Peppermint-Filled Pinatas

I just finished reading Eric Bryant's new book peppermint-filled pinatas. Eric is on staff with Erwin McManus over at Mosaic and this book really challenged me to love people better. I think it's easy for me to befriend those who are most like me, those who have the same values as me, the same level of education as me, and the same religion as me.

This has become increasingly evident in my life since we move to GR. I park my car at night and my headlights shine into the park where homeless men are sleeping. We get knocks on our door from people asking for money, and stopped in the street for the same thing. It is so easy for me to get upset...to fear, to assume the worst about these people in this horrible situation of homelessness. I don't want to be afraid of diversity - I want to engage the world around me...and, to be completely honest, I am not sure what that means for me at this point in my life.

Some thoughts that really jumped out at me:

• Some of our churches have so consistently become a refuge for Christians from the world that we fail to become communities that go into the world, or even communities where seekers feel free to come and explore the possibility of a God who loves them and has a plan for their lives.


• We've even created our own language that now requires translation: Christianese. our isolation from the world fails to communicate God's concern for those around us but instead communicates that we do not want others in our lives who do not know Christ.


• Too often we require others to come to us to find God rather than allowing what God does among us to spill over into the lives of those who have not been with us in that "one place."


• 1 John 1:15-16 says, "Do not love the world or anything in the world. If you love the world, love for the Father is not in you. For everything in the world - the cravings of sinful people, the lust of their eyes and their boasting of what they have and do - comes not from the Father but from the world." We should apply this verse to how we live our lives, not to where to live. Our character and actions should be what sets us apart - not our zip code.


• In our attempts to become holy or "set apart," we have mistaken a call for "living with a different standard" with "living in a different place that has a different standard."


• We want to live in an environment where the laws or policies enforce our beliefs and morality rather than engaging a lost and broken world where they live.


• And if we are to be "set apart" to be "apostles," in the broad sense of people who are "sent out," then we are to be "set apart" in how we live, and we are "sent out" to the world. Too often we reverse these two concepts. We live away from the world physically, but our behavior matches that of the world.