When good verses go bad

Have you ever heard someone quote a Bible verse that wasn’t actually a Bible verse? Like when a parent gets brave enough to walk into her teenage son’s room, takes a whiff, and manages to remind the son that the Bible tells us that “cleanliness is next to godliness” before passing out?

What about these?

“God helps those who help themselves.” Sorry, rugged, individualistic American Christian. It’s not in there.

“God never gives us more than we can handle.” Sorry, soft, consumeristic American Christian. You won’t find this one, either.

How about this one, quoted at a youth camp by a middle-schooler overwhelmed with how close he felt to his new camp buddies, and sad that the week was coming to an end? After wiping the snot from his nose, he took the mic and boldly proclaimed…

“It’s just like my favorite verse in the Bible: friends are friends forever if the Lord’s the Lord of them.” Yikes. That one isn’t even in The Message translation!

Here’s a link for those not familiar with where that line comes from. You’re welcome.

Sometimes, though, we can take a couple of verses and kind of meld them together in a weird “Bible study meets chemical lab” way, and the result sounds good, is true, and yet isn’t actually a verse in the Bible.

My favorite “science lab” verse? The command by Jesus that we are to be “in the world, but not of it.”

I realize that I just lost half my readership to Google for a few minutes, so to the four readers still here, I’d suggest using this time to get another cup of coffee. We’ll have lots to discuss once the others return.

Welcome back. Those of you who Googled in an attempt to find the verse already know that it’s not a verse, but it is Biblical. It’s important to establish that before I tell you what I really want to say. The truth in the “oft-quoted but not really a verse” verse comes from the prayer that Jesus prayed in John 17.

I have given them your word. The world hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I am not praying that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. I sanctify myself for them, so that they also may be sanctified by the truth. (‭‭John‬ ‭17‬:‭14‬-‭19‬ ‭CSB, emphasis mine)

The words are all there, as is the truth of the phrase. We really are to be in the world, but not of it. The problem is that we’ve gotten it backwards.

As believers, we’re to be in the world, but not of it. Unfortunately, too many of us are of the world, but not in it.

Need proof? Here’s an actual clip from an actual self-professed Christian at an actual prayer breakfast:

For too long – and now, in a more blatant way than I can remember – the church has practiced what I call “geographical evangelism.” We pull away from the world we’re supposed to reach in hopes that they will miss us, causing them to come find us in order to ask why we left. Of course, they rarely ever come looking for us.

One reason – and this will sting – is that they simply don’t miss us. That’s another post for another day, but if the world’s experience of the church is nothing but sour faces preaching about how bad the world is, then there’s actually not a lot to miss. Smiles and kindness are wonderful things that go a long way, even when the person with them is telling us hard things.

The second reason – and this will sting more – is that we sometimes aren’t any different from them. Too often, we’re living the same way, just in a different place.

Remember that clip? In it, we see someone joking about not having sex in the morning with her fiancé, so she can make it to a prayer breakfast on time, and then reminding him that they can be together later that night. I don’t know this person, so I don’t want to, nor can I, judge her heart, but it’s not hard to judge her words. She’s not in the world – she’s at a prayer breakfast secluded from most of the “bad” people – but she’s just like it. She’s of the world, but not in it. It’s the opposite of the message Jesus was praying over us in John 17.

The reason we get it backwards is that we miss the last part of His prayer: that we would be “sanctified with the truth.”

Sanctified means holy. Set apart. Different from.

We are supposed to be different from the world that we’re in. Not in a prideful, “I’m better than you are” way, but in a noticeable, “you seem to have something that I don’t, and I want to know more about it” way.

For too long, the church has been in the world and of it, or of the world but not in it. But a new day is dawning, and the Lion is roaring, and His roar is calling His followers to a life that is set apart without being far apart.

A life that is lived in the world without being of it.

Even if that’s not aa actual verse in the Bible. 😀

Facebook Comments

comments