Without Holiness...

Thursday 2/23/2012 4:54 AM

This is an election year and each Republican candidate for President is trying to convince the voters that he would be the candidate with the best chance of unseating President Obama.  Each candidate has his talking points that are designed to woo voters into his camp and it seems like most are trying to court the conservative element of the Republican Party.  The hot topics that seem to repeatedly emerge are abortion, immigration policy and gay marriage.  The candidates often portray themselves as Christians and, when campaigning in the primaries, will call into question the genuineness of their rival’s or opponent’s faith.  The media that report on the primary elections often portray the candidates and their followers as crazy fanatics who look out for the interests of the rich and powerful while ignoring the plight of the poor and disenfranchised of society.

I am ashamed to admit I’m a Christian to those around me if they think that all Christians are like those portrayed by the media.  If someone asks if I am a Christian I quickly backpedal and let them know that I am a Christian but not like those portrayed in the media.  I sometimes wonder why the media portrays Christians in such a negative light when most of the Christians I know are nothing like that.  Some would argue that it is just the persecution of Christians that has gone on for centuries but it seems to me that some of the media criticism of Christianity, as portrayed by some, is justified.

Today I read Hebrews 12:14, “Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.”  Perhaps the reason for the criticism is because, as a Christian community, we are not living at peace with everyone and we are failing to live holy lives.  God’s desire is that his people would be set apart, living distinctively different from the society around us, while we like to blend in so that no one will notice.  God calls us to give up our own interests and look to the interests of others while we, like the culture around us, look out for ourselves, often to the detriment of those around us.  If we want the world to see God when they look at us we need to live more like Jesus did and less like the world around us.