment is there, and with in a few verses you can find those words, but the phrase doesn’t exist.
Second. To be in the world and not of the world doesn’t mean that we somehow maintain some kind of separation from those around us. It means that we are called to a higher standard; a kingdom standard. And the only way to display and influence others towards that standard is be involved with them in a meaningful way.
Third. I see comments (both expressed and not expressed) about interacting with non-christians. Jesus doesn’t want us to just interact with non-christians, he wants to be intricately involved with them. He wants us to be friends with them at the same level as any any of our church friends. He wants us to love them the way he loves them. To say that we are interacting with non-christians reveals a flaw in our thinking; a form of dualism; an us versus them attitude; a level of separation.
All this is just a way of saying I agree with you, Nicole. But I would take it even further.
Rudy,
Yes. Well-said and you make some great points. I would agree that Jesus wants us to be intricately involved, but only with purpose. I’ve known too many believers, myself included, who form relationships with unbelievers and then leave it at that. We must be actively seeking and praying to see what God is doing in that relationships.
And thanks for pointing out that “in the world, not of the world” isn’t in the Bible. It’s more of a conglomerate of Romans 12:2 and John 15:19 maybe.
I often waffle between just leaving my relationships with non-believers as nothing more, and thinking that there needs to be some sort of purpose. Do we need a purpose to have a relationship with a fellow Christian? I worry that we do more harm than good if we come into a relationship with a non-believer with ulterior motives. When we do that, we run the risk of creating a situation like Allegra experienced.
Diana Butler Bass and others have argued that the typical sequence of Believe, Behave, Belong that the church normally follows, is actually backwards and not biblical. They call for a sequence of Belong, Behave, Believe where the non-christian is first of all welcomed into the community of believers, experiences the love of Christ in community, eventually starts to change behavior, and then comes to full belief. But it’s hard to feel you belong if you sense you’re someones project.
I want those around me, and those I consider friends to have the best – and the best means being part of the kingdom. But I struggle with that line between just ‘being’ Christ, and feeling the need to actively witness. I do know that in the past few years, as I have focused more on ‘being’ Christ than trying to witness, that I have connected in a much deeper way with non-believers, and gained a whole bunch of credibility along the way – not to mention being way more relaxed around non-believers.
This was a very thought provoking post. As all your posts are. Thank you.
What do you guys think about 1 Thes 4:11 “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.” Also, what do you think about not judging those outside of the church (1 Cor 5:12)?
Sometimes I think Christians have it backwards- we are so busy trying to force our beliefs upon non-believers and we are quick to judge. But there are many people hurting within the church. There are many people struggling with habitual sin within the church. Sometimes I think that if we judged within the church more often (as opposed to outside) the body would be healthier, and then non-believers would see this and be attracted to what we have.
I grew up in a church where there was a lot of pressure to “invite your friends to church” but as I grew older I wondered just exactly how pushy I was suppossed to be as a Christian, or how vocal I was suppossed to be about my beliefs. Don’t get me wrong, I try to live out my faith daily in front of whomever happens to be looking, and I will totally have an answer when asked about my faith. But I don’t believe in being territorial.
In college, I was witnessed to but at that time decided not to fully surrender my life to Jesus and decided not to join this particular church- and the girls who witnessed to me be dropped me like a fly! I really thought they were my friends. I was so hurt. I think it’s sad that we as Christians will sometimes see people just as a number. I know we are called to be separate- but I think that has to do with holding on to our values in our own personal life, while at the same time being friends with unbelievers.
I know that God uses many different approaches to win souls, but I can definitely say that in my life, I have had a lot of people ask me about my faith without me having to first bring it up.
I don’t invite people to church. I invite them into my life. Church life isn’t reality, but Kingdom Life is.
When I read that 1 Thess reference, I thought of Jesus as a young man growing up as a carpenter under the tutelage of Joseph. True, true, He is The Son, but I can totally see Him being approachable, cheerful, quiet, thoughtful, a good listener, full of integrity, and not involving Himself in the lives of others obtrusively, all as the Son of Man. Nice call.