ANYTHING GOES – THIS IS THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY!
August 2022
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I’ve been living in London for a year now and this summer I am going out every week - like a tourist on holiday, enjoying the many different and fascinating things one can see and do.
I went to the Barbican theatre in central London to see "Anything Goes" a revival of the Cole Porter musical - which was an absolutely superb production. Some words from the title song go:
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"Times have changed...
The world has gone mad today,
and good's bad today...
anything goes."
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Everywhere I go in London, there are people from every nation, every ethnic group, and religion - and they are not just tourists, many of them live here just like I do.
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London has always been cosmopolitan, but at the beginning of the 20th century, it was not like this. “Foreigners” would have stood out from the crowd - but now 100 years later in the early years of the 21st century, it’s normal - which is great. After all, in the eternal city of the New Jerusalem, there will be people from all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues (Revelation 7:9), so in a way, this is a little foretaste of that.
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I must just digress for a moment and tell you the story of the American preacher who was reading from the book of Revelation to his congregation and when he came to the passage about people around the throne from every nation, it suddenly hit him and he got really excited. He stopped reading and said:
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“I’M one of those people! - YOU are one of those people
– I’M IN THE BIBLE - WE’RE IN THE BIBLE!”
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So, as I go around London, I don’t have any problem with all the different nationalities - but you do see some VERY strange things. People, especially young people, dressed in the weirdest way with incredible hairstyles, and NOBODY even takes a second look – it’s the 21st century – and anything goes! All of this is fair enough but the way people dress is a reflection of who they are, their values, their standards, even their religion, and their morals - or lack of them.
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This “ANYTHING GOES” attitude is a major feature of life today. In the time of the Judges “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 17:6, 21:25) - and the result of that was godlessness and chaos. As Christians, we are in great danger of being influenced by the standards of the world – sometimes without realising it.
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So, in this “anything goes” – laissez-faire (leaving things to take their own course) type of society - how should we as Christians be living?
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We should be the influencers for good
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We are in the world but not of it (John 15.19) The apostle Paul said, “I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world.” (1 Corinthians 5:9)
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Paul also said, “I have become all things to all men that I might, by all means, save some… this I do for the gospel’s sake” but he did not mean that he would compromise in any way. Yes, we should mix with all kinds of people - but we must not be influenced by their standards and we will not join in with their behaviour - in fact, it should be quite the opposite.
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We should be showing the world by the way we live that being a Christian is the best way of life. But take note of this: we can win people - not by imposing our standards on them but by showing them, that life with Jesus is the happiest, holiest, humblest, kindest, free-est way of living!
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We should love and accept everyone
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Having established that we should be mixing with the world but not compromising with it, we can now look at how to do that both as individuals and as members of the Church and leaders within it.
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I have talked about loving and accepting everyone in detail in a previous Message of the Month when I quoted from the book by Jerry Cook on this subject https://www.ymforum.org.uk/love-acceptance-forgiveness
Let me just give a few quotations from his book ‘LOVE ACCEPTANCE AND FORGIVENESS’:
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“Today the Church of Jesus Christ needs to make a bold commitment to love people and then dedicate itself to fulfilling that commitment. Our whole lifestyle should tell people ‘If you come around here, we’re going to love you. No matter who you are or what you’ve done or how you look, smell or behave, we’re going to love you’… A church that can make that commitment to every person is a church that’s learning to love and a church that will be a force for God.”
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“Love means accepting people the way they are for Jesus’ sake. Jesus spent his time with dirty, filthy, stinking, bent sinners. And when those kinds of people find someone who will love and accept them, you won’t be able to keep them away.”
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“Unreserved acceptance of people should be a habit with us. There’s no other way to get close enough to people to help them at the level of their deepest needs. When we cultivate the habit of accepting people they open up to us, they like us, they trust us instinctively.”
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For the World of the 21st century, Anything goes! - and it leads to destruction as Jesus said it would:
“Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction,
and there are many who go in by it.”
(Matthew 7:13)
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For the Church of the 21st century, Jesus’ way goes! - and it leads to life
“Narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life,
and there are few who find it.”
(Matthew 7:14)
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