As a Christian, I answer a certain question every morning when I wake up. I don’t always think about it, per se, but it’s always there. That question I answer aloud, through my actions, decisions, and what entertainment I retire with in the evening if any, is, Since I believe, how should I live? Or in other words, I believe, now what?

Marva Dawn discusses the idea of Christians living as an alternative, parallel community in her book, Is It a Lost Cause?: “To be parallel keeps us from being so alternative that we don’t relate to our neighbors…” and by this, she means, that we live, work, and play in the same society alongside others for the good of the Gospel, and “…to be alternative prevents our parallel line form moving closer and closer to modes of life alien to the kingdom of God,” and by this, she means, that our music, poetry, songs, entertainments, prayers, and culture are not just a bad rip-off of the secular form, but a radically God-centered alternative. It is other-than.

In other words, we ought not to take our cues from the broader culture and Christianize it, but that we ought to create, live, and enjoy another one. After Marva Dawn states the obvious, I was thinking, “Wow, what a great insight,” yet the Bible doesn’t come near to teaching otherwise. Our evangelical culture is far removed from a Biblical one; we are hardly distinguishable from the world (browse my sidebar links).

In his preaching this past Sunday, my husband asked, “If someone were to come into your home, would they be able to tell you loved Christ by the books on your shelves, the show on your TV, the way you spend your time?” Does the way that I spend my money reflect that I am living for another world? As recipients of His grace, we are made for His glory and our obedience flows out of love for Him: “In the future, when your son asks you, ‘What is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees and laws the LORD our God has commanded you?’ tell him: ‘We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand.’” (Deut. 6:20-21) Put another way, we were blind, but now we see.

This week a friend told me the story of some karaoke fun at a church function in which the teenage girls took the occasion to sing all their favorite Britney Spears songs. Some parishioners protested, as such things weren’t fitting for a church function. The question, though, is not why this was allowed at a church function, but why do our girls know and rehearse all those lyrics in the first place? Is this OK so long as it’s at home in our bedrooms?

We are a “chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a peculiar people.” (I Peter 2:9) When did good orthodoxy (correct doctrine) become enough, replacing orthopraxy (right living) in its stead? If ideas have consequences, then it is fair to say that I really believe if there is no evidence? And this is the heresy of our modern churches– that Jesus can be your Savior but not your Lord.

There was a time that I would’ve said that all this sounds like a bunch of legalism justification. But now, I am learning to understand more of what Paul means in Romans 6: “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?”