pearliegates: Citizens of two worlds

The sermon this morning was on 1 Cor 6:1-8 about lawsuits against believers. The preacher did not much talk about lawsuits per se, but about how Paul admonished them as being too caught up in silly lawsuits when there are more important things around them.

One point which I found interesting was when he gave a brief introduction on the Corinthian context. He said the Corinthian church was a church that was reflecting the world in many ways.

This is also true he says, in any churches at any place at any time. Churches reflect the world and context they are in and at the times they are in.

This reminds me of what NT Wright has been writing about, the kingdom of God which is already now with us. We are both the citizens of the country we are in and citizens of the kingdom of God. We behave like most citizens of the country and we must also behave like children of God.

How do we do that? How do we be loyal to both and yet not betray either?

Interestingly, in the recent blog post by Roger Olson, he was against putting up flags of the country in the church. I never thought of that, since I have never seen that done here before. At first, I wondered what was wrong with that.

But he says there are two reasons why it is not right, one for the sake of our allegiance to God, in that the flag may symbolise one's highest loyalty even above Jesus Christ and two for the sake of the flag, one would be flying it in submission to God, and apparently a flag cannot be flown in submission.

I know Matt 6:24 or Luke 16:13 is about choosing between God or money as master but the first portion sounds relevant here, does it?