purity #3

On Sunday someone said that mixing the world with the church is like mixing ice-cream with horse pooh: The pooh is not much affected, but the icecream certainly is.

So what has that to say about purity?

Well, the church is supposed to be pure and separate from the world, but we let stuff from the world creep in (music, media, attitudes to money, fashion........). A lot of this stuff seems quite subtle or harmless, but thinking about putting pooh into ice-cream I would say that standard should be zero contamination.

When I was studying Food Hygiene I learnt that a lot of the food poisoning organisms are gut bacteria found on food instead of in the guts of the animals they came from. Our EHO explained this “faecal-oral contamination” as “shit on your food”.

Maybe if the church is feeling a bit sick or weak there is some cross-contamination with the world that needs sorting out???

The other way around.... the church is told to affect the world around us like a salty flavour, or like light in the darkness.

Many Christians are busy trying to find subtle ways to affect the world without being too outspoken about their faith incase it offends someone.

But Jesus did not do subtle.We are not meant to be subtle or acceptable. We are meant to be the clear beacon into the darkness.

How are people going to find the church if we have blended ourselves into the world?

Is it not better to be clean and cool icecream rather than a murky half melted mess? Then when people are in need they will find a church that is refreshing and life-giving.

Purity is not "intense" or "super-holy". Purity is how the church is mean to be.