Does the Bible Say That Christians Should Be Weird?

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There are two ways to read Revelation: as prophecies about a time coming in the future or an actual seven-year period in the future where an actual antichrist and an actual false prophet will reign. There will be a time during that seven-year period when God says to his people, “Get out of Babylon, I’m about to destroy it,” and we will literally flee the premises.

There’s another important way to read Revelation, though, and that is to read it as descriptions of forces that are already at work in the world now. The spirit of the antichrist is already here, John tells us elsewhere (1 John 2:18). I believe both readings are correct, because the Great Tribulation is just an intensification of the age we’re already living in.  So the command in Revelation 18:4 is for us now too: “Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues ...” 

Does that mean we should all flee this wicked world and live in communes? No, because in Jeremiah 29:7, God tells exiles in literal Babylon, “Build houses, live in them; plant gardens ... seek the welfare of the city [Babylon] where I have sent you into exile.” The Apostle Peter essentially repeats that same instruction in his first epistle to the church, 1 Peter, telling the believers in Babylon to “stay put, be a witness, and make a difference.”

We have two seemingly opposite instructions: Revelation 18:4, which says, “Come out of her, my people,” and  Jeremiah 29:7, which says, “Settle in and seek the city’s welfare.” 

Is this a contradiction?

Whenever you see an apparent contradiction in the Bible, that’s usually the place you’ll find wisdom. What this means is that we are to live in Babylon, deeply integrated into life here but distinct from her sins and her man-centered ways. 

While Revelation 18 may be describing a unique event at the end of history, this “be ye separate” principle is all throughout Scripture. Some of the more prominent, for instance: 

• “You shall be holy to me, for I the Lord am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine.” (Leviticus 20:26)
• “Depart, depart, go out from there; touch no unclean thing; go out from the midst of her; purify yourselves, you who bear the vessels of the Lord.” (Isaiah 52:11)
• “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?” (2 Corinthians 6:14) 
• “You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” (James 4:4)

Christians always tend to navigate toward one of two extremes. For some people, the “come out from among them and be ye separate” thing is what they do. This was a key verse, by the way, in my Christian high school. I heard so many sermons on that verse. It’s like the pastor, if he didn’t know what to preach, just went back to this verse. “Christians should be different” was our watchword. 

And it made us weird. We didn’t dress like the world. Our dress code was straight out of “Little House on the Prairie,” with an occasional fashion flare that we picked up from “The Brady Bunch.”

As boys, we wore our hair short, even though the style for boys back in the ‘80s was long and wavy. And we certainly didn’t have beards. Sure, in all the pictures of Jesus in our KJV Bibles, he had long hair and a beard, but we figured that those pictures were drawn by liberals because only liberals like art. 

We didn’t get tattoos or wear earrings, because only gangs and pop stars did that—including the lead singer of Wham!, and you didn’t want to be like him. 

We didn’t dance because dancing was the devil’s foreplay. We didn’t listen to rock music because that would make you want to dance, and we all know where dancing led. We were even forbidden to listen to Christian rock, because Christian rock was mixing God’s message with Babylon’s rhythms, like putting mustard on a turd. If the beat gets to your feet before the lyrics get to your heart, it’s sin. Plus, you never know what Satanists, atheists, and sneaky liberals had back-masked into your music. (If you don’t know what back-masking is, have fun looking that one up.)

I’m not making any of this up. These are literal things I heard dozens of times—although my dad recently asked me to point out that these were not the things he and my mom taught me, but things my Christian school emphasized. 

“Come out from among them, and be ye separate” was the command, and we took it seriously. Social weirdness was proof of godliness.

There are others of you, though, who aren’t anywhere near that. You’ve deeply integrated your life here. You struggle with the other verse; your lives bear no virtual distinction from Babylon at all.

Your values in your job are Babylon’s values. Your goals for retirement are the same as Babylon’s goals. Your social media behavior and posts are shaped more by CNN, Fox News, or the Daily Wire than they are the epistles of Paul. You don’t challenge the world with your online presence; you mirror it. Your approach to relationships and romance is more influenced by Taylor Swift than the Holy Scriptures. To be clear, I’m not hating on Taylor. I’m a low-key Swiftie … but it’s problematic if you know her stuff better than the Bible.

