Christians have a great propensity to compare. Particularly in a moral sense, we take the high ground in view of how we think we ‘compare’ with secular Britain around us: “They don't do this, but we Christians do”; “They do this, but we Christians do it better.” Even more damaging, is the Christian tendency to look inwards, and compare ourselves to ourselves: “He made a mistake which I would never make”; “Compared to him, I’m doing very well.”

This desire to always be sizing each other up is understandable, since the Bible has a lot to say about achieving goals in our pursuit of righteousness, and concerning our falling short of God’s standards. The problem as I see it though is that Christians are very good at seeing where we ‘fall short’ but the measuring stick we use to gauge our progress is often an historically, socially and secularly constructed Christian culture. In other words, what we expect of ourselves is simply a version of what we see others doing or not doing. In this case, our lives become a series of copy-cat motions with no meaning. I think we should ask ourselves if this is an accurate representation of what it means to be a believer in a British Christian community today?

A few years ago, I met an international Christian student from South America who came to study at a British University. One of the first things she noticed about the Christians she met at the university was their “unfriendliness in welcoming [her] as a fellow believer.” Furthermore, she was appalled at “the drunkenness, gossip and back-biting” that she witnessed in the Christian Union. Was our International friend simply demonstrating the unfortunate symptoms of culture shock? Maybe. More than this though, I think she was pinpointing the incompatibility of what scripture was saying against our own established Christian culture. She may have had in mind Bible passages such as Galatians 5:16–26 which talk of the acts of sinful nature as including discord, dissensions and drunkenness. Fair enough, but these three `Ds', appear alongside sexual immorality, orgies, and fits of hatred in the same passage — sins which in our British culture are much more frowned upon.

In fact, the global dimension that Christ demands of Christianity, that we “make disciples of all nations” (Matt 28:20 NIV) also has the advantageous side-effect that we in turn are challenged by people from other cultures. Any of you who have been on a year out abroad, or have lived or worked in a cross-cultural setting cannot have failed to notice aspects of the culture you visited which challenged your own notions of justice, morality and behaviour.

During my year out I was in Kenya for six months. I was caught by surprise when one week before I was to return to England when Daniel — my best friend and an African Christian — began sifting through my belongings as I was packing, taking things with a view to keeping them after I left. Was this theft? Was he showing a complete disregard for what I owned? Material items — my guitar, my shoes, my camera — were valuable to me and my natural instinct was to clutch closely to these objects. Was I just a victim of an unusual cultural problem? The miscommunication between our two Christian cultures existed because we had different notions of what was meant by individual rights of ownership and the value to be placed on material objects and things. Later that week I examined scripture regarding this question. Jesus Christ said to his disciples: “ If someone … wants your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.” (Matt 5:40 NIV) Also, the lifestyle of the early church is described in Acts 2 as a place where “All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.” The key themes of humility, selflessness and the danger of material wealth found in the New Testament underscore what I already knew: my Kenyan friend, coming from his culture, was hitting much closer to Biblical truth than I was in regards to our attitudes to material possessions. I did bring my guitar home with me, but I gave Daniel several other things which had originally been mine.

History is also a good gauge to measure our Christian culture by. As one example, we can view the moralists of the late 18th and early 19th Century in their fight to abolish slavery. In opposition were many who saw the abolition of slavery as a prerequisite to personal or national economic ruin since it undermined the lucrative trade of slaves and took away the cheap labour found in the plantations of the West Indies and North America. Shockingly, many who adhered to this latter view were Bible-believing Christians who justified the retention of slavery in cultural terms. They would often say, “we have always done it this way”, “slavery has existed since the beginning of time and must, therefore, be ordained by God”. More complex arguments were debated on scriptural texts particularly in reference to passages in Philemon and Colossians, which speak of the behaviour required of a slave and owner. In the end, it was an evangelical Christian called William Wilbeforce who spearheaded the abolition of slavery in British parliament. He was a man who saw beyond the transparency of measuring our circumstances by an established Christian culture. His goal was to apply the deeply ingrained biblical truths of freedom, liberty, submissiveness and peacemaking to the question of slavery.

Not many people today would want a return to the slavery of the eighteenth century. Indeed, its abolition is a piece of history which glows with justice and progress. Are there things about our Christian culture today which we justify incorrectly? Are there things which we blindly say “we have always done it this way” to, when actually we have no real knowledge of the underlying issue? What will future Christians think of us at the turn of the 21st Century in regards to how we dealt with issues such as holiness, materialism and scripture? Furthermore, what will they say when they view our stance on contemporary debates such as third world poverty, the environment, debt relief and abortion?

I began this article by talking of comparing. Comparison to one another is actually unbiblical. In his letter to the Romans, Paul explains: “You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgement on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgement do the same things.” (Romans 2:1 NIV) Measuring ourselves to the world, or to each other can only lead to a watering down of biblical truth. A helpful way to keep our Christian culture from becoming too fluid is to look outside our immediate environment and compare ourselves to fellow believers in foreign countries or in history. Here we may see different world-views which strike closer to the original intention of what God wrote in the scriptures. Really though, this is exactly the point: comparison of any kind within Christianity can only work if our uppermost goal is to measure ourselves against nothing less then the divine standards ordained by Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who said, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Dave Maclure