Soul of Christ, Sanctify Me
Philip Stopford
Growing up in an evangelical Southern Church, I was taught the importance of living a sanctified life. My faith, and the faith of my peers was largely weighed by the merit of our “differentness” from the world around us. It was an era of songs like “Jesus Freak,” a time of youth group leaders telling us how “If people think you’re weird for going to church, then you’re doing it right!”
The process of sanctification in a community like this meant, essentially, a journey that led further further into a strange sort of insulation from the realities of the world. Kids were only allowed on Godtube (yes, that’s real), movies had to pass muster with whatever Christian website was reviewing movies for Godliness (also real), and, essentially, if it wasn’t explicitly our brand of Christian, it was out.
Naturally, growing up this way, it was sometimes hard to connect with people outside of the church. However, this is to be expected – to be Christian was to be different, and to be different was to be persecuted.
Or so the new adage went.
Looking back, I find it interesting how this sanctification process is almost exclusively external. Children are put into private schools that only espouse the exact same brand of Christendom; Harry Potter is banned because kids might get into witchcraft; Only Christian Music is allowed in the home. All of this is just environmental manipulation. It is covering the world with pillows, not putting on the armor of God.
I think the instinct to manipulate our environments to try to make ourselves feel sancitified is a natural impulse. It’s like losing weight – I can throw all of the sweets out of the pantry and stock the fridge with veggies, but unless I’ve done the internal work of changing my relationship with food, the buffet line is still gonna get me when I inevitably venture out of the safe little sweets-free zone of my kitchen.
For me, it comes down to this: Sanctification is a matter of how you act within your environment, not the environment you’ve made for yourself.
I might even go so far as to say it is antithetical to a life of Christ-like ministry to live in such a white-washed, sterile environment. The ministry of Jesus was intentionally in and amongst the all that could be called dirty or messy or impure in the world.
To love as he did is not only to deny those human impulses that are false, but to accept and love all the messiness that being human entails – in ourselves and others.
Andy Eaton
Director of Music
First Presbyterian Church