Do you see yourself?

This book is kicking my butt and forcing me to repent. Notes:
Exerts from Chapter 6 of “Engaging the soul of youth culture” –Walt Mueller

Alienation/ Self-containment/ cultural Christians: a form of Christian alienation where we have established a distinctly separate Christian culture that runs parallel to the mainstream culture, and we assume that living in the parallel culture will shelter and protect us from the world. A sin in the eyes of Christ. Its sign is the barren fig tree (Mark 11:12-14), heavy with leaves for its own self-beautification, but sterile and without fruit. When Jesus saw it, he cursed it. He compares this lifestyle to that of the Pharisees who were preoccupied with keeping outward appearances and keeping away from those activities that would compromise their “purity”. Jesus said it’s the things that come from the heart that make a person unclean. (Mat 15:16-20). He made it clear that true righteousness consists of inward conformity to God’s will.

Accommodation- simply chooses to do as the world pleases or listening to the world more than to the Word. A Christian culture- claiming to be followers of Christ but the culture it represents is indistinguishable from the world it seeks, “to save”. In an effort to be influential, Christians have been trying to buy their own legitimacy from the surrounding culture by compromising the Christian world and life view.

Our call is infiltration and transformation, it’s the hardest of the three but it most mirrors the ministry of Jesus Christ and his will; it requires diligence, wisdom, and hard work.
“double refusal”: we refuse to become either so absorbed in the Word, that we escape into it and fail to let it confront the world, or so absorbed in the world, that we conform to it and fail to subject it to the judgment of the Word.
John 17. Jesus wants his followers to infiltrate the world, living in it as a transforming and redemptive presence, while maintaining their distinct identity; being spiritually distinct but not socially segregated.

As I was reading, I couldn’t help but feel convicted because I was choosing to follow the alienation route. Choosing to minimize my association with sinners and their world but that was the life of Christ, going in to their world. Being in the world but not of the world. Is it because I doubt God’s power to convert their soul or his power to keep my own? How are we to find a point to connect just as Christ did with those he converted if we are not willing to get in their midst and see what has their attention? We cannot alienate ourselves from the very ones we’re sent to convert.

Where do you stand?