Indistinguishable

Today in our 1 Corinthians class, we talked about how one of the underlying problems with the church in Corinth was that the behavior of its members was essentially indistinguishable from the behavior of the culture surrounding it. Sadly, the same could said of the church today in America, as evidenced by a recent Barna Group survey.

The Role of Faith

Faith commitments sometimes play a role in what people do - but less often than might be assumed. In comparing the lifestyle choices of born again Christians to the national norms, there were more areas of similarity than distinction. (Note that in Barna surveys, the born again segment is not based upon whether a person uses that label, but based upon their profession of faith in Christ and confession of personal sin.) Born again Christians are more likely to volunteer for their church; however, they are no more likely than average to help the poor and homeless. Born again Christians were also among the least likely groups to recycle.

In evaluating 15 moral behaviors, born again Christians are statistically indistinguishable from non-born again adults on most of the behaviors studied. They are less likely to view sexually explicit movies and magazines, to use profanity in public, and to buy a lottery ticket. However, even in these cases, the gap between born agains and the norm is not wide - roughly one-third of the non-born again audience say they had engaged in the three activities compared to one-quarter of born again Christians.

My fellow saints, we can do better than this. Of course, it would help if we could all get on the same page with the fact that God does actually expect us to be holy. Unfortunately, it seems we can not even assume that as a starting point, as the Barna Group also explains.

Holiness is a matter embraced by the Christian Church, but it is not one that many Americans adopt as a focal point of their faith development. This is partially because barely one-third of Americans (35%) contend that "God expects you to become holy." A larger share of the born again public believes God has called them to holiness (46%) but that portion remains a minority of the born again population.

And so I will conclude this post with this reminder:

But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: "Be holy, because I am holy." - 1 Peter 1:15-16