I want you to imagine for a moment a set of parents. Now these parents have an only child and because of this they are super protective. They are so protective that they refuse to have an oven in the house for fear of their child getting burned.
This child will grow up never knowing the joy of coming home to freshly baked cookies, a hot meal, or even a home-made open-faced turkey sandwich (I’m hungry, can you tell?). The child will also never learn to interact with an oven correctly. He will either become scared of the oven completely and never get near it (evil oven), burn himself until he learns how to use it correctly, or read on the Internet or ask a friend how to use an oven without getting burned. If the latter, he could then start an adventure that could lead to a wonderful relationship between himself and the “hot” oven. He doesn’t have to worship the oven, but it sure would help get some good hot food.
A major problem in Christianity today is we tend to shelter ourselves into a “Christian” lifestyle. We find ourselves listening to Christian music as we read our Christian book as we sit in our Christian bookstore. We try on different Christian shirts and buy Christian music and only go to Christian events. We stick a Jesus fish on our car that we will only take to the mechanic with the Jesus fish on his sign and get a bill with a Jesus fish on it as well.
We just avoid the “evil oven” all together because we have been told many times that it will burn us and we are scared or maybe we’ve been told “the devil lives there”.
It is important for a follower of Christ to be exposed to certain things in culture in order to learn to discern. If a disciple is always told not to listen to do something because it might “defile” them, then that disciple will never learn to hear the voice and conviction of God on his own. There is timing and maturity involved, but eventually we need to grow in our faith enough to know what it means to be IN the world but not OF it.
Like the girl mentioned in part 1, she was able to recognize her area of temptation and avoid it because of her love for God and desire to stay pure. She didn’t call a boycott of basements. She didn’t have people picket near the door. She didn’t tell everyone else they couldn’t go into their basements. She simple lived life in response to her love for God and that inspired girls around her to make wise decisions following in her example.
There are some good hot meals out there to enjoy, but make sure you use an oven-mitt before taking some of them out of the oven and definitely don’t go near the oven with a gas leak because the devil might live there.