Come Out!

                            

Jesus said:"'I have chosen you out of the world.'"  John 15:19 (NRSV)

What does it mean to come out of the world?

Fundamentalists will tell you it is all about sex - coming out of the Whore of Babylon and coming out of Sodom.

This betrays their deep-seated phobias about sex.

And it is wrong.

Coming out of the world means denouncing the ways of the world - i.e. the brutality and materialism of our masters, the worship of money and status, the corruption and evil of the world.

God calls us out of this dog-eat-dog world of violence and domination in order to teach us the ways of Love.

And then He sends us back into the world as agents of Love.


[Scripture quotation (marked NRSV) are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission.  All rights reserved.]

Photo Credit: Crystian Cruz Flickr via Compfight cc