It's cold here ... miserable cold. I've had to start wearing long sleeves to work. The highs barely break the 70's, and the lows drop way down into the upper 40's. I don't know how anyone lives in these cold climates.
Of course, most of you are saying, "Oh shut up!" Bear with me; I'm making a point.
I live at the northern edge of the Sonoran Desert. From mid-May to mid-October we average 93 days above 100°F. This year Phoenix had 105 days at or above the 100° mark, with a peak at 118°. Beyond that, from the first of April to the first of November we have an average high over 80° each day. In this climate, it is really easy to become used to warmth. In fact, it is a necessity if you are going to live here. My wife and I actually like it. We've grown accustomed to this heat. So for us, when it drops below 80°, we're headed toward "the dead of winter" -- "miserable cold". My point? One word: acclimated.
It's very easy to get acclimated. You immerse yourself in a place or a culture or some such. Before long the novelty wears off, the oddity is no more, and you're ... acclimated. Your comfortable with your surroundings. It is this very human phenomenon that accounts for a big problem today with Christians. We are acclimated. We live in our culture, immersed. We're accustomed to the sin, so much so that we begin to consider it not only "not sin", but normal. We develop tendencies like an equivalent divorce rate with our culture, even though the Bible is undeniably anti-divorce. We begin to not only accept fornication around us, but to defend it for ourselves. A couple of weeks ago, on a Christian radio station, they had people call in and explain if it's okay to live together before getting married. I was amazed at the number of people who called themselves Christians and defended sex before marriage. "How else are you going to know if you're compatible?" Women's Lib has taken the culture, so it has seeped into the Church. Gay pride has taken the culture, so it is has seeped into the Church. We have become those of whom Isaiah warned: "Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil" (Isa. 5:20).
How did this happen? We got acclimated. We immersed ourselves in our culture. We forgot the command: "Come out from their midst and be separate" (2 Cor 6:17). We invited the world into our churches without being cautious of the sin they would bring. We stood so silent when sin crept in all around us that sin is no longer an allowable topic in some churches. Like the frog in the pot, we became comfortable in water not our own, and when the heat was slowly turned up, we were unaware that we were getting cooked.
We are called to be a light on the hill. We are to "Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven" (Matt. 5:16). We are to be salt and light to the world. Instead, we have lost our savor and hidden our lights and, instead of supplying what our world lacks, we've joined in their loss.
Of course, 70° is not cold. When you're used to 100°, that 30° difference feels cold, but it's not cold. By the same token, much of what we've come to view as "normal" is not normal or, worse, not right. Moving from the "normal", the "popular", the "currently acceptable" to the biblical will also not "feel right". It will be a change. It might feel "cold". It isn't. But move we must. It is necessary to stand for what is true, for the biblical perspective, rather than the pop-culture.
It's not popular or pleasant to stand. In Scripture you won't find much in the way of "Onward Christian Soldiers", but you will find many times that it says, "Stand firm." We are not anticipating better times. We're expecting it to get so bad they will "mislead, if possible, even the elect" (Matt. 24:24). The people around us cannot afford to have us hanging around, knee deep in sin, lights covered. We need to recognize our acclimation and begin the difficult process of climbing out of it -- else our frog will be cooked.
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