Don't hang your identity on being counter-cultural.
It’s better when good things become mainstream.
If something is good and right, it’s best when everyone knows this and it’s not substantially controversial.
Opposing things hurts.
There is a lot that is horribly wrong with the world, and a lot of fights that have to be fought. There are many lives in the balance (and other things). But the point isn’t the fight, and it’s not being outside the mainstream.
The point is the values and the people.
Serve your values, and your people. Fighting is a means. It is necessary. But it is not an end in itself. And you can serve your values and people best by looking for ways to serve them - and when that is fighting, to fight, and when that is building, to build.
When people make the fighting an end in itself, bad things happen.
so many christians put all these rules into religion
when Jesus was the man who broke all of them. he broke basically every single religious law there was, so i don’t understand why there are so many rules to Christianity. if we all called to be Christ like. Jesus was counter cultural, so i should be too.
Counter Culture Christians
Message: Perseverance pt.1
Series: Life
Stand up and Persevere in Holiness
When you begin to follow Jesus in the way you live your life, you soon find that you are standing in a different direction from the prevailing culture around you. That’s why Paul says of living a life of worship, that we must, “not conform to the pattern of this world” (Rom 12:2). The result of pursuing holiness and Christ like character and conviction in our lives is that we often look counter to the culture in many aspects of our lives.
Most of us (except for the few true weirdos amongst us…er, I mean unique) prefer usually NOT to stand out from the crowd. ”Counter-cultural” does not sound like a very positive description to most of us. But, I want to encourage you as a follower of Jesus Christ not only to accept that living for Jesus will often make you seem different, but to embrace it as a powerful witness for Him.
Do not fear looking and feeling different from the culture around you. If following Jesus means that you do things in ways that seem weird, dumb, unnecessary, old fashioned, stupid to the world - own it and know that it often thought the same of Jesus.
“You went on a trip with your girlfriend/boyfriend and you stayed in different hotel rooms??? Why they heck would you do that? What a waste of money? And what’s that you say…you’ve never slept with him/her? Wait you’re actually thinking about marrying them without seeing if you are sexually compatible? What if she/he is a lame duck in bed??? You wouldn’t buy a car without taking it for a test drive would you?”
“Wait, you got a new computer and you PAID for MS Office?! Like you actually bought the software…with your own money? Don’t tell me you actually buy your music and movies too? Are you dumb? Don’t realize you can just download all that stuff for free?”
“So you’re telling me that you actually believe that book is literally The Word of God? You’d actually do something or believe something just because a book written thousands of years ago says so - even in this day and age?”
“Wait, so you were playing basketball, and you actually admitted that the ball went out of bounds off of you? Haha. Who does that?!”
Who does that? We do that. Followers of Jesus Christ do that - not because we think that God will love us less if we don’t, but because we believe it is better to live like Jesus than any other way. We believe that living for His pleasure is more satisfying and more life-giving them any sexual escapade, money savings or notches in the win-column could ever be.
If pursuing and persevering in the character and conviction of Jesus Christ often makes us counter-cultural, than let’s just own it and lean into that. It’s in the contrast, that the difference between God’s way and this world’s can be clearly seen.
