Alternative lifestyles.

When I use that phrase, what comes to mind? Perhaps someone who creates a belief system out of a mishmash of ideas? What about someone who embraces sexual promiscuity or rejects family life and the idea that marriage and children are a good thing? Or maybe you think about someone who organizes their life around a certain drug culture, or even living in a commune.

The word “alternative” suggests something unconventional—and that most people don’t live that way. Alternative is only truly the alternate if it’s in opposition to something—namely, a “mainstream.” 

But many of the things I called “alternative” aren’t that alternative anymore. Some of them are becoming increasingly mainstream.

With that in mind, I’d like to suggest that Christlikeness is the new alternative lifestyle.

There was a time when calling yourself a Christian was quite socially acceptable. And yes, some of that still exists. Increasingly, however, it is an unconventional way to live.

Writing to the believers in Philippi, Paul said they lived in a “warped and crooked generation.” But the believers were to be different: “Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life” (Philippians 2:15-16).

Tim Keller remembers a woman who went to church for the first time. She didn’t used to think that Christianity was credible. But as she looked at the world around her, she figured that the alternatives were becoming less credible!*

Can I get an Amen?

Our world is filled with choices and alternatives. Choices and alternatives about how to live. Each and every day choose the one path which radiates grace and truth. “Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life.”

Notes and extra content:

-“The new alternative lifestyle: Christlikeness.” Sermon. Click here.
-*Timothy Keller, Hidden Christmas (New York: Penguin, 2016), 85.
-Bible quotes are from the NIV.