And you shall know them by the music they play...

...and you shall hasten to pass their radio station!

Seriously though, let's talk about this whole idea of Christians being "separate" and "not conformed" to the world.  How are we really supposed to be different?

In the culture I grew up in, there were a lot of "Do's & Don'ts" that supposedly marked us as different from the secular culture.  These things included such things as: the clothes we wore, the way we cut our hair, the rock music we did not listen to, the movies we did not go to, the alcohol we did not drink, etc, etc.  We were taught that by refraining from all these things, we could rest assured that any unbeliever on the street could identify us as Christians, and might even approach us asking how they could be like us.  Well, I must have failed miserably, cause I never had any of those worldly scumbags come up and ask how to be as good as I was.  Or at least, thats what I thought they were in relation to me...

Nowadays I know that culture by the term Legalism, and it causes the hair on the back of my neck to bristle.  And I have moved farther past it than some of my friends, who still hold a fair amount of resentment.  I often find myself in lively discussions about it.

So, how IS the world supposed to know we are different?  Well, Paul told the Galations "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control."  There's nothing there about forbidding your women to wear pants, or insisting that you only read from the King James Version of the Bible.  There's nothing about wearing a tie to church, or cutting your hair so it doesn't touch your collar.  Perhaps it does imply that you should wear a WWJD bracelet, but that may be reading into it too much.

Now, the way I understand that, I could wear the same clothes as "the world", use the same words as "the world", play the same music, drink the same beer (perhaps in less quantity), and go the same places as "the world" and yet, by simply loving them, still be radically different.  If I wanted to be really super different, I would also spread joy and peace, and be patient and kind, and good, and so on.

So what's my point?  Well, I'm glad you asked!  See, at my church we've been talking about Law and Grace, and all this time I've been thinking about Legalism, and now it all comes together.  The Legalism I hated growing up was simply Pharisees around me making up things to add to the Law, things they knew they could keep.  Legalism is an easy way to be "different" from the world, because you simply make up rules that might be inconvenient or awkward, but are fairly easily kept.  But in the end, it doesn't matter if your Law comes from the Old Testament or the old traditions of your religious culture- they have nothing to do with how you are identified as a follower of Christ! 
Now, here comes the kicker.  These markers that identify a believer are not things we could have made up, nor would we have.  These are not things we can consistently do in our own strength.  They indicate our connection to Christ because they require our connection to a source of love and joy and peace much greater than our own.  In order to exhibit any of these, we require serious transformation and regeneration by the indwelling of the Spirit.

Maybe that's why they're called fruit of the spirit....