drawing lines, setting boundaries

Do not be mismatched with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and lawlessness have in common? Or what partnership is there between light and darkness? What agreement does Christ have with Beliar? Or what does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God, as God said,

“I will live in them and walk among them,
and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people.
Therefore come out from them,
and be separate from them, says the Lord,
and touch nothing unclean;
then I will welcome you,
and I will be your father,
and you shall be my sons and daughters,
says the Lord Almighty.”

Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of flesh and of spirit, making holiness perfect in the fear of God.

2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1; NRSVue

These are no ordinary times. And the stress level is often out the window, or so it seems to me.

I am against what used to be ecclesial “second degree separation.” The proponents themselves were imagined purists who were not as much about the gospel, but about a certain code of living which they surely would have said is connected to the gospel. Simply stated, it was the idea that even if they could have fellowship with a certain church or denomination, if that church or denomination happened to have fellowship with another church or denomination not approved by them, then you could no longer have fellowship with them. Usually if not always this separation was really not about faithfulness to Christ, but at least more about holding strictly to one’s interpretation and faith statement so that for all practical purposes, it was equal to God’s word. No doubt that still goes on today.

But what we’re seeing in the church now is something more akin to blatant out and out idolatry. It comes with the idea that a nation is going down the tubes and we need someone we can depend on to fix it. And they’ve found their someone and are more or less in lockstep with that. What this amounts to ends up being what Paul was warning about above. Paul’s words have nothing to do with befriending and being genuine friends of unbelievers. Rather it has to do with what amounts to idolatry, being yoked with unbelievers in a pursuit that is not of God, not of Christ, even in the spirit of the antichrist.

I hardly think we’ll have to draw lines and set boundaries, because these folks will do that on their own since they are embracing such idolatry even in the name of Christ. We have to be careful not to be yoked with them, not to have anything to do with their error. At the same time, yes, this can get complicated. Not so much in a church setting. If for instance, there’s a church heavy into something national and political which looks to the nation as their guarantor of not just religious liberty, which is a legitimate concern (along with Muslims, Jews, etc.), but want to have what amounts to rule of a pluralistic state, then such a church or so-called Christian group has lost its way and is not faithful to Christ. When it comes to family or friends who are caught up in such churches, that’s another matter. We don’t want to separate, but neither can we condone what they have embraced, or are more or less complicit in.

This is a time when lines must be drawn, boundaries set.