Dear Christian, This World is Not Your Home

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These days it feels like you can’t get through your day without having succeeded in offending someone. There are so many ways this can be accomplished:

• Fat shaming
• Body shaming
• Ageism
• Sexism
• Ableism
• *Insert any number of phobias here

I am pretty sure I’ve offended someone now, because I left out their favorite way to be offended.

I got offended last week, too, when someone left several comments on a handful of my videos about my appearance. I was actually very surprised at how much it affected me.

I wasted an entire day on trying to get over it, and then recording several versions of a video in response to the comments – which, in the end, I decided not to upload.

An entire day wasted on what? My dented body image? That’s already starting to wrinkle and go grey?

I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why I didn’t feel comfortable uploading the video; but I’ve lived enough years to know that nothing good comes from not listening to that feeling – so I abandoned the idea.

Several days later it came to me.

Dear Christian, This World is Not Your Home

My rant about how the church needs to stop emphasizing body image (because now that mine had been dented, I suddenly started to care very much about that) was a perspective that was incredibly myopic.

And friends, this has become chronic in the body of Christ.

While the world is running around frantically calling out everyone who so much as whispers something negative about someone’s body, shape, addiction, trauma, age, ability, sexual orientation, nationality, and whatever other offensive thing we can say today…

The church is sadly taking it’s cues from the world.

What would happen if we remembered that this world isn’t our home; that there is another world that is far more real, that is of far greater importance than the one we can physically see, hear, taste, touch, and smell?

How would it change our perspective?

I will tell you how it changed mine.

A few days after abandoning the now embarrassing rant video, I was able to put my finger on what was wrong with it.

Her attacking my appearance should have been no more damaging to me than if my kid attacked the cardboard packaging from whatever it is I ordered online lately.

My body is just a box; and what’s truly valuable is not what is seen, but what is not seen.

And while I was all upset over something that will sooner or later be discarded and thrown in the ground, I was losing the plot.

I was perpetuating the worldly message of “Let’s not body shame.”

Dear sisters, we can’t afford to get entangled with this world to the point that we lose sight of what is truly valuable. We can’t afford to fall in love with the cardboard boxes of having to have a nice house with a modern interior design in a nice area of town.

We can’t afford to get caught up in body image; trying to achieve the ideal look so we can fit into the latest fashion.

We can’t afford to latch onto the woke messages of sexual orientation, race, ableism, ageism, and all the other “isms” so that the church appears more loving and caring.

All of these are cardboard boxes…and some of them completely contradict God’s Word.

When we know who we are – who we truly are, as blood-bought children of God – the things in this physical world lose their value and importance in our lives.

Suddenly, we don’t feel the need to enslave ourselves financially to have the house of our dreams, because having one that’s functional is just fine. We’re only borrowing it for a short time anyway.

Soon God will call us home to the mansion He’s built for us!

Suddenly, our body image isn’t nearly as fragile because we understand the greater value of the “hidden person of the heart”. This fleshly body will wrinkle, deform, and eventually die no matter what we do to it to keep it young.

That’s an effort in futility.

Suddenly, our message of “God’s wants to see you happy” and “Live your best life now” loses its glitter and glam because when you put fool’s gold next to actual gold you can really tell the difference.

God isn’t nearly as concerned about your happiness as much as He is about your holiness.

He isn’t as much concerned about your life now we much as He is about your eternity.

Having an eternal perspective changes everything for us, because it becomes the foundation on which we build our entire lives.

It changes how we think about ourselves, our past, our failures, our hurts, and our traumas; because we gain a whole new identity. We realize that none of this defines us. Christ defines us.

It changes how we function as a family because it places on us the obligation to raise our children with eternal values. Academics, though important, do not supersede a spiritual foundation. Academics without eternal values lead to arrogance and elevation of science above God’s Word.

It changes how we view society, because we no longer feel the need to live up to the arbitrary standards of success, class, culture, and image. We are free to find contentment at a standard that is functional.

I cannot express to you the level of freedom we will find when we embrace our spiritual citizenship!

The pressure to live up to the behemoth of today’s standards of success falls off of our shoulders and we are free.

Free to be who we are – Christ’s ambassadors

Free to go where He calls us – to all the world, making disciples of all people

Free to be a witness – because our life will starkly contrast to the lives those around us

Dear Christian, this world is not your home, the woke handbooks is not your Bible, and this culture’s image is not who you are!