This kind of bungling is the inevitable result of staying in what some authors have called "the Christian Ghetto." We take refuge in our isolated world of church life; we read and listen only to Christian media, socialize only with Christian friends. It is almost a fortress mentality, as if we are afraid the outside world will contaminate us. And so we become irrelevant.
I do not stay in the Christian Ghetto. To continue the city metaphor: sometimes I go to Chinatown, sometimes Haight-Ashbury, sometimes the Castro. All these neighborhoods have their particular sins and evils, to be sure; but all also have human beings whom God loves.
Jesus told His desciples that He would not ask His Father to remove them from the world. He clearly intended for them to be out in the world. This was a man reviled by the religious establishment for socializing with "tax gatherers and sinners;" the religious establishment called Him a glutton and a drunkard, because He enjoyed what they regarded as worldly pleasures.
I have friends in the metaphorical Chinatown, Haight-Ashbury, Castro, and other cultural neighborhoods. Far from corrupting me, they have helped me reach new insights, find new truths in God's Word I would otherwise have missed. I have no use for fortress Christianity.
Fortress Christianity can be as harmful to society as the sins it condemns. One of the stickers declared, "God hates divorce, Malachi 2:16." 'Scuse me? A text without a context is only a pretext. That is only half of Malachi 2:16! The other half says, "and I hate a man's covering himself with violence as with his garment." Now why would the Lord put that in the same breath as His hatred of divorce? Is it not because in His eyes, it is the same thing? If there is domestic violence in the marriage, then in God's eyes, they are already divorced! A domestic violence victim should not, therefore, be told to try to make it work, because the marriage ceased to exist when the violence began.
Now why, in eight full pages of Christian stickers, most of them speaking out against sin, was there not a single one speaking out against domestic violence -- not even the one which cited Malachi 2:16, the clearest anti-domestic violence verse in the whole Bible? There were plenty of stickers of anti-abortion, anti-evolution, anti-divorce, anti-gay marriage, even anti-gambling... not even one anti-domestic violence. To find the anti-domestic violence slogans, I had to search on a site catering to atheists, agnostics, New Agers, and neo-pagans. This is the fruit of isolationist, fortress Christianity. I will not expect figs from a thornbush. If we want our fig trees to bear friut, we must ruthlessly root out the thorny brambles trying to take over the orchard.
