Today is the start of the scholarship groups for final year high school people and there is a reception for these candidates at the University. Son one has an invite, and last night was printing He made a comment that “Dunedin is weird. This dies not happen anywehere else in NZ“. And this got me thinking how NZ has a quality that Europe has, that I had noted in a combox at TC.
I like the Specificness of Europe. Tuscany is not Rome, Dresden is not Frankfurt, and Leeds is not London. Each county has its own cheese, wine, beer and traditions. I’d rather deal with that, and having to use my really bad German or French or Latin to communicate, than see Europe become just another set of Malls — and as an aside, I like Rural America for the same reasons. If you let in a culture that demands you bow to their homogenity you will lose all that.
But now I want to talk about the limits of this. For in Christ we have to purge the pagan from our church, our culture, and from us.
1These are the statutes and ordinances that you must diligently observe in the land that the LORD, the God of your ancestors, has given you to occupy all the days that you live on the earth.
2You must demolish completely all the places where the nations whom you are about to dispossess served their gods, on the mountain heights, on the hills, and under every leafy tree. 3Break down their altars, smash their pillars, burn their sacred poles with fire, and hew down the idols of their gods, and thus blot out their name from their places. 4You shall not worship the LORD your God in such ways. 5But you shall seek the place that the LORD your God will choose out of all your tribes as his habitation to put his name there. You shall go there, 6bringing there your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and your donations, your votive gifts, your freewill offerings, and the firstlings of your herds and flocks. 7And you shall eat there in the presence of the LORD your God, you and your households together, rejoicing in all the undertakings in which the LORD your God has blessed you.
8You shall not act as we are acting here today, all of us according to our own desires, 9for you have not yet come into the rest and the possession that the LORD your God is giving you. 10When you cross over the Jordan and live in the land that the LORD your God is allotting to you, and when he gives you rest from your enemies all around so that you live in safety, 11then you shall bring everything that I command you to the place that the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his name: your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and your donations, and all your choice votive gifts that you vow to the LORD. 12And you shall rejoice before the LORD your God, you together with your sons and your daughters, your male and female slaves, and the Levites who reside in your towns (since they have no allotment or inheritance with you).
2 Corinthians 6:3-13 (6:14-7:1)
3We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, 4but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, 5beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; 6by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, 7truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; 8in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; 9as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see – we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; 10as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.
11We have spoken frankly to you Corinthians; our heart is wide open to you. 12There is no restriction in our affections, but only in yours. 13In return – I speak as to children – open wide your hearts also.
14Do not be mismatched with unbelievers. For what partnership is there between righteousness and lawlessness? Or what fellowship is there between light and darkness? 15What agreement does Christ have with Beliar? Or what does a believer share with an unbeliever? 16What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will live in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 17Therefore come out from them, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch nothing unclean; then I will welcome you, 18and I will be your father, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”
1Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and of spirit, making holiness perfect in the fear of God.
It is very clear that Israel, when they eneered the land of the Cannanites and Amorites, were not to continue and adopt their practices, but instead cling to the law of the LORD. In the same way Paul tells us not to be mismatched with unbeleivers. He refers back to the idols of that past age to make that point.
We are not to tolerate the Pagan. I can here people say — but the Islamics say that, and you are against them.. That misses two points: the first is that ISlam is pagan, with a monotheistic gloss” it is the religion of a tribe, and the tribe grows by conquest and conversion. There is no tolerence of variet on the non pagan parts of a culture.
For Christianity tolerated people from mulitple cultures, and did not ask them to change. This was one of the reasons why circumsicision was so big an issue in the early church. Christ came to the Jews, but he was not for the Jews alone. He was for Greekes and… (horor of horrors) those Roman bastards who had invaded our temple and worship mulitple Gods. Yet, in Christ, we remain jew, Greek and Roman: our unity is in the blood of Christ.
The issue now is that we adopt the ideology of the age, and let this corrupt us. So we need to, again, reform, remove, and repudiate that which is clear error. We noed to stop being therapeutic. We need to preach the consequences of sin — knowing that none of us is without it. And we need to tolerate the specific quirks of each town, when they are neutral.
Because not all traditions are pagan. And we as to be salt and light in our community, preserving the good, not some kind of weed mat, smothering the culture.
