Maybe in some of the areas that Christians are different, from those who do not follow after Christ, we would be better off in our gospel witness if we didn't purposefully make it public knowledge.
Mike McKinley says,
"As believers, we are necessarily going to have a lot of distance between us and those who don’t follow Christ. We live differently, love differently, hope differently. We’re citizens of a different country.
But it might be helpful if we limit the distance between us and the world in a lot of other ways. We don’t have to flaunt our lack of a TV and be weird and preachy about grinding your own grain. That only serves to put unnecessary distance between us and the people we’re trying to reach. Instead, we should try to engage the world around us, know what our neighbors care about, and try to inhabit the same universe they do.
If they are going to persecute us, let it at least be for things that really have something to do with being a Christian."
For those of us who strive to live God-centered lives, everything revolves around Him. So even our personal convictions, we would probably ascribe to them as Christian convictions.
But maybe there are areas of our lives that are just plain weird to the world, but the enemy uses those weird things to blind them from seeing the true gospel lived out in our lives and hearing the gospel spoken from our hearts.
One way to assess this is to ask the question, "When was the last time someone really asked me about my personal convictions and why I choose to live this way?" If they are asking, then you're probably, more likely, living it before them in a righteous way and there seems to be a freedom behind it. If they are not asking, then maybe the opposite is true.
Maybe.
(HT: Justin Taylor)
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