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Os Guinness:

Faithful presence is not enough. It is merely the beginning.

Jesus was not merely present in the world, but far, far more. He was intensely active: he taught extensively, he healed countless people from all sorts of sickness and disease, he delivered from the domination of evil spirits, he drove out moneychangers from the temple, he raised people from the dead, he confronted hypocrisy, and he set his face toward Jerusalem and his active choice to die.

Like him, then, we must be not only present but active, and so dedicated to the world yet so dead to the world to which we are dedicated, that in some small way we too may strike a critical tension with the world that will be the source of the culture-shaping power that only the church can exhibit. The fact is that the principle is easy to say but hard to follow, for the pressures of the modern world are unrelenting.

So if we really wish to be agents of transforming engagement in our time, we have to be constantly asking Lenin’s questions: Who? Whom? Is the church shaping the culture, or is the culture shaping the church?

But those questions assume other questions that must come even before that. Do we know the world well enough to know how and where it is likely to be squeezing us into its mold? And do we know our faith well enough to know where the mold of our world will be beneficial and where it would be harmful?

In sum, we are to be as close as we can be to our Lord’s call to us to be in the world but not of it—a challenge that requires not only faithfulness and obedience, but discernment and the willingness to count the cost and say no to the world.

– from Renaissance: The Power of the Gospel However Dark the Times

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