Corporate Separation

 

We're all familiar -- or think we are -- with the concept of individual, spiritual "separation" from the world.  We think of it as holding to the Christian worldview, to the Gospel, and to practicing Christian ethics -- individually.  Even when we think of the believers as a group, we continue to think of our group as composed of individuals practicing the views, teaching, and ethics just mentioned.  However, if we move on to viewing the church, the Body of Christ, in more corporate terms, as we should, then we have to ask what the look and feel of this corporate "separation" really is.  Does it appear to be a sub-culture within the general culture?  Are we ready for it to look this way?

Now some bodies of believers are strong on corporate separation.  Some of us from those backgrounds may be quite familiar with the look and feel of such environments.  In fact, the overthrow of that kind, type, or degree of "separation" may have been important for us, since that old "separation" really could have been overly restrictive, legalistic, or introverted, performing little outreach to the unbelieving world, and also was likely not aware of improvements in doctrine and devotion that could be learned from other Christian environments.  "Separation" can definitely go wrong.

But, I suggest that however much we seek to jump out of those kinds of environments, the need for Scriptural separation will always come back, simply because the corporate nature of Christianity requires it.  The wheat and the tares remain visibly distinct throughout this age.

The question in my own mind really is this:  Will losing our corporate, and to a degree "separate," Christian culture result in frittering away our patrimony?  Is losing our corporate culture (rather than our doctrinal profession) the first step in group apostasy?  I mean by this, not necessarily individual apostasy, but the disintegration of our corporate being and testimony.

Preserving cultural "separation" from the world can preserve a Christian profession, whether it's dead or alive.  We know this can happen and therefore we may object to attaching significance to "separation," because we don't want our sub-culture to preserve something dead, or to restrict legitimate Christian freedom.  But, I strongly suggest, even the best Christian sub-cultures that are alive require separation, too!

Once this is seen, it's also not hard to realize that maintaining a corporate testimony that by nature must in some manner be "separate," may, at certain times and in certain points, set certain limits on our liberty.  This is a delicate subject requiring great discrimination, but is clearly a subject addressed in Scripture.  See Paul's discussions about eating meat dedicated to idols (Rom 14-15).  This teaching, as to its inner principles, applies to more than just food and drink, and must even apply as much to our external testimony to the world as it does to our inward behavior in the church.