Turning the world upside down

A few years ago the Christian music group Truth sang a song titled "Living Life Upside Down." The words were quite good, dealing with some of the issues in our contemporary culture that seems to no longer know right from wrong. In particular, this song addressed the issues of marital fidelity/divorce and abortion.

Here are the words of that song:

John has a new way of looking at life
He's tired of his job, of his kids, and his wife
He says the secret to his success was in leaving and finding himself
Now he's someone to somebody else
You say we've risen to a new age of truth
You're calling it a spiritually godly pursuit
But I say...

CHORUS
What if we've fallen to the bottom of a well
Thinking we've risen to the top of a mountain
What if we're knocking at the gates of hell
Thinking we're heaven-bound
What if we spent our lives thinking of ourselves
When we should have been thinking of each other
What if we reach up and touch the ground
To find we're living life upside-down

We've got a new plan for saving the earth
While unborn children are denied the right to birth
One baby's blessed, another cursed
Have we made this world better or worse
Now that the life of a tree comes first?
You say we've risen to a new age of light
You're telling me what used to be wrong is now right
But I say...

REPEAT CHORUS

Good words, but I wonder if part of our upside down world is the fact that we Christians are looking at the world and forgetting that Satan rules this world—not us. Is it so surprising that sin is rampant in the world of unbelievers? Is it a strange thing when people who don't recognize God undervalue the lives of others, and even their own lives?

Romans 1:28–32

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

This morning as I read the Bible I came across and interesting passage in Acts 17. Paul and Silas were in Thessalonica as they journeyed around sharing the gospel message with those who had not yet heard. Paul went into the local synagogue and for three weeks straight, he presented the scriptures to the Jews in the synagogue. He showed them that the long-awaited Messiah was Jesus Christ. Quite a few of the local Jews from the synagogue were persuaded and believed.

Within three weeks Paul had the local religious people in such an uproar that they incited a crowd to violence. The story from scripture continues here:

Acts 17:5-7   But the Jews were jealous, and taking some wicked men of the rabble, they formed a mob, set the city in an uproar, and attacked the house of Jason, seeking to bring them out to the crowd. And when they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city authorities, shouting, “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also, and Jason has received them, and they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.”

I found the crowd's accusation against Paul and Silas to be quite interesting. "These men who have turned the world upside down...."

I think this passage is showing us that we are not to look at the craziness of a debased world as being upside down—it is, in fact, the way we should expect the world to be. It is instead our job as Christians to turn the world upside down by pointing the way to Jesus Christ.

Evangelism is not always easy, but it is always necessary.