In the current context, the greater our separation from the world, the better.
Our world is incapable of turning. It is utterly impossible to promote genuine righteousness in America today. The society as a whole cannot recognize it. This is the meaning of “perverted” — so twisted and corrupt that it cannot be straightened. It must be destroyed. What happens to the people is not the right question; the standard of the Word is the point of reference.
Think about all the things I’ve taught about what it means to walk in holiness unto the Lord. If there is any way in which I’m on the right track, then we should be utterly alien to most Americans. They should find us generally annoying. America today is in the same place as Jews when Jesus walked the earth: So completely removed from divine revelation that they are incapable of recognizing what God actually requires.
I’m referring to the so-called “conservative” patriotic American folks. The liberal ones are even worse. But the conservative American society is the enemy of biblical righteousness precisely because it is a counterfeit insisting that their values define Jesus.
Nobody is suggesting we have to hate the common patriotic American or any other sinner. We should pity them the way Jesus pitied His own nation. We should relentlessly call them to righteousness, but they aren’t the enemy. We know who the Enemy is.
Pretend for the moment we had complete legal freedom to operate as we believe we are called by the Word. We would immediately separate into our tribal covenant enclaves and keep the world out of our communities. Not our public worship, but we would keep them out of our homes for the most part. We would not allow TVs, radios and would carefully restrict Internet access. We would not have cellphones inside the community. Not to keep people in, but our restriction would be to keep the worldliness out.
We would never let our children experience the sinful world until they were old enough to discern it for what it is. They would already be steeled against the temptations of the fleshly and the material. They would first have tasted mysticism and the heart-led way. God forbid we should expose them to the filth of the world directly until they are ready. They would certainly know about the world, but not have tasted it before they can discern it.
The whole point is to make the world culturally distasteful to us. There should be no opportunity for this kind of scandal to happen. Our daughters should not be accessible that way. We need a different set of social boundaries that keep young females away from non-family males. Obviously Hillsong is not a covenant community where male leadership can be treated as “family.” But sadly, they are a model for a major sector of what churches look like.
We would be careful to seek out market opportunities with our own first. We would be reaching out to other like communities to see what they had to offer, and try to keep everything possible in-house, as it were. We would demand that outsiders recognize our peculiarities before doing business with them. God forbid we should allow our marriageable young folks from having significant social contact with the outside, and we would restrict our own contact to protect our moral boundaries.
Do you see why the law code aspect of the Covenant is so important? We cannot mandate spiritual birth; no human agency is capable of making it happen for anyone. It is entirely the initiative and power of God. So we carefully build a structure of life that does mandate the things God says we should do. This brings people as close to the truth as they will ever find without spiritual birth, and it will empower those who have it.
So what can we actually do now? That’s between God and you. There are generalities for most of us living in the USA, but the bottom line is you walking by your convictions. Pray for the Spirit to coalesce a community of faith that includes you. Pray that He will build His church using us.
