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Citizens of The Kingdom???

I've been reading a bit of Christian History...specifically about Charlemagne who was crowned as the first Holy Roman Emperor on Christmas Day, 800 a.d.  It's a fascinating read of a time when Church and Culture were as close as they could be.  A lot of Christians wished it could be true today, but once your realize what took place one cannot help but realize that it's a vision that is clearly not possible - simply because it fails to understand how human nature seeks a selfish end.

 Christianity recognized a power to rule, but it was not a power to serve upwardly, but a power that sought to rule from above.   A power to rule "over" rather than "under".  The result was a culture - although steeped in the church - that was using power to control, rather than power to serve.  It's been an interesting read and lesson to learn, but it creates a question:

 How do we then - as Christians - live within culture as citizens of the Kingdom?

 Increasingly so, the culture has become more secular, even to the point of alienation from many aspects of Christianity's values.  We can't expect culture to embrace values it does not own.  But we must not embrace values that we know will ultimately ruin us and/or those around us.  

 In an early Christian letter known as the Epistle of Diognetus (130 a.d.), Diognetus talks to his Christian audience about the push/pull of living for Christ in the Roman world - a world which was antagonistic to all things Christian.  He tells them to live Christ in the midst of their neighbors and love them:

 "Christians dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners.  As Citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners.  Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers...They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven.  They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same surpass the laws by their lives."

 I've been thinking about the Christians being expelled from their countries in the middle east - simply because they are Christians.  Since we live in a nation that is still allowing freedom for our faith we don't face what our brothers and sisters in Muslim countries are going through.  Yet be sure of this, we still must live as Citizens of the Kingdom first.  We must not be seduced by the thought that our political freedoms release us from living out lives that seek Christ first in all that we do.

 Peace


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