Unfortunately, biblical morality is viewed in these politically correct times as little more than the avoidance of so-called evils. God’s saints are seen as spiritual shrinking violets cowering in church corners from the pollution of today’s profane culture. We are supposedly party-poopers threatened by revelry. We are terrified at the thought of rock music blaring in our ears and tobacco smoke blown in our faces. Therefore, we continuously constrict ourselves in order to avoid all worldly corruption.

When our faith is viewed as a religion of rigidity and we as religionists obsessed with whittling down life to ever smaller but safer spheres, the church appears to the world as a diminutive place and we as a rather dwarfish people. Why should others desire to step out of the whole wide world into the midst of cloistered congregates in some closeted church? 

This perception of modern-day saints being so scared of sin that we fence ourselves off from all that is untoward is counterproductive to our winning of converts. It makes us appear to a sin-loving world as those who are always in frantic flight from any semblance of spirited living. 

If we are to be effective evangelists in our present-day world, we must convince others that our avoidance of sin is not a matter of cowardice, but of preference. Far from being frightened, we are fearlessly living our lives to the full. We are not living apprehensively, but abundantly! In Christ, we have found over and above all that we have ever hoped for or dreamed of. Emptying our arms of worldly things in order to embrace Him was merely ridding ourselves of temporal rubbish and gaining for ourselves incomprehensible and eternal riches!

“But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.” (Philippians 3:7-8 ESV)