Engaging Culture

Well, I have a few minutes before my house is filled with excited single teachers for whats been named, "Jack Bauer" night. They come over every Tuesday night to watch 24 with my parents. Its been so amazing being back home for a couple weeks. I can't even explain how liberating its been. I think I reached a place at school where I just let myself get so busy and somewhat cynical about being there. Time away has been good. I've had tons of time to reflect on what exactly I'm doing and why. I'm reading through Romans and its been phenomonal (sp?). To read the words of Paul to the struggling Romans. I feel like I am right there with them sometimes. I've become so concerned with meeting the invisible expectations of school, church, ministry, and spirituality that I lost sight of what it was all about. I'm at Bible College but that doesn't mean I'm perfect or even that I have to pretend I am. Its liberating to remember that. As I've been able to look back over the semester I've seen how little by little, I let my passions slip by. Somewhere along the line I became apathetic, I turned down the volume of my heart beat for the lost and broken so much that I stopped hearing it at all. I stopped seeking hope, I stopped pursuing, I stopped feeling for those around me. But over the last couple weeks I've been thinking again about the people around me. I've noticed things about them, how they react, what they value,etc. I have this goal of being a student of people, and in talking to my mom about it I realized that though I strive for it to be a good thing, there is also a flip side. For, in being a student of people, it can quickly become being a judge of people, silently condemning them with my secret thoughts and assumptions. Being a student of people can easily be born out of selfish reasons, corrupt motives. I don't want to be a student of people for my sake and I don't want it to become about the people themselves or meeting their needs either. Though both are great things, I think they remain great only if they stream from a river that flows to and from the heart of God for His glory. I don't want to serve those around me to serve them, I want to serve them because I am ultimately serving Christ. I see all this in the Apostle Paul in Acts 17. He speaks of becoming all things to all people, he engaged and studied the culture of the region he was in. His reason? So that he could affectively proclaim the message of the truth of God to the people. I want to engage my culture in such a way. I don't want to withdraw from it, I don't want to integrate into it, but I want to engage it and be a student of my culture and the people in it.
1 Corinthians 9:19 "This means I am not bound to obey people just because they pay me, yet I have become a servant of everyone so that I can bring them to Christ..."