I sent my first post (on Christmas) to the people at Citizen-link who are running the "Stand for Christmas" Campaign. Their response was very nice but they obviously didn't get (or maybe agree with?) what I was trying to say. Here's my thinking in as small a nutshell as I can put it. . . 2 Cor 5:17-20, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God.”
So, we are ambassadors. "We can be reconciled to God through Christ." That’s our message. We have NOT been given a message of conformity. We are not to conform to the world and we are not to take the secular world and try to conform it to the kingdom. (Notice that you have to be in Christ before you can be new.)
I think a fundamental problem of Christians today is that we try to do one of those two things. We either want to fit in or we want the secular world to fit us. We put the external things above the internal things. In this particular case, seeing a sign that reads "Christmas Sale" would make me feel good, because if we could get this country to be respectful of Christianity maybe things would be better. The real problem with the world is that its people have been disconnected from their source of life. And, that is why our ministry is “reconciliation”. We have a few brief years on this planet. That’s it. And, in eternity it will not matter whether our currency here said "In God We Trust" or not. What matters, is whether people were reconciled to God while they were here so they could spend eternity with Him.
We spend so much time going after industry and government. When we win battles in these areas we sit back and congratulate ourselves for a "job well done". Though, it is nice to have the 10 commandments remain on wall of the Supreme Court building, I am not sure that people are coming to Christ because of it. We want so badly for people to, as some put it, "return to the principles on which this Government was founded" because there was some bible doctrine in there. But, though there was some truth, it was not perfect. It was deeply flawed. One of the first amendments to the constitution was about how many black people equaled a whole person for the population count... Biblical Principles in the hands of people who have not been personally reconciled to God = people who distort truth. How many times in history have we seen people do things in the name of God and Christianity that were absolutely horrific? This is what happens when we go after ideals instead of hearts. I'm not saying we shouldn't vote or stand for truth and families and standards. If they want my vote I’ll give it. But, look at the early church in Acts. They didn’t campaign for Roman respect of their Way. They met together and had everything in common, they met practical needs and devoted themselves to prayer and the teaching of the word... They prayed that God would enable them to speak the truth boldly. The result was a movement that took the whole world by storm. They were ambassadors who recognized that the world they belonged to was supremely different from the one they were living in and they sought to reconcile people to God. That’s all.
If we live the truth of the Gospel and love people by the definition in 1 Cor 13, if we are full of mercy and grace that flows out of our understanding of how Christ had mercy on us, if we love our neighbor and unashamedly say it is because of Christ, if we stand for truth and don't compromise integrity and honor, if we are generous, if we are honest and not hypocritical... People will notice. People will wonder. People will come to God like they did in the beginning. And, after their hearts are healed, maybe this nation and the rest of the world will be able to honor God in their signs and buildings and currency. Maybe it wont be just because we complained loud enough but because we did what Christ asked us to do before He left. We were ambassadors to the world. We had the ministry of reconciliation. We gave them a reason to love the truth and honor it.