2005’s Thank You For Smoking may be my favorite film of all time. The movie stars Aaron Eckhart as Nick Naylor, a divorced dad and lobbyist for the tobacco industry who is navigating a shaky path of moral relativism as he attempts to raise his son, Joey. Much like its protagonist, the film itself never fully passes judgment on Nick, but rather presents his point of view and allows audiences to decide for themselves. Nick’s philosophy of life becomes clear when he takes his son to a fair, and they decide to get an ice cream. Click here for the famous ice cream scene.

As humorous as the film presents it, how many times has Nick’s point of view been our unconscious default setting?
I don’t have to prove I’m right;
I just have to prove you’re wrong.

The 2016 presidential race took this strategy to new heights:
I don’t need to prove my candidate is the best;
I just need to prove your candidate is the antichrist.

We might expect this from politics, but I’m disturbed by how often I’ve seen this mindset lived out in church, and I’m not exempt from it myself.
Stop for a moment and think about how many times you’ve heard a church event billed as “not church as usual” or “not like your parents’ church.”
How many denominations define themselves just by being not Catholic or not Anglican or not Southern Baptist?

Sometimes, we get so caught up in what we aren’t
that we lose track of what we are.

The entire Old Testament is about God’s people being distinct.
They found their identity in God and define their lifestyles based on that.
Their laws come from God, not just reactions to the people around them.
The entire New Testament is about the Church being distinct.
They are called to behave differently than their contemporaries,
but this is not what defines them.
They are defined by the love of Christ,
just as we ought to be defined by the love of Christ
and help to reshape the world with the love of Christ.

Too often, we settle for defining ourselves by what we aren’t.
What if we start defining ourselves and our church by what we really are?