Where Do You Stand?

by Danette Reeves

Standards for Christians are controversial in today’s culture. Is it appropriate to watch R-rated movies? PG-13 movies? Is socially drinking acceptable? Is it tolerable to listen to secular music? Read “50 Shades of Gray”? Harlequin Romances? Is it passable for Christians to go to restaurants like Hooters (because the food is good)? Is it reasonable that Christians have abortions?

The sad commentary on Christianity today is that most Christians do not have any standards that are different from the world. We seldom feel the conviction that we are to live differently…separately from the world…more like Jesus.

Have you ever told your children to stop touching each other only to have them point fingers a quarter of an inch away from the other’s face and declare, “I’m not touching you!”? Do you state that pornography is wrong yet watch someone’s daughter show her body in a movie? Do we sing songs to Jesus on Sundays about our love and full allegiance to Him, and then sing songs about falling in love with another woman’s man during the week? We tell our children not to go out in the road, and they go to the very edge of the driveway and put one foot in the road, but they

are still on the driveway.

How have we come to live in such a double standard world? We are just like children, keeping one foot on the driveway and one foot on the road. I think we are pushing the wrong line. We try to see how far we can go without actually sinning. We try to live by the world’s standards enough to be accepted by our peers without offending our church family.

How does this line up with God’s Word? Jesus said, “Take up your cross and follow Me.” As a rabbi, His followers lived with Him. They spoke as He spoke; they emulated His actions. They sought to be as close to Him as possible. When Jesus said to flee sexual immorality, was He saying to watch as much as we can without sinning, or was He saying to stay as far away from it as we can? Maybe He was actually saying, “Stay as close to Me as you possibly can.”

We cannot have it both ways. We cannot keep one foot on the road and one foot on the driveway. Jesus said the world will know His followers by their love. Is it loving to watch someone’s daughter do unspeakable things in a movie? What if it were your daughter? Is it loving to take lightly the song about illicit love? Ask the woman whose husband ended up in another’s arms.

When we say “Yes” to Him, we are saying “No” to everything that tries to pull us away from Him. I believe if we push the line to see how close we can get to Jesus, we can make a difference in this world. So the question is, Where do you stand?

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