Christianity as a Way of Life

I have a friend who has a somewhat unusual habit when it comes to eating.  He likes to keep the food on his plate neatly divided, never letting his corn touch his potatoes, or his chicken touch the green beans.  Each separate food isolated to its own area of the plate, and if this pattern gets messed up, he gets very upset.

For someone like me, who sees my plate like an artist sees his palette, mixing the corn with the potatoes and covering it all with gravy, this seems to be a little OCD.  It borders on mental illness, almost like someone who keeps a clean desk. :0)

But in real life, we all are pretty good at compartmentalizing, aren't we?  Keeping one area of our life neatly separated from the others so that the problems and demands remain neatly organized.  When the pressures of our job or the stresses of our home life start to get to us, we throw ourselves into overdrive in some other endeavor and create a world where those other difficulties can be crowded out of our thinking or don't come into play. 

Sadly, in the lives of Christians, this often results in a total disconnect between the things that they profess to believe on Sunday morning, when they are sitting in their pew, and the way that they live their lives the rest of the week, out in 'the real world.'

In his powerful and thought-provoking book, How Shall We Now Live?, Charles Colson addressed this tendency in light of the moral morasse that we find ourselves in today.  He said, "Americans are groping for something that will restore the shattered bonds of family and community, something that will make sense of life.... We must show the world that Christianity is more than a private belief, more than personal salvation.  We must show that it is a comprehensive life system that answers all of humanity's age-old questions.  Where did I come from? Why am I here?  Where am I going? Does life have any meaning and purpose?  Christianity offers the only viable, rationally defensible answers to these questions."

The only way that we will ever have a genuine impact on our society is if our faith in Christ makes an outwardly visible difference in how we deal with the problems that life throws at us.  The only way that we will ever win our neighbors to Christ is if they see in us the answers to the difficulties that they are facing.  Our faith must influence our home life and marital relationships.  Our walk with God must impact our ability to get along with our neighbors.  Our adherance to the Scriptures must be the determining factor in our business dealings and social interactions.  In other words, what we believe must determine how we live our lives from day to day. 

In the very simplest terms, Jesus said that the whole world would know that He came from the Father if the disciples would simply show genuine love for each other.  Did you hear that?  The entire credibility of the Gospel rests fully upon our ability to show that the love of Jesus has the power to influence how we get along.  We are His witnesses!  If we are going to make a difference, we have to be credible witnesses of the life-changing power of truly knowing Christ.  In order for that to happen, our corn is going to have to touch our potatoes.