When I was a preteen I used to go to major league baseball games with my aunt and uncle. They lived in the Kansas City area and were die-hard Athletics fans. It was fun to tag along, learning from them the players’ names, what their strengths and weaknesses were, and which visiting teams posed the biggest threat to a KC win. They even showed me how to use a scorecard, which helped me focus on each batter and play as the innings rolled by.

I knew my aunt was an avid fan, but I never expected her to confront a stranger at one game who was sitting near us. What had he done to make her mad? He was listening to another sporting event, a football game I think, on his transistor radio, which he was holding up to one ear. My aunt thought it quite disloyal to the A’s for him to do this during one of their at-bats! And she told him so. As she was sputtering out her indignation, she tried to find an apt analogy. The best she could come up with was dancing. I remember her standing up and sputtering at him, “It’s like trying to dance to another tune!” I had no idea what she meant and I don’t think the man did either. But she was worked up about it. That was apparent.

Soon my embarrassment eased enough for me to enjoy the rest of the game. But I never forgot the incident. Now, some fifty years later, I think I better understand what my aunt was trying to say. She felt that he needed to pick a team and focus on its game, not on the dozens of other games playing simultaneously. To divide his attention like he was – physically sitting at the baseball game, but listening to a play-by-play account of a football match – meant he couldn’t fully attend to either one.

Many would argue that my aunt should have minded her own business. Who was she to call out this man, who paid his money for the baseball ticket the same as she did? What he chose to do once he was inside the baseball park was his own business. Wasn’t it? He thought so, and so did I. But perhaps her point about disloyalty is crucial, especially in the spiritual realm.

The apostle Paul didn’t seem to have any problem calling out believers who claimed a relationship with Jesus Christ and yet divided their loyalty (that belonged to Him) with other rival gods. Paul felt, like my aunt, that they should focus their full attention on their home team. I can hear the thunder in his voice as he writes to the Corinthian believers, “What do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God” (2 Corinthians 6:14-16). Focus people, he implores… Remember to whom you belong and act accordingly. Otherwise, you risk alienating yourself from God, the very One you say you want to serve.

In the verses that follow, Paul quotes from the Old Testament, bringing the same message that God gave to the Hebrews to the body of Christ. “As God has said, ‘I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.’  “Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you. I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty”’” (vv. 16-18).

In spite of this warning, Christians in North American church seem to be focusing more on making friends with the world than pleasing our Father. We have chosen to believe that grace means license and that there should be a way we can have our cake and eat it too. Rejection because of what we believe? Surely not! That’s for another time and place, isn’t it? Suffer and do things we don’t enjoy for the sake of our faith? That can’t be what God expects of us. We have freedom from stuff like that, don’t we? We want to project a new and improved version of Christianity that is attractive, approachable, and warm, not judgmental and narrow, as in the past. So, many individuals and pulpits have quit directly preaching the Gospel (even though Paul says in Romans 1:16 that it is the power of God for salvation), finding alternative ways to try to bring people to Christ that don’t include any reference to sin, hell, or accountability for what we have done with our lives.

Of course we want to approach sinners with compassion and love. But how effective have our seeker friendly services or our “friendship evangelism” efforts been in winning the lost? Since adopting this new approach conversions have not increased, as we’d hoped. Few people (relative to other times in history) are coming to Christ in our midst, even taking into account large attendance numbers at some mega-churches. In fact, more and more people in North America are abandoning faith altogether or converting to alternative religions like Islam and Mormonism.

Another problem with our new approach is that we seldom get beyond being nice to actually sharing the Good News with our friends. Why? Well, because that might offend them! And offense is a big no-no in the politically correct world in which we live. But look at how Jesus viewed popular acclaim and offending those who opposed God’s kingdom. He had no qualms about doing and saying what His Father wanted Him to, no matter what the reaction was among others around Him. He didn’t even care if He offended His own disciples, if it meant that He could help them see the truth. Somehow we have to recover His values if we want to effectively represent Him.

Our methods of evangelism aren’t the real issue, though. It’s just one symptom that demonstrates where we’re at. I’m afraid the description of the Laodicean church in Revelation 3 describes us pretty well.  We’re lukewarm towards our team. We don’t have an exclusive loyalty to the One who saved us. We’re “wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked” in God’s eyes even though we see ourselves as just the opposite. Jesus told them “Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent” (vv. 16-19).

We like to point our fingers at other people or things as the cause of our spiritual powerlessness – the liberals, our busy lives, our jobs, our family, the lure of Hollywood, or the godless school system, to name a few. But the truth is, we are responsible for our wretched state. We have everything we need to live fruitful spiritual lives. All of the resources of Christ are ours to appropriate, yet we refuse to give ourselves wholly to our new life in Christ. We’d rather pick and choose when we want to be “spiritual” and when we want to be just like anyone else, enjoying what the culture has to offer without having to worry about how it might affect our relationship with God.

Some days I wish the Christian calling wasn’t as demanding as it is. I’d like to relax and do the minimum and hope that God will come through anyway. But that’s not what Scripture teaches. As His disciple, I’m expected to press toward “the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14). I have to give myself to the process of discipleship as it is laid out in the New Testament.  Only through rigorous training will I become an effective and fruitful follower of Jesus Christ.

Jesus said we can’t serve two masters. Our loyalty to one will make us enemies of the other. We might not like that idea, but that’s the reality in the spiritual realm. Our loyalty to Him must be exclusive and complete. Instead of trying to figure out how close we can get to sin without jeopardizing our salvation we need to rethink the implications of being a follower of Jesus.

Dallas Willard has written an excellent book on discipleship called Renovation of the Heart. The subtitle is “Putting on the Character of Christ.” If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. In chapter one he writes: “Jesus did not send his students out to start governments or even churches as we know them today. They were, instead, to establish beachheads of his person, word, and power in the midst of a failing and futile humanity. They were to bring the presence of the kingdom and its King into every corner of human life simply by fully living in the kingdom with Him.”

It’s time for us to put the transistor radios down and focus on what is really before us: not a baseball game, but a struggle between the forces of light and darkness. If we want to make a difference in our godless culture, we need to repent of our double-mindedness and ask God to help us live fully for His glory and praise. “Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord Almighty” (Zechariah 4:6).

In 1792 Charles Wesley wrote about this struggle that we all face. Here are two verses from his hymn, “O for a Heart to Praise My God.”

O for a heart to praise my God, a heart from sin set free;

A heart that always feels Thy blood so freely shed for me.

A heart in every thought renewed and full of love divine;

Perfect and right and pure and good – a copy, Lord of Thine.

Trying to dance to another tune won’t work. As sons and daughters of the living God, we have the most important role ever given to mankind: to bring the presence of the King into every corner of human life. We can do it with His help. Let’s begin today.

Questions to ponder:

1. What distracts me from focusing on God’s kingdom? How can I turn this “radio frequency” off?
2. How serious am I about “putting on the character of Christ”?
3. How much time do I give to my Christian resources (like Scripture reading, prayer, worship, sharing my faith, fellowshipping with other believers, etc.) in comparison to temporal interests and pleasures?  If a choice has to be made between them, which one am I apt to sacrifice?