In direct contrast to the problem that prompted the adoption of rule #7, many people forget that Christianity comes with standards. I remember, after I wrote up what I thought was a particularly mild code of conduct for a youth group - something along the lines of “act like a Christian when you’re at church, and don’t wander the halls by yourselves” - a parent responded by saying, “We don’t ask adults to live up to that, why should we ask children?” I was so confused that I couldn’t respond.
It was all clothed in language about how we’re on a journey, and none of us is perfect, etc. But that is an exact quote. I was floored. What has Christianity come to when you can’t acknowledge a standard for behavior? when you can’t even ask teens to meet that standard for one hour a couple of days a week? What’s happened?
We’ve forgotten that we are saints. We’ve fallen into this “everyone’s special” trap, which leads to everyone being mediocre. The motto for the movement: “We’re all God’s children.”
I hate to say this, particularly in print, for two reasons: (1) it makes me sound like a cranky, arrogant, “fundamentalist”; and (2) because it makes me sound like a jerk. But what’s true is true, and sometimes it has to be said…we are not all God’s children.
I know it sounds harsh and hateful and exclusionary. But it’s true. I know because I wasn’t always God’s child.
On the morning of June 3rd, 1998, I was not a child of God. Nor was at any time before that. I did not know Christ, nor had I truly pursued him. I wasn’t raised in church and had only been attending a short time. Soon something changed though. I’m not sure how, or when, but some time between then and the afternoon of June 7th, I was adopted as a son, and became an heir to the promise.
I’m not sure quite when it happened. Maybe it was at the time of my baptism on the morning of the 7th. Maybe it was at what I consider my spiritual turning point the night of the 3rd. Or maybe it was sometime between. But I know that it did.
“Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now am here. I have not come on my own; but he sent me. John 8:42
“This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.”1 John 3:10
I may have put too fine a point on this. Phrases like, “Kill’em with kindness,” and, “You’ll catch more flies with honey…” really don’t describe what I’ve done here. But like I said, sometimes the truth has to be spoken.
Now, this distinction - saint and sinner, adopted-child-of-God and child-of-the-other-guy - is not about privilege…it’s about responsibility. We now have a standard of behavior: love, mission, morality. The bar is high and the guidelines are clear. Without Christ we have no hope. With Him we have no excuse.
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