Curious if that’s you? Let’s play a little game to prove it. Finish the lyric:

“‘Cause baby now we’ve got ...” 

Yeah, I heard you, even from over here. “Bad blood.” 

“I knew you were trouble ...”

You got it again, didn’t you? “When you walked i-i-i-i-i-n. And maybe you’re saying, “I only know that song because of the weird screaming goat remix.” Maybe. But I’m not sure if that’s better.

“Why can’t you see-ee-ee ...”

Three for three, I’m willing to bet. “You belong to me.” 

Okay, so you know Taylor’s “wisdom” about love and relationships. How about the Bible’s? Try to finish these:

1 John 3:16: “By this we know love, that ... ” 

John literally says, “I’m gonna tell you what love is.” And you don’t know the verse? C’mon. Here it is: “… that he laid down his life for us, and thus we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.”

Ephesians 5:25, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, to ...” 

Uh oh. This one’s even tougher. But just as relevant: Paul is telling men how to love their wives. Seems pretty important to get this one right. Here’s the other half: “ … make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word.”

Last one: 

Colossians 3:14, “And above all these put on love, which …” 

I know at this point you’re thinking, “Maybe if we just set all of these to music, they’d be easier. Fair point. But, you know, that is a thing. Anyway, here’s the punchline of that verse: “… binds everything together in perfect harmony.”

Maybe you’re a little bit more like Babylon than you think. 

In his book, The City of God, St. Augustine said that Christians, citizens of the kingdom of God, should be most distinguishable from the world around them in three primary areas: money, power, and sex. If you want to know if someone’s really distinct from Babylon, these are the three areas to look at.

The City of Man, he says, sees money as a tool for acquisition and self-promotion. Get all you can, keep all you can, spend all you can. Give a little so you look good, but otherwise, it’s for you! The Christian believes money is a stewardship from God to bless others and advance his kingdom. 

The City of Man says power is to be grasped and leveraged for yourself. The Christian, by contrast, believes power is something God entrusts to us to serve and build up others. You’re evaluated, in God’s eyes, not by how high you climb, but by how high you lift up others.

The City of Man says sex is whatever you want it to be: You write your own rules, and if it works for you, it can’t be wrong. The Christian says sex is a gift from God to be honored within his design. For the Christian, sex is about loving self-giving more than stingy self-gratification.

As Tim Keller notes: “Roman society was stingy with its money and promiscuous with its bodies. They gave nobody their money and practically gave everybody their body. By contrast, the Christians came along and gave practically nobody their body and they gave practically everybody their money.”

You’re supposed to be different from the world, not because you don’t have earrings or tattoos, or because you wear denim skirts and culottes (again, look it up). Your whole life is supposed to scream that you’re from somewhere else! People should look at you and say, “You ain’t really from here,” because you’re so out of sync with the rhythms of Babylon.

Picture a huge marching band at halftime—every single person moving in perfect sync, lockstep motion, but then you see one guy in the middle doing his own thing. He’s got the same uniform as everyone else, but he’s moving completely differently. When everybody goes left, he goes right. When they duck, he jumps. When they stand still, he shakes. He looks totally out of rhythm, like he can’t keep beat—until you notice he’s wearing AirPods and listening to a local radio station playing, “I Don’t Wanna Wait” by David Guetta and OneRepublic. Turns out he’s perfectly in rhythm, he’s just tuned into a different conductor. 

That’s the Christian life. To the world, we look odd, even out of step, but we’re actually just watching another conductor. We’re perfectly in rhythm with the music of another City.

J.D. Greear is the pastor of The Summit Church, in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. He hosts Summit Life, a 30-minute daily radio broadcast and weekly TV program as well as the Ask the Pastor podcast. Pastor J.D. Greear has authored many books, most notably Gospel, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart, and Gaining by Losing. 
Pastor J.D. completed his Ph.D. in Theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Chick-fil-A, serves as a Council member for The Gospel Coalition, and recently served as the 62nd president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Pastor J.D. and his wife Veronica are raising four awesome kids.

This article originally appeared on Christianity.com. For more faith-building resources, visit Christianity.com.